Wheels up once Joao Neves was hurdling the advertising hoardings wearing an astonished look of somebody who had not only completed Paris Saint-Germain’s dramatic comeback but located himself six yards of space from a routine set play.
Unforgivably all alone, 78 minutes into a crucial Champions League tie. Manchester City were not recovering from that, not in their fragile state at the febrile Parc des Princes, and were described as having sullenly traipsed over to their aircraft to whisk them straight home.
City usually stay overnight after European away fixtures – a steam, sauna, swimming pool in the morning – but decided against it for Paris, largely down to the short flight time. Pep Guardiola’s players will have been glad to have left the scene of the crime quickly and turn into their own beds.
The mood was predictably dark for a couple of days after, Guardiola actually pleasantly surprised by the response in beating Chelsea, and that lingering disappointment of the squad was borne out of the same old problems in Europe.
As the Neves header skidded off the wet underneath Ederson, four City players were nervously glancing at the linesman for offside in vacant desperation. An aghast Manuel Akanji gestured towards Rico Lewis. Erling Haaland half-heartedly struck the ball against the netting. All of it screamed grim acceptance. The story is not new, merely a variation.
Two goals up after 53 minutes and losing by the 78th in what was effectively City’s fourth chance at nailing progression to the knockout stages. Four have come and gone, the fifth – and final – opportunity on Wednesday night when Club Bruges, unbeaten in 20 games and requiring a point to be absolutely sure of going through, arrive in town having rested the majority of their team at the weekend.
If Man City exit the Champions League here, it’ll mark one of football’s great modern disasters
Pep Guardiola’s inconsistent City side have suffered three extraordinary capitulations in the Champions League this season against Sporting Lisbon, Feyenoord, an Paris Saint-Germain
Opta gave them higher chances of winning every game than finishing on just eight points
‘We are here for the reasons we know and because we have not been good enough,’ Guardiola said.
Those are painfully simple: a lack of control in key moments, not using possession smartly enough, and defensive disorganisation as a consequence. The leaders have been elsewhere, injured or otherwise, and it has contributed to bringing us here – even in a new format designed to benefit the top table.
In previous years, PSG might have felt like a nadir of capitulation yet that prize goes to Feyenoord, the 3-3 draw in November, when the Dutch scored three in the last 16 minutes, City’s defence in a hazy daze. ‘Three episodes,’ Guardiola labelled them as at the time, as if describing a tragedy.
Guardiola locked himself away in his office after that. Hours later, when greeted at the training ground by staff looking to offer some form of morale boost, a still disconsolate manager – having barely slept – turned to say grimly, ‘it is not a good morning’.
That is when City were being gripped by a crisis. One that has subsided yet not gone entirely, Guardiola insisting on Tuesday that they had not turned a corner. Feyenoord had followed another collapse at Sporting, Ruben Amorim’s side beating Ederson three times in the space of 11 minutes either side of half time.
Three tumbling decks of cards in Europe and in that spell, two in the Premier League – the late concession of derby spoils against Manchester United last month and Brentford’s two-goal rally earlier this.
When confidence is brittle, the emotional stability to see these results out vanishes and City’s battle with the mind has been just as pivotal as performances and injuries.
Notably, neither John Stones, Nathan Ake nor Ruben Dias have been available for any of the European jolts. All of them exude a little bit of extra calm and Guardiola is hopeful of calling on Stones on Wednesday night.
City had not learned their lesson by the time they faced PSG and conceded four after the break
Exiting the Champions League at this stage would see City miss out on at least £10million
They have only faced two of the top 16 clubs in the competition’s league table this season
Guardiola sustained a cut to the nose after scratching himself during the Feyenoord collapse
Rodri, an octopus at the base of midfield, puts out countless fires for them as well. And as one of the more vocal members of the leadership group – led by a weary Kyle Walker until he joined AC Milan on loan – who could have offered more in-game counsel when tides turned.
That and retaining possession, putting his foot on the ball, in a way City’s midfield options simply haven’t managed. Rarely have they appeared capable of taking the sting out of matches on the continent.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Josko Gvardiol sighed. ‘Against Paris, two-nil up, you want to finish the game by scoring one more instead of taking control of the ball. To move the ball left and right.
‘We wanted to keep on going to score one more and they can hurt you. That’s when it happens, you concede one, two, three quick goals. We were a bit down mentally and it’s difficult to come back.’
Phil Foden was illuminating on a similar subject when, in an interview with the local newspaper, he admitted that mental fatigue saw his own form dip at the start of the season. ‘My mental state was low,’ he said. ‘Football is playing with the brain.’
City have lost theirs at regular intervals. Gvardiol echoed his manager’s synopsis of the difficulties, the reason why City find themselves in the unfathomable position of requiring victory in their final group game to sneak into a playoff round to then determine if they reach the last 16.
Anything but a win would cost at least £10million in prize money and the staggering scenario City find themselves in is amplified by Opta’s statistics at the beginning of the competition.
Their supercomputer gave City a 0.4 per cent chance of finishing on eight points, their current total, and 2.2 per cent of them ending on 11. By way of comparison, the chances of eight straight wins were apparently deemed higher.
Phil Foden admitted that his mental state has been ‘low’ at stages during a tough campaign
Josko Gvardiol was lost for words after the Premier League champions capsized in Paris
A win will be enough for City to make the play-offs and Guardiola insists it will happen
The fixture list hasn’t been particularly unkind either, City facing only two of those nestled inside the league’s top 16 – Inter and Feyenoord. It makes for grim reading. Asked if elimination would serve as an embarrassment, Guardiola replied: ‘Thank you for your concern but after the game it will concern me and I will answer you.
‘We would like to score a lot in the first 20 minutes but I don’t think it is going to happen. We need to be completely relaxed, no emotion and understand the game. I know these type of games you need something special – something that has not been (seen) enough this year in the Champions League.’
Guardiola was softly spoken a day out from their must-win assignment, as is his way on the eve of defining nights. They are usually reserved for April or May, at the business end of this competition, yet the emotional scars – aside from those Guardiola has visibly worn himself – of each collapse have fed into the next.
City’s manager knows all this, and he knows that the City that turned up against Chelsea should deal with Bruges without fuss, and rightly did some deflecting to take some pressure off.
‘I appreciate your concern for if we don’t qualify but I think we are going to do it,’ he said. If they don’t – a team within a penalty shootout of reaching consecutive finals eight months ago – it’ll be one of the largest disasters in modern history. Imagine the state of mind if that comes to pass.
