STOKE ON TRENT, ENGLAND - AUGUST 20: Josep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City looks on during the Premier League match between Stoke City and Manchester City at Bet365 Stadium on August 20, 2016 in Stoke on Trent, England. (Photo by Chris Brunskill/Getty Images)
Manchester City: Pep Guardiola set for return to Camp Nou
Manchester City ending up in the same Champions League group as Barcelona may not be terribly surprising for the Blues, but it does present many interesting scenarios.
Well, hands up who saw that coming? My wife certainly did. In a world where Manchester City’s long promised friendly against Bayern Munich would happen basically a week after Pep Guardiola made the switch from the latter to the former, drawing Barcelona in the Champions League was all but inevitable, 100%. I’m surprised they even went through the motions of pulling out blank balls from the machine when everyone knows how it works by now.
The toughest three teams from the first three pots all mysteriously end up in the same Champions’ League group and, lo and behold, Pep is having a reunion with the club that defines him.
Oh and Claudio Bravo too, less than an hour after he formally switched from being the Barcelona number 1 to City number 1, he already is faced with the prospect of seeing his old teammates, supporters and rival up close and personal. Daunting, to say the least.
Not-so-thinly-veiled accusations of match fixing aside, it’s certainly an interesting group for all participants. Borussia Monchengladbach will feel, perhaps more than any side, a little hard done by with the draw. They had reasonable hopes of finishing second, even after Barcelona was first out the door, but the addition of the Blues complicates matters immensely. Celtic are among the weaker sides in the competition, but will likely relish drawing a UK club and attracting the attention a Barcelona fixture brings.
The big story of the group though, remains Pep’s forthcoming showdown with his old club. Any manager facing a former team is newsworthy, but for Guardiola and Barcelona it goes so much further. Pep is, in many respects, still the heart and soul of the club. He took them and turned them into perhaps the most dominating, winning machine club football has seen in a generation or more. But beyond that, he instilled in the club a spirit of winning that has outlasted him and shows no signs of stopping.
Pep is a legend at Barcelona. His record of 14 trophies in 4 (!) seasons there is a club record and to this day you can ask anyone associated with the club, be they supporter or staff, and they will tell you straight out that Pep remains the greatest Barcelona manager ever. His extreme tiki taka style is so engrained in the ethos at Camp Nou that subsequent managers have had all had to have the distinction of being at the club during Guardiola’s tenure.
For City, this represents potentially the greatest challenge but always the highest reward. Making it past the group stages, assuming Barcelona do also, would ensure the Blues avoid them in at least the subsequent round. Nobody wants to play Barcelona, but perhaps it’s better to do so when a loss or a draw isn’t the end of the competition.
Further, the test may be well received by Pep and Citizens alike as a barometer for how far the squad has come along since Pellegrini exited. With the addition of Bravo, and the likes of Ilkay Gundogan and Leroy Sane finally becoming available, Pep’s final squad is starting to take shape and the proposition of seeing exactly how they’d match up to the best team in the game is mouth-watering.
Nobody knows Barcelona like Pep Guardiola, but nobody knows Pep Guardiola like Barcelona. The football, the mindset, everything will be the same and it will come down to individual difference makers on the park. It’s pretty hard to argue against Barca, with Messi/Neymar/Suarez, having that edge, but in my mind it’s just as likely that both sides cancel each other out.
First for Manchester City though is Borussia Monchengladbach at the Etihad on September 13th and, understandably, Pep’s international vision won’t extend any further. For the rest of us though, we can all look forward to that statistically unlikely, but somehow assured from the beginning, matchup between City and Barcelona.
