A combination of intelligence and strength deserve to see Inter in the final and prove that the Petrostate clubs have nevertheless surpassed the classic elite.
For 15 years, Manchester City has had ambition above all others. Since Sheikh Mansour acquired the club, the Champions League has been his goal. They searched the highest mountains and through dark forests. They lost in the quarterfinals and semifinals, once in the last itself, frustrated by heroes and monsters, defeated by both themselves and outdoor opponents. Once they are one game away from glory and, in their own way, they are the ultimate proof: Inter, the third. place the team in the fourth best league in Europe.
It’s said in dramatic moments in sports that you just can’t write the script. Well, you wouldn’t write this one. The narrative demands that the final stage, the apotheosis of the Abu Dhabi city project, have a pretty grandiose ending, that the final boss to be defeated is far more intimidating than a motley crew of things that were popular in England several years ago: Edin. Dzeko, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Romelu Lukaku, Goldie, the dog Blue Peter and social democracy.
Can Inter win? Of course they can; The greatest quality of football as a game is that surprises happen, that the underdog can dig and frustrate the giant. By beating Barcelona at the organizational level and facing Milan in the semi-finals, Inter showed that they were well organized, capable, once forward, to manage the pace. Federico Dimarco and Francesco Acerbi have had wonderful seasons and shone in the semi-finals, but Kyle Walker, after seeing Vinícius Júnior, probably doesn’t care about left-back, while nothing bothers Erling Haaland, not a 35-year-old centre-back who has spent much of his career at Sassuolo.
Inter was comfortably defeated twice 2-0 by Bayern in the organization phase, and City got rid of Bayern only in the quarterfinals. The biggest challenge for them in Istanbul will likely be their own neurosis: the accumulated scar of Pep Guardiola’s disappointments. and the remaining City-itis lines. That, and, unless maritime links have intensified particularly since 2005, when it last hosted the final, between the city centre and the Atatürk Olympic Stadium.
For both Guardiola and City, it has been an arduous journey, full of frustrations. When he won his Champions League moment with Barcelona at Wembley in 2011, it didn’t seem credible that it would take him another decade before he reached another final. If City beat Inter, they would be the fourth manager to win the trophy 3 times, while the 12-year gap between trophies would be the longest apart from Jupp Heynckes (15) and Ernst Happel (13). That said, it’s been 19 years between Carlo Ancelotti winning his first European name and adding his fourth last season, so there’s still time for Guardiola to take the record away from the Italian.
During this period, Guardiola frustrated partly by bad luck, the games in which his team had infinite possession but failed to convert the countless chances they created, but also by his own anxiety to be countered and the tactical changes he made to stop. To avoid that eventualidad. su “too much thought. ” There hasn’t been any desire to think too much this season.
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If City win the trophy, the 4-0 win will remain, like Ajax’s 4-0 win over Bayern in 1973 or Milan’s 5-0 win over Madrid in 1989, as one of those iconic games where paradigms replace and a new reality. Emerges. It was perhaps the symbolic moment when the Petrostate clubs nevertheless surpassed the classical elites and, by extension, the effects of the moment of hyper-capitalist style unleashed in football with the creation of the Champions League came to settle. An adventure that began in 1987 with Silvio Berlusconi’s bewilderment that Italian and Spanish champions Napoli and Madrid could meet in a first-round knockout duel reached a historic point in Manchester on Wednesday.
This has been going down for some time. Madrid has defied logic for a long time. City may have easily inflicted a similar beating in the semi-finals last season. They have no position in the fashionable war. Madrid has enough resources and prestige not to disappear, however, it is completely imaginable that the last season will be noticed as a last slightly explicable flowering of this gentlemanly culture.
City, on the other hand, is not only deeply modern, it defines modernity. Since the Premier League brought its 115 allegations of monetary irregularities against City, they have not lost. Guardiola had to slightly replace the teams. Doubts early in the season about whether Haaland would unbalance the team have faded. City have become an impressive powerhouse, leaving out anyone who stands in their way, even former superclubs like Bayern and Madrid.
Obviously, goals help, but the most important thing Haaland has brought to City is clarity: there’s no need to overcomplicate things. This team may not be a natural distillation of guardiolism, but it is an impressive and unstoppable combination of intelligence and power. This is what a well-made state allocation looks like.
Maybe football, the capricious old goddess she is, still has a trick to play. But it seems City’s long-delayed European crown has come regardless.