Thursday, November 7, 2024, 1:08 p.m.
| Updated 3:12 p.m.
Until not long ago, the midfielder was accused of not being a decisive player. The strategic intelligence of the position did not receive individual awards, to the detriment of whoever scored the goals. In a game in which physicality is increasingly important, thinking well and quickly seems essential for everything to work and seem simple. It does not seem a coincidence that in the dark side that stalks Pep Guardiola‘s Manchester City and in the crisis of Real Madrid that it seems that no one wanted to see coming, they have as protagonists a strategic issue such as that of the midfielder. The absences due to injury of Rodri Hernández, current Ballon d’Or winner, and the retirement of Toni Kroos, only show in which area of the field the mother of the lamb is. Two guys with the gift of making everyone else play better and their clubs miss even if the rest of the players are available.
It’s easy to miss someone when you’re alone, but what’s really complicated is when you miss them when everyone is there. That the one from Santpedor would notice the lack of the Madrid native was more or less clear, based on the fact that the previous year the Citizens played nine games without him and lost four, almost half of them. However, of the 50 in which the Spaniard was involved, he only gave up in one, achieving 38 victories. They are paying dearly for the absence of the Ballon d’Or, with a torn ligament in their right knee, and their return is far from immediate. Players, like the people around us, must be appreciated when they are there and for the consequences they leave when they are not there. This way we can value them in the best way. It happens with the long-awaited Kroos and with the architect of City, who for the first time since April 2018 has experienced three consecutive defeats with Guardiola, that this could be his last campaign, since his contract as Etihad coach ends in 2025.
Eliminated in the League Cup by Tottenham, second in the Premier after losing to Bournemouth, and beaten by Sporting de Portugal in the Champions League, the club sets off the alarm at a more than turbulent time. The defeat against Andoni Iraola’s team ended a streak of 32 unbeaten games in the English league, while the setback against Rúben Amorim’s team ended a European record of 26 games without losing on the Old Continent. Guardiola, who cannot find partial solutions with Kovacic or Gündögan in place of the Spanish champion, recognized that the team needs urgent improvement.
«It’s disappointing because we’re in a bit of a dark time right now. Everything seems to be going in the wrong direction. Even when we played well, we didn’t convert our chances and conceded too easily,” lamented Bernardo Silva after the last defeat. Brighton looks on the horizon of the light blues, a millionaire team used to winning.
Beyond the numbers, in which there is evidently room for improvement for Guardiola’s men, who have never seen their team fall four times in a row in the last nine years, the petrodollar entity sees how the dependence that it has with its scorer Erling Haaland and the poor season of Phil Foden, the Premier League MVP last year. And of the 31 goals that the team has between the league in its country and the European competition, 14 are from the Norwegian attacker. The losses of Jeremy Doku, Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish increase this dependence on the ‘Viking’ striker’s goals.
