Since each meeting with Manchester City coached by Pep Guardiola always brings the question of identity to the fore, the victory (2-1) at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday of the probable future champion of England, in the semi-final first leg Champions League, led the Catalan coach to close the evening by addressing the subject. Between provocation, media conditioning of the coming week and weapon of mass seduction for the use of the lost children of global football – those who struggle to understand and identify a space without borders, where the words of the actors are used to conceal rather than to transmit and where the value systems are substantially equal, from a club with 550 million declared annual budget (Paris-SG) to a club with 540 million declared budget (Manchester City). Guardiola, therefore: “If we produce a game that looks like us in the second leg, we won’t have too many problems.”
The hatchet by the handle
Definitely. The Parisian players had to strangle themselves: we will settle that in a (small) week. Otherwise, what does this game look like? Possession of the ball, control, patience. We knew City’s game by heart: the Sky Blues played it as planned. And they were demolished during the initial forty-five minutes by more aggressive, faster, more determined Parisians. More expressionist. So ? We always come to an event with clichés. No big deal: the matches are there to get rid of it, but we must not miss the opportunity to do so. Manchester and its 2.0 game? Oh no. Wednesday, the privileged few present at the Park saw Kevin De Bruyne and others turn the game by taking the ax by the handle.
And simply enter the buffet of their opponents. Once, ten times, fifty times. Neymar has disappeared, Leandro Paredes has drowned, Idrissa Gueye has fallen out. Duels, a formidable intensity culminating shortly after the hour of play: an insular and primitive expression referring to the XIXth century and to these reproductions where the players stick to the ball in clusters, a collective and brutal achievement explaining better than anything else the fusion between British teams and their social and cultural environment. An irreducibility: in an English context, the last (the most crude, Kyle Walker and John Stones on Wednesday) are always the first, that is to say the best. What exactly are they like? At the Park, everyone was waiting for Guardiola and his algorithms. And everyone has seen a commitment from the bottom of the ages, unconditional, deep. Football cannot be invented. He rediscovers his terroirs.
.
