ETIHAD STADIUM — First Madrid and now this, Manchester City eviscerated by the great footballing houses they sought to join. The dismantling against Liverpool here was every bit as emphatic as that at the Bernabeu, City lowered by much the better team.
Worst still, none of this was a surprise. The defeat in the Champions League was City’s 13th in 26 matches. The 14th was no less painful since it saw hegemony passing from Manchester to Liverpool, the visitors effectively confirming the end of City’s unprecedented domination of the Premier League.
Errors were everywhere, each imperfection a micro tear in Pep Guardiola’s soul. The arms went up repeatedly, turning to his bench to vent his frustration, to process the load. City were faced with a team propelled by the same zeitgeist, the same elemental force that Guardiola’s team once exhibited. The calm refusal to panic, the composure, the confidence to wait that was once City’s is now entirely Liverpool’s.
The sight of the diminutive Rico Lewis marking the colossal Virgil van Dijk at a corner was a neat microcosm of the opposing forces. It wasn’t just that Liverpool scored from said corner, but that they expected to. The peerless Mo Salah completed what was a training ground move, albeit with the help of a deflection. The celebration felt so “that’s how I roll”, which is, of course, the essence of big dog hauteur.
Guardiola stared at the ground, perhaps hoping it might swallow him. The picture was not helped by his ill-fitting slacks that blew in the wind, giving the impression of a figure increasingly unmoored. City, so rhythmic in their four-consecutive-titles phase, are increasingly fingers and thumbs. Even Phil Foden struggled to master the ball, the surrender of possession via his boot another occasion for Guardiola to despair.
City did not lack for effort here. They went forward with a kind of purpose but little of it was convincing. The drilled connectivity of the past has become a sequence of individual attempts at repair.
An injury to Alex Mac Allister gave Guardiola his moment. As the players migrated to the touchline to rehydrate, Guardiola sought out Omar Marmoush for additional schooling. The Egyptian had just seen his equaliser scratched for offside. He walked into a wall of hyper, machine-gun instructions, the intensity of which was unmatched by anything the team had offered.
We can infer from the screeched gestures that Guardiola was not happy with Marmoush’s positioning the wrong side of the defensive line. When the second goal went in Guardiola was abject, a pacing ball of Catalan fire. You sense City’s demise is not only consuming him but his team, a group further slowed by the anxieties of the boss.
If ever there were a symbol of City’s fall it was the prone form of 20-year-old Abdukodir Khusanov, face down in the dirt after failing to close down Dominik Szoboszlai for the second. The half ended with a suitably awful attempt by Kevin De Bruyne, his left-foot shot a scythed emblem of all that is wrong in City’s world.
De Bruyne, who did not feature in Madrid, considered beyond use by Guardiola, left the field with 25 minutes to go. Even the best have a sell-by-date. The art of the deal is to anticipate their end. Guardiola, it seems, has happened across this realisation too late, the game moving on inexorably beyond his last great creation.
De Bruyne didn’t finish the match, Bernardo Silva remained on the bench, Ilkay Gundogan, overrun in Madrid, was a late replacement for Marmoush. It all felt so yesterday, City floundering against a team playing at a different level and with more in the tank.
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