PEP AND MAN CITY – THE UNTOLD DECADE, Part 3: The journey to the Treble. For the first time, JACK GAUGHAN reveals the secrets of Guardiola’s masterplan for immortality – from magnets to Coldplay, a ‘trap’, a secret weapon and tactical perfection

In the away dressing room at one of Europe’s great football cathedrals, there was only silence, a state of paralysis. Nobody spoke, nobody argued. It took a lifetime for everybody to head for the showers and board the coach back to Madrid’s Mandarin Oriental Ritz.

Pep Guardiola paced around the room because pacing is all that Pep Guardiola knows in those moments. Head spinning, Manchester City had been thrown into the Real Madrid washing machine and whacked on the highest heat. They had shrunk. They lost when it appeared for all the world as though they were about to win. Where exactly does it go from here?

Stoppage time of the Champions League semi-final’s second leg had approached with City two goals clear on aggregate. Jack Grealish twice went close to scoring in the dying minutes and Joao Cancelo tested Thibaut Courtois from distance but those moments surely wouldn’t matter. The tie was done. Over. They’d neutered the kings of Europe. Hadn’t they?

Their lead, they felt, was unassailable and they would be back in a European final, one year after losing their first showpiece to Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea in Porto. A shot at redemption beckoned in Paris. ‘You don’t just think you’ve finished the job, you have actually done it,’ one staff member said later.

But then Real did what Real can do. Even by their own storied standards, that night in May 2022 bore witness to one of history’s finest football comebacks. Two Rodrygo goals before the whistle were followed by Karim Benzema’s penalty five minutes into extra time. Defensive mistakes contributed to all three as City minds became scrambled.

Nights like this were becoming the norm. Monaco, Liverpool, Tottenham, Lyon, Chelsea and now Madrid. Six consecutive years of devastating Champions League disappointments and with each passing failure – for that is how it looked and felt – the one question that had followed Guardiola around since he left Barcelona for a year off in 2012 grew louder and more persistent. Just when are you going to win the Champions League again?

After so much heartache on the continent, City’s manager – hired specifically to take the club to the next level – could have been forgiven for some moments of self-doubt. So much money and expertise had been poured in the City project but still the glass ceiling they believed had been placed there by the continent’s big clubs by way of UEFA’s spending rules remained resolutely intact.

As they stared at the tiled floor of that dressing room that terrible night in spring, Guardiola and his shellshocked players would not know it – but from the sky blue funeral of the Santiago Bernabeu began an ascent to immortality.

Three-hundred and seventy days passed between visits to the Spanish capital and the hotel changed, which goes against Guardiola’s preference for continuity. Go north from the Mandarin, past the Cibeles Fountain, and you arrive at the Rosewood Villa Magna in the city’s boutique shopping hub.

Guardiola usually likes familiarity. But this time City had bounced around hotels. The Four Seasons was the base on earning a creditable goalless draw at Atletico in the tempestuous 2022 quarter-finals, Guardiola bemoaning to friends that nobody ever praised their defending.

Sometimes the boss is best left alone on these trips. He happily sits around the lobby with a coffee, buried in his own thoughts, and is often seen gawping at huge televisions, transfixed by whatever football is on. The two-day European sojourns often offer quieter flashes of his character.

But not on the night of May 9, 2023. The post-match dinner at the hotel is buffet style. Guardiola is alive and it is largely thanks to one man who will eventually have a statue of himself outside the Etihad.

Kevin De Bruyne, who City were desperately managing through a chronic hamstring problem, has just earned them a share of the first leg semi-final spoils with a thunderbolt at the Bernabeu.

Aside from the hamstring, which surgeons described as like a paper towel when operating in the summer, De Bruyne was dealing with personal loss. The grandfather of his wife, Michele, had been terminally ill and De Bruyne had flown to Belgium after a weekend win over Leeds to say his goodbyes. On the Monday, as the squad travelled to Madrid, he had died. As De Bruyne hammered in the equaliser and charged over to the away support, he burst into tears.

Guardiola knew all of the back story of course, the sacrifices made by his talisman’s body and mind. He knew what was being expended for the cause and around that dinner table, two hours after full time, his brain whirred.

He didn’t even wait to watch the tapes of the evenly-contested 1-1 draw before launching into the ideas of what to do the following Wednesday back in Manchester. To a small group of his staff, he spoke passionately about what could improve, what needed to improve, and how they could prevail.

Those around that table say the tie was won then, Guardiola’s infectious desire to avenge what had occurred a year earlier creating an environment among them all where City would not be allowed to fall at this hurdle again. He had his plan for the second leg right there, glass of red wine in hand. What followed eight days later was spectacular, basically perfect.

It was a monstrous performance described as ‘a trap’ by a Spanish daily newspaper. An atmosphere that midfielder Federico Valverde would call the most intimidating he’d ever encountered. City simply battered Real, Bernardo Silva scoring twice before half-time and scarcely believing either as they hit the net, eyes bulging and arms flailing.

As former City manager Brian Horton – a coach whose footballing dream was the sort of swashbuckling 45 minutes that Guardiola produced – went inside at the break, his phone buzzed. David Pleat was on the other end, at home watching on television. Pleat, a slave to expansive football during his time with Luton and Tottenham, enthused to Horton that it had been the greatest half he’d ever seen. Very few who witnessed it live at the Etihad on the night would argue.

‘The team simply knew it was their day,’ one source said. ‘You could tell from Kevin’s face, Bernardo’s face, that we weren’t giving them any chances here. It was unbelievable, considering the level of the opponent.

‘The players knew it had to be us this year. That wasn’t obvious in September, but in the knockout stages. There was this mindset of “not another time, it has to be this time”. The previous season they deserved to make the final. They had this feeling of “no, no, no – we need to be super competitive when the time arrives”. You could feel it from them.’

This was cathartic retribution. Again two goals clear going into the second leg’s final quarter, but this time Grealish isn’t thwarted on the goal line. Instead Manuel Akanji is on the end of De Bruyne’s free-kick to nod in via the unfortunate Eder Militao. The margins, the differences.

Akanji. Never anybody’s favourite – likely in very few strongest XIs – and yet one of Txiki Begiristain’s greatest triumphs in the transfer market. Without him, John Stones doesn’t gallivant into midfield with the abandon that defined City’s run to the Treble. Without him, they likely don’t win it.

The story’s origin is a breakfast in the previous August. City had steadied themselves after the Real collapse to clinch a fourth domestic crown of this era in dramatic circumstances on the final day of the 2021-22 season, beating Aston Villa 3-2 to yet again edge Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool by a point.

By now a deal for long-standing transfer target Erling Haaland was wrapped up. City’s trajectory was only heading in one direction and Haaland undoubtedly proved the catalyst, ending with a mind-boggling 52 goals in his debut campaign.

And yet, even in the midst of Haaland scoring nine league goals in his first month at the club, Guardiola was like a bear with a sore head. City had 17 outfield players at their disposal when everybody was fit. And when Nathan Ake limped out of a pulsating 3-3 draw at Newcastle United on August 21, Guardiola was down to two available centre halves.

Josh Wilson-Esbrand (now at Radomiak Radom, Poland), Claudio Gomes (Palermo, Italy’s Serie B), Ben Knight (Cambridge United), Luke Mbete and a 17-year-old Rico Lewis all made various benches at this point. City had turned their back on a move for Brighton’s Marc Cucurella over finances that summer. Guardiola likes small squads but incredibly, three injuries – Aymeric Laporte and Kalvin Phillips the others – had already stretched them.

Begiristain has known Guardiola since the 1980s so understood what was required. They ate breakfast together at the training ground and the director of football’s message was clear. ‘I’ll sort it,’ he said.

Akanji was stagnating at Borussia Dortmund at this point. An experienced Switzerland international, he was out of the team while disagreements over a new contract rumbled on but – relatively unheralded outside of that part of Europe – nobody apart from Crystal Palace was really looking at him. So Begiristain had a clear run at a player who fit with an idea that had been percolating for a while, namely that Guardiola wanted defenders who could just defend. 

For all the inverted full backs and false nines of his reign, the season that tops all others can be remembered in part for picking four bona fide central defenders during four of the seven European knockout games – including both legs of the quarters with Bayern Munich.

As well as his natural centre back position, Akanji would go on to feature at right back, left back and holding midfield. Currently on loan at Inter Milan, the 30-year-old played for just three full seasons but in that time won every single trophy available to a player in England, apart from the Carabao Cup.

At £15million he is the bargain whose introduction as a full back – keeping out Kyle Walker for the Champions League final – allowed Stones to produce the game of his life in Istanbul. Akanji would describe Stones as ‘like Maradona’ on that balmy night in Turkey.

Tactically, Akanji gave Guardiola flexibility in a way that even the chameleon Cancelo and the mostly superb Walker could not. Akanji was the centre half at full back, able to provide that absolute solidity when merging into a back three as Stones flew the nest, memorably pirouetting through Inter’s midfield in the final.

The pair of them were heavily involved in Rodri’s eventual winner, Stones peeling wide and allowing Akanji to break the lines, in a scene that Guardiola had predicted and asked of them during a team meeting that week.

Stones as an actual midfielder. A classic Guardiola overthink. His detractors insist that a penchant for the excessively clever has cost Guardiola more nights of European glory. Those around him scoff and marvel instead at the often-unnoticed tactical subtleties and tweaks that helped City collect so much silverware across a decade.

Potentially the sharpest of those when reacting to game situations, on the historic run of 2023, came inside the home dressing room at the Etihad when Bayern were in town for a quarter-final first leg. A goal up at half-time, Rodri scoring a one-in-100 effort from outside the area with his wrong foot, Guardiola wanted to prey on Bayern central defender Dayot Upamecano in a bid to create more opportunities.

He wheeled out the whiteboard and its magnets, telling wide men Bernardo Silva and Grealish to listen carefully for instructions on a pressing game they had never deployed before. Both strikers, Haaland and Julian Alvarez, dropped on to the central midfielders when Bayern had the ball in their own third. It left Silva and Grealish to come in off their flanks to close down, prompting confusion.

They played cat and mouse in a move designed to cloud Upamecano’s thinking. Grealish robbed him once early on, almost yielding an instant reward, before Silva’s second – a flying header to meet Haaland’s exquisite cross – came directly from Grealish ambushing the France centre half into a mistake. City won 3-0, finished the job with a draw at the Allianz Arena, and went to Madrid on a high in the semi-finals.

The press altered the complexion of that tie but still Guardiola knows what people think. He knows they criticise. He’s said as much in public. ‘Every team has their particular way to play and you have to adapt and adjust to it and then overthink what we have to do,’ he said pointedly before a meeting with Atletico.

He regularly calls himself a ‘failure’ and references ‘stupid tactics’ but the reality is that he does not believe a single word of it. There are too many positive examples to list, the most notable in the early years being how City set up in the Bernabeu in February 2020, with Sergio Aguero on the bench, De Bruyne a false nine and Gabriel Jesus on the left wing. They won 2-1. Nobody mentions how mad that selection first appeared.

The sheer weight of disappointment from the years of defeats leading up to their crowning glory felt, for some time, as if it was too heavy for Guardiola to shake. It is probably why relief swept across him when destiny was finally secured. He was openly reflective of this in Istanbul. ‘I’m feeling tired, calm and satisfied,’ he sighed. ‘This f****** trophy is so difficult to win.’

As he sat there, the oh-so-nearly games flashed before his eyes, while in the pubs of Manchester a section of supporters still fiercely debate to this day how much impact their manager’s tinkering had on some of those evenings.

Chelsea in the 2021 final is the one. Despite their numbers being limited by the ongoing ramifications of Covid, City fans took over Porto’s riverfront all day and expectancy hung in the air as they gathered to sing underneath the Luis I Bridge. 

Chelsea had finished 19 points behind City in the Premier League. Club staff and former players mingled with fans in what resembled a carnival atmosphere while the travelling media were handed commemorative pens before the game even kicked off.

At 1pm on the day of that final, in a restaurant famed for its Port on the banks of the Douro River, unconfirmed team news started to filter through. No holding midfielder was the word, despite Fernandinho and Rodri having started each of the last 61 matches. Raheem Sterling was being brought in from the cold after not starting a Champions League game since February. Phil Foden was to be in the centre of midfield for what felt like one of the first times.

Guardiola’s rationale for the midfield switch – Ilkay Gundogan holding – was that they would dominate possession. He wanted an extra ball player and that was borne out. City had 60 per cent of it yet did barely anything of substance, chasing the game after Kai Havertz’s first-half goal and reduced to lumping it long for substitute Aguero on his sad final appearance.

Among the squad, uncertainty had reigned right up until the day, over selection and plan. A pressure permeated and there was an edginess in sessions and team meetings. Staff now confide to having felt sick all day and were ultimately unsurprised by the result. 

Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak went in the dressing room afterwards to console the team and at the hotel the next morning told staff they needed to go through heartache in order to reach the summit. That attitude was mirrored by those who turned out for the pre-arranged ‘party’ in the dead of Porto’s night, awkward to begin with before focusing on the title and Carabao Cup win and remembering that this had still been a successful season. 

Guardiola, in hindsight, admits he was too aggressive in his messaging to players at half-time, in a way that inhibited them. Fernandinho, meanwhile, claims never to have spoken to Guardiola about that selection.

The run to that final had been emotional. A monster of a half-time team talk was required by the manager away at Paris Saint-Germain when a goal down in the semi-final first leg. City won the game 2-1. Foden, meanwhile, had produced a masterclass at Dortmund in the previous round. That was a night that fuelled belief.

Earlier that season, one brave staff member had asked the Catalan a very simple question in full view of plenty their colleagues. ‘So, when are we actually going to win this competition?’ he said.

Guardiola took the inquisition with good grace, reaffirming that it would happen before retiring to his room at their Marseille hotel. That exchange came only two months after arguably the club’s worst night of the past decade.

Lyon in the 2020 semi-final. David Silva’s last stand. Three at the back with two holders, an overload of caution. A missed Sterling open goal. Covid and that strange end-of-season Champions League jamboree organised by UEFA where the last eight played out as one-off knockouts in Lisbon across a week. City – having beaten Real in the last 16 in a two-legged tie in which the games were separated by six months due to Covid – thought they’d be there for the duration but need not have unpacked.

‘All of us felt after we beat Real Madrid that maybe we have a chance, maybe this is our year, when we got Lyon – with all respect,’ one staff member said. ‘I saw Pep really down after the game. Somehow he came back (the next season) really positive. It amazes me.’

City’s line-up against a team sitting seventh in Ligue 1 when Covid stopped the French season felt baffling. Bernardo Silva was an unused substitute, as was Foden. Wantaway teenager Eric Garcia and Fernandinho were picked at the back ahead of an out-of-favour Stones. Riyad Mahrez started on the bench.

Guardiola was lampooned after a 3-1 defeat in an empty Estadio Jose Alvalade. David Silva slipped out of the Sheraton in Cascais hours after full time with no fanfare and signed for Real Sociedad. A miserable episode and one that haunts the player they called El Mago.

‘That night was tough,’ says David’s namesake, Bernardo. ‘It’s a bit easier to take when you end the game and go on holiday. We’re not sharing the dressing room a week after and don’t have to speak to each other. But obviously it is really tough.

‘For all of us, you have those days where you feel, “Wow”. When we lost to Tottenham in 2019 – the Champions League quarter-final – for three days I wouldn’t even speak to my family. It felt like the world was going to end. It was the same in Madrid.’

The Tottenham game to which Silva refers is the quarter-final tie of April 2019. Spurs were 27 points inferior to City – champions for the second time under Guardiola – that league season. Guardiola dropped De Bruyne for the first leg, a 1-0 defeat that included a major mistake from Fabian Delph that ended his City career. Aguero missed a penalty, with spot-kicks a scourge on Guardiola’s City until Haaland rocked up.

The second leg stands out to this day as one of the most tumultuous nights of Guardiola’s decade at City. And there have been a few. The stats speak of a 4-3 City win that added up to a 4-4 exit on away goals. Those present still remember Sterling’s apparent last-second ‘winner’ that was chalked off for offside and the appeals for handball around Fernando Llorente’s ultimate ‘winner’. 

What was less tangible was the mutual loathing between Guardiola and Tottenham’s Mauricio Pochettino, while in the privacy of the dressing room afterwards Vincent Kompany spent an hour consoling a tearful Aguero.

Pain and heartbreak were City synonyms with the competition all the way to Istanbul. The year before the Spurs heartbreak, City were schooled 3-0 at Anfield in a quarter-final first leg at a time when they led Klopp’s team by 25 league points.

That was an acrimonious night. Games against Liverpool tend to be. The City team bus was pelted with missiles on the way to Anfield, footage of which was filmed from the front seats by Guardiola’s right-hand man Manel Estiarte.

Gundogan operated as a right winger on Merseyside and Laporte at left back – both moves falling flat. City claim the refereeing left a lot to be desired but Klopp simply had City’s number, his team surviving an early onslaught to win 2-1 at the Etihad.

City and Liverpool. Anfield and Guardiola. Klopp and Guardiola. It’s worth a book on its own. When Klopp’s team beat Tottenham to win the Champions League, Guardiola called him to offer congratulations. It was a classy move and was genuine, too. Equally interesting was that he clearly didn’t have his great rival’s number. The call went in to a Liverpool physio Lee Nobes, who had joined the club from City.

‘The motto “This is Anfield” is no marketing spin,’ Guardiola has said. ‘There is something about it that you will find in no other stadium in the world. They score a goal and over the next five minutes you feel that you’ll concede another four. You feel small and all the rival players seem to be all over you.’

This was never truer than in that first leg, all three goals coming in 19 minutes like bright red machine gun fire. Guardiola has spoken a lot about Klopp and Liverpool, how they pushed City to scale new heights – and it quicky became a barometer of how their current crop were fairing.

‘In this stadium, I know the guys who want the ball and the guys who don’t want the ball. I will take a note,’ he told the players before a pulsating draw in 2021.

That fixture’s importance never dimmed, Guardiola showing a montage of goals and positive bits of training footage to players, backed by Coldplay’s Fix You, as motivation before a potentially title-deciding game at the Etihad in 2022. That one ended in a draw. To borrow a Liverpool slogan quietly mocked by some people at City, this meeting always meant more.

In later years, Guardiola would goad the home crowd by holding six digits aloft to mark his title wins, mindful that those around the dugout in 2022 were alleged to have hurled coins in his direction. Accusations of staff being spat at surfaced in 2021 while Liverpool have condemned alleged tragedy chanting from the City end. Guardiola has only won twice in 11 attempts at Anfield, a place that tormented him for so long.

Defeat even came in the Treble season, sealed by Mohamed Salah, pouncing on a Cancelo mistake that marked the beginning of the end for the mercurial full back.

After the Qatar World Cup that winter, Cancelo started only three of 10 games. He seemed paranoid by the emergence of Lewis, held heated discussions with Guardiola and the pair were involved in a bust-up after it became clear Cancelo was not to be selected for an FA Cup tie against Arsenal. He slumped on the bench and did not warm up before a match earlier that week, too.

His final games for the club before joining Bayern on loan were a 1-0 January reverse at Southampton in the Carabao Cup – there was to be no Quadruple – and a league defeat at Old Trafford three days later. In his absence, even Silva filled in at left back.

With acrimony abounding, a disruptive Cancelo sulking and a squad and season in need of turbo-boosting, Guardiola lost it with his players. The famous ‘happy flowers rant’, after a 4-2 comeback win against Tottenham prevented two defeats becoming three, saw him criticise almost every member of the team by name. Guardiola’s knack has always been to go severe when his team win. Mostly, it provokes reactions. This was about not wanting to work hard and being interested only in accepting plaudits.

‘Playing with this lack of passion, we’re not going to win anything,’ he said, despite his side cutting the gap to leaders Arsenal to five points on the night. ‘(We lacked) guts, passion, fire, desire to win from minute one. The same with the fans, they are silent for 45 minutes. I want my fans back. I don’t recognise my team, they used to have the passion and desire to run.

‘I want a reaction from the whole club – everyone. We are a happy flowers organisation. I don’t want happy flowers. I want to beat Arsenal. Play this way and Arsenal will destroy us.’

There was anger at how nobody stuck up for Lewis when Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg kicked lumps out of him and soon after that popular sports therapist Mark Sertori left by mutual consent, upsetting some players. They were also agitated that squad confidant and chauffeur Mohammed Fayaz Hussain saw his dressing-room access revoked. He was instead told to attend matches in the stands.

Such things matter in the strange gilded world of professional footballers and as such these were big talking points among the squad before the Premier League’s 115 charges were handed down in February of the Treble year. Guardiola publicly backed his employers to clear their names. Internally, he used the allegations of financial impropriety as fuel. ‘They don’t want us to win,’ he told staff.

A draw at Nottingham Forest prompted a harsh team meeting instigated by Rodri. Guardiola then unusually gathered his players on the pitch in Leipzig following another disappointing draw. Arsenal were threatening to run away domestically but, right on cue, City’s big gear change arrived. When all Guardiola’s emotional and psychological input finally paid him back, it did so in spades.

After recovering that 2-0 deficit against Tottenham, City went on to lose just one and draw four matches from 26 in all competitions. Their unbeaten run stood at 23 games as Ruben Dias, crucially, returned from injury and Arteta’s Arsenal collapsed to hand City the league title.

Gundogan turned into ‘prime Zidane’, according to his team-mates, while coaches still talk about the quality of Grealish in the final months of the season. For that he is not afforded enough external credit. Rodri became Ballon d’Or Rodri. Ake was Mr Consistent. De Bruyne was beguiling. Mahrez always chipped in when required.

Arsenal were slapped for four and so were Real. Liverpool and Bayern both shipped three to Guardiola’s bulldozer. Luminaries of European football were dealt no mercy and as Arteta’s side were losing at Forest in May, the majority of City’s team and backroom staff were at the training ground to watch together, the title handed to them with three games to spare.

With the Premier League done, a third in a row, attention turned to something far more eternal.

The City Football Academy canteen on May 22, 2023. Breakfast is being served prior to a recovery session. They had celebrated another shiny Premier League crown the evening before and Guardiola is going around the tables.

‘Come on, come, we’re gonna win the Treble,’ he repeats. Heads look up from their bowls. He means it. The confidence is in the voice. The certainty. From there, City were just marching to an inevitability because their leader said so.

The FA Cup is often overlooked in this trilogy. A derby with Manchester United at Wembley, the added spice of rivals trying to halt in its tracks the very accomplishment that only they, back in 1999, could lay claim to achieving.

Guardiola’s team meetings in the build-up centred on three aspects of Erik ten Hag’s side. A couple of different ploys when the defenders or cup keeper Stefan Ortega had possession were offered. Either build using the left – Bruno Fernandes would operate on the right in front of an out-of-sorts Aaron Wan-Bissaka and isn’t defensively minded – or go long for the knock down off Haaland.

Inside 13 seconds, City had gone long for the knock down off Haaland and Gundogan’s volley goes down as one of the all-time great FA Cup moments, the fastest ever goal in a final. Thousands of free bucket hats in the red end were lowered to cover eyes – and not because of the blinding sun.

Guardiola had racked his brains for months on locating a way of extracting the maximum for the team from Haaland. Although the Norwegian was plundering goals, Guardiola hadn’t quite succeeded in that mission and he often asked his coaching staff to think of ways to find a collective cohesion with a player whose profile was at odds with their usual methods.

Winning that header against United midfielder Casemiro might have been route one but certainly served its purpose. As did his timewasting at 2-1 in stoppage time, with the blue west end of Wembley holding its breath as United threatened to crash the party and protect their own legacy.

The other aspect that Guardiola wanted to exploit was a sluggishness within United. They struggled to compete for second balls and the message was to make sure to win those – especially from set-pieces. Win those and win the game. So via a Carlos Vicens-inspired free-kick routine, picking up on how deep United’s defensive line was, De Bruyne curled to the edge for Gundogan to score his second volley from outside the box.

These are basic things. They are not Guardiola Total Football. But they matter and those who know Guardiola properly speak of a man with an unquenchable thirst for the small details that can make a difference when it really matters. The TV cameras see the big moments play out. Only a chosen few really understand their origins.

‘Wembley wasn’t our best performance but finals are to win,’ one source says now.

‘It was good that we had that final. When you have too much time between the end of the league and a Champions League final, it’s weird – because what do you do? How many days off? How are we going to train? Having that FA Cup final allowed us not to lose focus.’

Istanbul was the only focus now. There were exactly seven days between City and the top of the mountain. Gundogan, a level-headed captain who was departing for Barcelona in the summer after disagreements over the length of a new contract, twice saw pre-match team talks scuppered.

The first by Dias at Wembley, the centre half jumping in to deliver a powerful message in the huddle. And in Turkey, Walker’s omission from the starting XI meant he wanted to contribute by being the one to offer final words to the team. ‘Make my dream come true,’ he said. No pressure, then.

Neither of those bothered Gundogan and bigger things were at play. The interest in this group of men was stratospheric, the world’s media climbing on stools and clambering over each other in cramped pens to hear Haaland speak at the obligatory press call in the days before travelling east. Guardiola joined in the penalty practice with his players at training, telling them in meetings how to find Rodri on the edge of the box (that one worked) and called upon some extra help from an old friend.

Formerly his No 2, Juanma Lillo had left the club in 2022 to take over at Al Sadd in Qatar. His relationship with Guardiola extends 20 years and has had such a profound effect on his career that the manager asked his friend if he could fly over for two games that season: Real Madrid at home and, ultimately, the final. Lillo could not say no. Lillo would not want to say no. So Lillo said yes.

An already strong coaching team of Enzo Maresca, Rodolfo Borrell and Vicens were only bolstered further by somebody who is described by sources as the ‘perfect, deep voice behind Pep,’ and a previous mentor who just understood him better than anybody else.

‘It wasn’t that he didn’t have ego, because every coach has ego, and it wasn’t that he wouldn’t challenge, but he would always do it from a calm mindset,’ Vicens says. ‘From a place of trying to help. And let’s not forget: he wasn’t used to being an assistant. Only with (Jorge) Sampaoli in Seville and then Chile. But Pep wanted him at that final.’ 

Others talk about how Lillo is the antithesis to Guardiola’s impulsion and temperamentality. Whatever the case, it worked.

The diminutive Spaniard offered tranquillity during that week of slowly building tension and, unlike 2021 in Porto, City spent two serene days at the JW Marriott hotel overlooking the Sea of Marmara with free minds. Relaxed with a plan. Old greats Aguero and Fernandinho were welcomed back.

The pair both spent individual time with Guardiola on the day before kick-off, Aguero in the dugout and Fernandinho – such a colossal captain – around the dressing room area. The group ate lobster at an al fresco dinner on the Thursday night and Guardiola included chef Jorge Gutierrez as part of his meeting with the entire group 24 hours before the final.

Gutierrez, a man who drove Lionel Messi away from junk food at Barca and was hired from Guardiola’s favourite local Deansgate haunt Tapeo & Wine in 2017, was leaving in the summer. This was his last game.

He had introduced a slice of home to City’s cooking, a Canarian mojo sauce to go with potatoes for lunches, that went down well. He was so well liked, he was privately hired by Guardiola as well as countless players, including Laporte who tried to take him along to Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia.

Guardiola thanked a bashful Gutierrez for his service during the meeting and, as always, there was a point to it. That being that this was a team effort. He named the XI who would start and City’s heads were clear – even when their coach driver, Mike, weaved a way into the Ataturk Stadium with millimetres to spare down the tightest of entrances.

They had used a match with Chelsea, when already crowned league champions on May 21, to practise for the back five Inter would deploy and despite performing well below par in a poor game on a hot night, manufactured Rodri’s magic moment and became only the second English club to complete a traditional Treble. Guardiola’s immediate response was to hug anybody in sight.

Because of what happened on that night and during that incredible season, City go down in the pantheon of great European teams. They could hold their own when it came to alcohol, too.

The party back at the Marriott properly kicked off when the players arrived sometime after 3am local time, some of them not going up to their rooms until required to collect their belongings for the flight home. Mercedes Formula One star George Russell blagged a way in and nobody, to this day, knows how.

Haaland hit the DJ decks while Guardiola was hidden away around a corner. He is thought to have been with Maresca, whose father Pasquale had gone missing around the stadium but had been found safe and well in the early hours.

On the Etihad Boeing 787 back to Manchester the next day, plans were being hatched for a jaunt to Ibiza. The only proviso that the revellers made it back for Monday’s city-centre parade.

Dias was central to these and his idea was to repurpose the jet, turning it towards the Balearics immediately on landing in Manchester. After quickly establishing that such a move was not possible, they went to source an Airbus.

Players were given an hour to dash home, pack clothes for the day, and return back to Manchester Airport’s Signature Aviation private hangar. That they didn’t land until gone 11pm in Ibiza suggests some stragglers were staring at their wardrobes for too long. Off they went for the night in the Pacha nightclub while the coaching staff, who were described as ‘just surviving’, wandered around Manchester city centre with loved ones.

Tast, the Catalan restaurant part-owned by Guardiola, Begiristain and chief executive Ferran Soriano, was a spot for City staff to pop in and enjoy an aperitivo. It appeared they all had the same plan on the day, gravitating to a central hub for a nice, quiet afternoon. 

Couples turning up would find friends and colleagues already there and the day snowballed. Phone calls were made and it ended up as a party on the terrace overlooking Manchester’s cobbled King Street with families.

There, as the sun set on the most historic of campaigns, nobody was mentioning the prospect of becoming the first club ever to win four consecutive top-flight titles. But that was all to come…

COMING TOMORROW: PEP AND MAN CITY – THE UNTOLD STORY, Part 4: Pep and his players