Slowly, and then all at once. That’s how Manchester City are falling apart these days. Pep Guardiola once described his ultimate fever dream as a coach, the goal at the end of all that detail. Essentially holding the ball for 90 minutes, creating your own frictionless world of total control. Well, it will have to be parked for a while. Probably best not to look back at him for a while.
Produced one of the strangest performances of Guardiola’s time at Parc des Princes City. Everyone has an off day. Human error happens. What stood out in the second half, during which City went from 2-0 to 4-2 down, was how lonely the players looked out there, a team completely losing their sense of themselves.
Basically it all came out of nowhere, arrived as a kind of social contagion. For 15 minutes the city simply crumbled, collapsing like a rain-soaked cardboard box, an entity that suddenly had no resistance, no fiber, no sense of collective purpose.
Teams are strange things. Even at this elite, hyper-prepped level they run on emotion and collective energy. And City have been the ultimate systems team, coached by a manager so brilliant that he would paint a chalk spot on the practice pitch and put Raheem Sterling in it, only to realize the loss. .
And yet the human element will continue to creep in: There are still ants in the carpet up to 25 floors up. It’s been a feature of the city’s recent run, a way of falling apart that feels like more than missing parts near internal hysteria.
City scored three goals in eight minutes against Sporting Lisbon. Two goals in five minutes against Brighton. Two in seven against Tottenham. Three of 15 against Feyenoord. Two against Manchester United. Two in eight against Brentford. And here it was, two goals in four minutes against PSG, 2-0 up and playing like a team that seemed to be running on clean, clear air.
That season-defining run from fall to winter was itself a surprising nosedive in the Valley, nine losses in 12 games since December 2023 after one loss over 90 minutes. Settled, she begins to sparkle and flicker into life like a streetlight.
In Paris, however, that loose stitch always seemed to hide. The Parc des Princes had been drenched by endless torrential rain in the hours before kick-off, one of those days where the existence of dry land seems truly negligible, a waste layer of mud standing briefly between the sky and the seas. was done .
The city began cautiously. For a long time PSG pushed at a door that looked ready to give. There were signs. This City side talks to itself during games these days, and not always in a good way.
Guardiola arrived in Paris in full-on outdoors mode, his technical area in a black quilted gown and cable-trimmed beanie hat, like a thief on a hiking holiday. He pushed Bernardo Silva briefly on the touchline. Moments later Matthijs Nunes played a low pass in front of Kevin De Bruyne, who threw his arms up in panic. Is it good? Does it speak to a settled state?
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Jack Grealish went into half-time goalless and opened the scoring five minutes later. Erling Holland made it 2-0. At this point, something seemed to change. Bradley Barkula created the first for Ousmane Dembélé, getting away from Nunes with alarming ease, literally facing the wrong way, and staring into the crowd.
Barcola then made it 2-2, converting a rebound off the bar. And in the absence of the city during this period, parts of a team were very close to the game of football. There was no way to reverse it. Guardiola sent on five substitutes in 28 second-half minutes, the last just as PSG scored their third goal. The fourth arrived at death, a prelude to wild celebrations.
Where does the city go from here? What’s next for this Millifuel team? It would be tempting to find an existential reason for this sudden onslaught of mass yips. The game has simple elements. It is such a carefully constructed team. Seeing the city without Rodri has been like watching some beautifully engineered high-spec luxury saloon go into chronic viral electrical failure because the rotating flange unit is slightly under-lubricated, leading to systemic referred corrosion of the coils, glove The box contains poltergeists, mirrors. keep falling
It feels like something else. City will surely still advance to the next stage of this competition. You still won’t bet on them winning. Perhaps these types of champion teams can click back in other ways as well. For now he has become a brittle, brittle and endlessly watchable entity.
