Pep Guardiola was considering his favourite comeback. As he needs perhaps his greatest ever remontada, one sticks in the memory. “Aston Villa, last game, to win the Premier League,” he said. “Seventy-four minutes, 0-2.” Then came three goals in five minutes. The final day of the 2021-22 season ended with Manchester City as champions, with Ilkay Gundogan’s brace sandwiching a Rodri goal.
Guardiola can be football’s natural frontrunner, the man whose sides have led title races for much of the season, whose Barcelona dominated two Champions League finals. But as he faces Real Madrid, possibly for the last time, it is with Guardiola requiring a stunning turnaround. Fede Valverde’s hat-trick in the Bernabeu last week put City on the brink of elimination, 3-0 down. This time, at least, they have 90 minutes to orchestrate something special. City, the club that won their first Premier League title with a goal in the 20th second of the 94th minute of the 38th game of the campaign, knows it may be still later.
But they face the kings of the remontada, looking to dethrone them. If the word entered the wider footballing vocabulary courtesy of Guardiola’s beloved Barcelona, and their 6-1 second leg win over Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 to overturn a 4-0 deficit, now Real tend to be the specialists.
City can testify as much. The captain Bernardo Silva cast his thoughts back to another match in the spring of 2022. “I lost to Madrid, they scored two goals to us in the 90th minute or something like that,” he said. Rodrygo scored in the 90th and 91st minutes of the second leg in the Spanish capital. City had led for 178 minutes of the tie, with Silva scoring the last of their goals in a 4-3 victory at the Etihad, but Real went through.
Or there was last year: City were 1-0 and 2-1 up at the Etihad before Brahim Diaz levelled in the 86th minute and Jude Bellingham struck in the 92nd. Or 2024, when City led three times at the Bernabeu and, on each occasion, Real pegged them back. The Champions League’s late drama has tended to hurt City; even one of their finest fightbacks, from 3-1 down on aggregate to Tottenham in 2019 to apparent victory, was thwarted by an early example of a VAR intervention, ruling out Sergio Aguero’s seeming injury-time decider. “In a league [season] the best team wins 95 per cent of the time,” said Silva. “In the Champions League, the best team not necessarily wins.”
Silva revisited last week’s loss in Spain. “This might look a bit stupid, but when I watched back, I don’t see a reason for us to be losing 3-0 that game at half-time,” he said. Yet lose it they did. As the City captain trawled through his own history, unprompted, he brought up the Villa game. He is one of the survivors of that seminal day: indeed, he was the man replaced by Gundogan, in what must rank as one of Guardiola’s best-ever substitutions. Silva may feel like a throwback to another era. He cited an instinctive understanding with long-term teammates like Kevin De Bruyne, Kyle Walker, Gundogan and Rodri. Apart from the Spaniard, each is gone. The three assists in the comeback against Villa came from Raheem Sterling, Oleksandr Zinchenko and De Bruyne, all gone.
A new team may be a lesser one; at least they should have fewer scars from defeats to Real. But Guardiola takes heart from one part of the past: the knowledge that City can score. They have a history of scoring at least three goals in Champions League knockout games at home: seven against Schalke and Leipzig, five against Monaco, four against Real, Tottenham, three against FC Copenhagen and Bayern Munich.
But they conceded three apiece to Spurs and Monaco, just as they have in each of their last three games against Real. Now one could be decisive. “We also need to defend well because we cannot concede a goal,” said Silva. “Otherwise, if we concede, the tie is over.”
There is no margin for error. “It has to be a perfect game in many, many departments,” Guardiola said. City have produced one at home to Real, with what would be the perfect scoreline on Wednesday: 4-0 in 2023, with Silva scoring twice. History suggests the captain with the scoring habit against Real is crucial.
He provided a ray of optimism after the gloom. “Usually after a big defeat, on the day you feel like everything is very dark,” he said. “Then it gets brighter and brighter.”
Guardiola has been on the receiving end of too many comebacks. And yet, as he looked back, he savoured the contest. “Always I have good feelings in defeat, even when the Tottenham game, and the other one, we were out,” he said. “But what a game, what a moment. It’s painful, it’s hard, but I always remember it now in my pocket. Don’t always remember the good things in your life.”
But the memories of Villa, of his most-cherished comeback, still stand out. Unless, that is, he can mastermind something still better.
