Manchester City won the Champions League with the Catalan coach. It was Halaand’s first, but the fundamental player was Rodri.
Manchester City won the Champions League with the Catalan coach. It was Halaand’s first, but the fundamental player was Rodri.
Haaland was not the hero of Manchester City, European champion, despite the fact that the Norwegian took all the headlines of the season. It was Rodri, the Spanish midfielder, perhaps the most important and least talked about piece of City. Rodri makes everything work, as we are seeing this season, when his absences cost the team a crisis in the Premier. Rodri is a watch and in the final, against Inter, perhaps City’s worst game in the competition, he scored the winning goal, the only one of the match, enough to lift the trophy, the one that Pep Guardiola had been looking for so much since he He left Messi’s Barcelona.
The Catalan coach went through Bayern and his domestic conquests were marred because he did not achieve the goal of conquering Europe, the big prize, which confirms the definitive success for a coach and how difficult it is to win, due to all the factors that influence in the playoffs. You have to know how those matches are played, resist in the bad moments and overcome the clashes in the good moments. You have to know, above all, how to beat Real Madrid. And City achieved it and took revenge, in this way, for the unforgettable tie from the previous year.
Real Madrid eliminated him in an epic sigh, but in 2023 City gave him no option. A good game by both at the Bernabéu turned into a convincing victory (4-0) for Guardiola’s team at home. For the Catalan coach, the Champions League was a liberation. His successes at Barcelona were so linked to Messi’s that his most enthusiastic enemies wanted to convince themselves that every season without Pep Guardiola’s Champions League was a failure. His victory eliminated that part of the criticism, not the fixation of the enemies.
City also won the Premier and the English Cup, in a season in which they had no rival. Pep Guardiola is the director of a team built without spending problems. But it is the Champions League that gives true prestige: Manchester City took the trophy for which they have fought so hard, and PSG suffers, for example. The victory of the English team has also broken a barrier, which only held for a matter of time. Sooner or later, the richest clubs on the continent had to win.
But, in addition, City, unlike the Paris team, is a team built with a different plan, more thinking about football and hence the success, which was achieved with the intention of being lasting. For this reason, when Carlo Ancelotti, at the beginning of this season, was asked about the favorite to win the Champions League, he did not hesitate to name City.
The key to success
Also because he has Haaland, who joined, like his team, the first, with the feeling that it will not be the last. Although his prominence was declining, he already has one more than Mbappé, his supposed rival to govern football from now on, after Leo Messi won a Ballon d’Or, for the World Cup and something honorary. Leave the position vacant for those who arrive. And for now Haaland already has an advantage.