Manchester City’s Flaws Have Been Exposed but Singular Brilliance Remains

 Kevin de Bruyne, Riyad Mahrez and Bernardo Silva celebrate going 2-0 up at Manchester United during a first half in which City overwhelmed their rivals in a blur of a thousand midfielders. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA
Kevin de Bruyne, Riyad Mahrez and Bernardo Silva celebrate going 2-0 up at Manchester United during a first half in which City overwhelmed their rivals in a blur of a thousand midfielders. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA
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Manchester City’s Flaws Have Been Exposed but Singular Brilliance Remains

 Kevin de Bruyne, Riyad Mahrez and Bernardo Silva celebrate going 2-0 up at Manchester United during a first half in which City overwhelmed their rivals in a blur of a thousand midfielders. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA
Kevin de Bruyne, Riyad Mahrez and Bernardo Silva celebrate going 2-0 up at Manchester United during a first half in which City overwhelmed their rivals in a blur of a thousand midfielders. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

There was something almost refreshing about Manchester City’s performance in beating Manchester United in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday. Here was a Pep Guardiola side back to its best, passing and moving, a blur of a thousand midfielders confounding duller-witted opponents. Gone was the fragility to the counter that had enabled Marcus Rashford to eviscerate them in the Premier League at the beginning of December, and diminished with it was the thought that this might be a side in terminal decline.

When great teams go, they can collapse suddenly. As City struggled against United, Wolves (again) and Newcastle, it was possible to envisage this as a team reaching the end of its lifespan. Béla Guttmann’s Three-Year Rule – the great Hungarian coach said that if a manager stays at a club more than that period, players tend to become bored and/or complacent and opponents start to work out counter-strategies – began to be invoked.

In English league history only one manager – Sir Alex Ferguson, twice – has ever completed a hat‑trick of league titles. Maintaining hunger, staving off entropy, keeping things fresh is hugely difficult – perhaps exacerbated by the very intensity that makes Guardiola so successful. Players can be worn down by that relentlessness – and there was a constant murmur from City in the summer that Guardiola seemed unusually intense even by his standards – or Guardiola himself may be exhausted by the effort of being Pep, of existing constantly at that hyper-alert, hyper‑engaged level.

After four years at Barcelona Guardiola was so shattered he needed a year’s sabbatical. After three years at Bayern his players almost openly celebrated the more relaxed regimen of Carlo Ancelotti. Guardiola’s genius is not without cost. It was possible to wonder if a similar process of attrition could be seen in City’s surprising recent vulnerability to the counter: they have already conceded more shots to fast breakaways this season than they did in the whole of last. The temptation was to construct a narrative of City’s players, lacking the edge of the past two seasons, struggling to press with the same ferocity.

But the statistics belie that. In every metric to gauge pressing offered by Opta – high turnovers, pressed sequences (in which the opposition have three or fewer passes in a move and it ends within 40m of their own goal), opposition passes allowed per defensive action, how high up the pitch a team begins open-play sequences – City are as good as or better than last season. (What is striking in that regard is how improved other sides are – Liverpool, most notably, but in certain metrics Leicester, Southampton and Chelsea as well.) The issue, perhaps, is rather that opponents have become emboldened to press against City.

Or perhaps it comes down to that most old-fashioned of reasons: how good the players are. The failure to replace Vincent Kompany, even leaving aside the intangible of his leadership qualities, was a needless gamble that left City vulnerable if Aymeric Laporte were to be injured, which of course he was at the end of August.

That problem has been compounded by the fact that Guardiola’s faith in Nicolás Otamendi and John Stones appears limited. That in turn has meant Fernandinho dropping deeper to play as a central defender, giving Rodri greater exposure earlier than was perhaps intended.

Left-back has been a problem position throughout Guardiola’s reign. It may yet be that if Benjamin Mendy can stay fit, he can come to dominate that role but for now his chief function in the squad appears to be as king of the WhatsApp. In Guardiola’s three and a half years at City, £185m has been spent on full-backs yet the only one to have offered any consistency is Kyle Walker.

Recruitment can never be perfect, and City’s over the past few years has been better than most, but that is a concern, particularly as it seems to fit a recurring trend in Guardiola’s management. A host of very fine players – Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Aleksandr Hleb, Dmytro Chygrynskiy, Alexis Sánchez, Medhi Benatia – have struggled to adapt to the Guardiola ecosystem. Which in a sense is only to be expected: part of what makes Guardiola so great is that what he does is highly unusual. If outsiders could adapt to it easily, far more teams would be playing like that.

Although it is the way Wolves, United, Norwich and Leicester scored against City on the counter that sticks in the mind, City’s defending in general has been poorer this season and they are yielding 7.95 shots per game this season as against 6.26 last. At the same time expected goals stats suggest City are not taking chances as clinically as they might be expected to, the result of which has been five defeats in the first half of the season and the almost certain surrender of their league title.

Yet City have 44 points from 21 games, which until recently would have seemed a useful platform for a title challenger. If they continue to accumulate points at the current rate that will give them 80 points. That, admittedly, is far fewer than the 100 or the 98 they have collected in the past two seasons; even if they win their 17 remaining games, beginning at Aston Villa on Sunday, they will still be five points shy of the record they set in 2017-18. But it would be a surprise were they to lose another five games in the second half of the season. Imagine two of those defeats transformed into wins: 86 points would have been enough to lift the title four times in the past 10 seasons.

The issue really is less with City than the standards demanded at the top of the modern game by its financial structures. Extraordinary as the top two have been over the past couple of years, brilliantly as they have been coached and efficiently as they have – Liverpool in particular – used their resources, a world in which 95‑plus points are required for the title is not a healthy one.

City have slipped a little this season but Tuesday was a reminder that there is not a lot wrong with them that a decent centre-back would not fix. It is only Liverpool’s sustained excellence that has made City’s season so far feel so anticlimactic.

The Guardian Sport



Rafael Nadal Retired after the Davis Cup. It's a Rare Team Event in Tennis

Spain's Carlos Alcaraz, left, shakes hands with Rafael Nadal during a training session at the Martin Carpena Sports Hall, in Malaga, southern Spain, on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz, left, shakes hands with Rafael Nadal during a training session at the Martin Carpena Sports Hall, in Malaga, southern Spain, on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
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Rafael Nadal Retired after the Davis Cup. It's a Rare Team Event in Tennis

Spain's Carlos Alcaraz, left, shakes hands with Rafael Nadal during a training session at the Martin Carpena Sports Hall, in Malaga, southern Spain, on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz, left, shakes hands with Rafael Nadal during a training session at the Martin Carpena Sports Hall, in Malaga, southern Spain, on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Rafael Nadal wanted to play his last match before retiring in Spain, representing Spain and wearing the red uniform used by Spain's Davis Cup squad.

“The feeling to play for your country, the feeling to play for your teammates ... when you win, everybody wins; when you lose, everybody loses, no?” Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, said a day before his career ended when his nation was eliminated by the Netherlands at the annual competition. ”To share the good and bad moments is something different than (we have on a) daily basis (in) ... a very individual sport."

The men's Davis Cup, which concludes Sunday in this seaside city in southern Spain, and the women's Billie Jean King Cup, which wrapped up Wednesday with Italy as its champion, give tennis players a rare taste of what professional athletes in soccer, football, basketball, baseball, hockey and more are so used to, The AP reported.

Sharing a common goal, seeking and offering support, celebrating — or commiserating — as a group.

“We don’t get to represent our country a lot, and when we do, we want to make them proud at that moment,” said Alexei Popyrin, a member of the Australian roster that will go up against No. 1-ranked Jannik Sinner and defending champion Italy in the semifinals Saturday after getting past the United States on Thursday. “For us, it’s a really big deal. Growing up, it was something that was instilled in us. We would watch Davis Cup all the time on the TV at home, and we would just dream of playing for it. For us, it’s one of the priorities.”

Some players say they feel an on-court boost in team competitions, more of which have been popping up in recent years, including the Laver Cup, the United Cup and the ATP Cup.

“You're not just playing for yourself,” said 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu, part of Britain's BJK Cup team in Malaga. “You’re playing for everyone.”

There are benefits to being part of a team, of course, such as the off-court camaraderie: Two-time major finalist Jasmine Paolini said Italy's players engaged in serious games of UNO after dinner throughout the Billie Jean King Cup.

There also can be an obvious shared joy, as seen in the big smiles and warm hug shared by Sinner and Matteo Berrettini when they finished off a doubles victory together to complete a comeback win against Argentina on Thursday.

“Maybe because we’re tired of playing by ourselves — just for ourselves — and when we have these chances, it’s always nice,” Berrettini said.

On a purely practical level, this format gives someone a chance to remain in an event after losing a match, something that is rare in the usual sort of win-and-advance, lose-and-go-home tournament.

So even though Wimbledon semifinalist Lorenzo Musetti came up short against Francisco Cerúndolo in Italy's opener against Argentina, he could cheer as Sinner went 2-0 to overturn the deficit by winning the day's second singles match and pairing with Berrettini to keep their country in the draw.

“The last part of the year is always very tough,” Sinner said. “It's nice to have teammates to push you through.”

The flip side?

There can be an extra sense of pressure to not let down the players wearing your uniform — or the country whose anthem is played at the start of each session, unlike in tournaments year-round.

Also, it can be difficult to be sitting courtside and pulling for your nation without being able to alter the outcome.

“It’s definitely nerve-racking. ... I fully just bit all my fingernails off during the match," US Open runner-up Taylor Fritz said about what it was like to watch teammate Ben Shelton lose in a 16-14 third-set tiebreaker against Australia before getting on court himself. "I get way more nervous watching team events, and my friends play, than (when it’s) me, myself, playing.”