NhanDinh.vn – The Catalan was seen laughing in disbelief the last time the Blues were at Camp Nou, but the humiliation was all his when he took his Bayern side there shortly after
You couldn’t write the script. Well, actually, you could. Manchester City will meet Barcelona for the third time in four Champions League campaigns, but while Europe’s top competition is starting to look a little samey, there is more than enough interest in this mammoth clash.
The headline, of course, is Pep Guardiola’s return to Camp Nou. The Catalan has asked for time to get City playing his kind of football but it will not be long before his methods are given the ultimate test: home and away games against the team he propelled to dominance across four spellbinding seasons.
Barca have rarely dipped from the standards that Guardiola set and they have certainly shown their dominance over City in their four previous meetings.
Only a Joe Hart masterclass kept the aggregate score respectable when the two sides last met in 2015, but, of course, the Englishman will not be there to repeat the feat this time. His place will be taken by Claudio Bravo, who left Barca this very day partly due to a desire to play Champions League football – he was given a winner’s medal in 2015 but Uefa asked for it back because he did not feature.
Guardiola was in attendance the last time City played in Catalunya, too. He was seen in the stands clasping his hands to his head in amazement as Lionel Messi, the man he helped turn into the best player in the world, perhaps the best in history, popped the ball through James Milner’s legs.
But the humiliation was all Pep’s – well, a little bit Jerome Boateng’s too – the last time he was in charge of a team at his old stomping ground. His maverick man-to-man gameplan only lasted so long before Messi turned on the style and made Boateng the butt of millions of memes. It was the second time in two seasons his Bayern Munich outfit had crashed out heavily at the semi-final stage.
It was much closer back in May as Atletico Madrid proved to be their undoing, but it did not stop many branding – unfairly – his time in Germany a failure.
That is a charge Guardiola has struggled to come to terms with and he will be desperate to put City on the map as far as European football is concerned.
The Blues got to the semi-finals last season but went out with a whimper. Their route to the last four was aided by the fact they finished top of their group for the first time in history, a feat which will be considerably harder this time.
Although they were drawn against tough opposition in Juventus, Sevilla and Borussia Monchengladbach 12 months ago, that pales in significance in comparison to meeting Barca, travelling to the bear pit of Celtic Park (which Barca will not relish either) and, admittedly, yet another meeting with Gladbach. Who said the draw was becoming predictable?
Maybe Gerard Pique, who wryly tweeted on Tuesday that he would want the exact same route that Madrid took to glory last season. That included an “easy group” and “the fourth placed team in England” in the semis. Group C is certainly not easy, but the centre-back – another to benefit from Guardiola’s guidance – can now look forward to a return to Manchester, a place he still holds dear after his time at United.
City have started the Guardiola era with four wins from four, and the coach will only expect their performances to improve now they have poached Barca’s Bravo.
By the time the two new rivals meet, we will know a lot more about City’s prospects not only this season but for the remainder of Guardiola’s reign.
He predicted it won’t be until the New Year that the Blues start to really take shape, but if they find themselves in the Champions League last-16 by that stage it will mean they have already made stellar progress.
Like Guardiola’s mandate to dominate English and European football, this will be no easy task. But it will certainly be entertaining.