The Chilean needs his players to produce a
performance that shows signs of progress under his leadership, with the
squad running out of time for European success
Pep Guardiola will be back at Camp Nou to watch Manchester City attempt to defy form and history against Barcelona on Wednesday night.
There is no suggestion that the trip has anything to do with the Spaniard’s next career move, but Manuel Pellegrini would still be forgiven for feeling a chill run down his spine at the news.
Guardiola - who led Barca to two Champions League titles in four years in charge of the club - has always been Txiki Begiristain’s dream coach.
Pellegrini’s job is not under immediate threat – not least because Guardiola and several other highly-regarded candidates will be unavailable this summer. Events at Camp Nou, however, could yet shift the landscape.
The demand from above is not for victory, merely a performance more befitting of the occasion than the timid display that allowed Barcelona to stroll around the Etihad Stadium for long spells last month on their way to a 2-1 win in the first leg of their last-16 tie. A repeat would make humiliation likely and any narrative of progress under Pellegrini harder to sustain.
It is a narrative the Chilean is keen to stress, particularly when it comes to the Champions League. “City went from not getting out of the group to two years running getting through a group with Bayern and then being unlucky enough to get Barcelona,” he told reporters this week. “We can’t let that misfortune change our vision.”
City have certainly made progress in Europe, as statement victories over Bayern and Roma in the last two seasons attest. Their gains have also been in spite of relentlessly unfavourable draws, the product of a much-maligned seeding system that Uefa will drop next year. Yet the failure to even sniff a quarter-final appearance in three full campaigns stands in marked contrast to the rapid emergence of Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League soon after the arrival of vast foreign wealth.
This week Pellegrini pointed the finger at the Financial Fair Play sanctions handed down last summer, and the consensus at City is that Uefa stifled their plans to rejuvenate an ageing and stagnating squad spine by capping the club’s wage bill, Champions League squad and net spend. “This was the ideal year [to build], [but] with the financial fair play restrictions, not only could we not sign, we couldn’t register players,” the Chilean insists.
Underpinning the antipathy of many City supporters towards Uefa is the wider suspicion that one of FFP’s primary aims was to halt the club’s growth. “There are clubs with enormous debts; City have zero,” Pellegrini points out. “Without [temporarily] indebting yourself one year, it’s hard to build… preventing you from investing, speculating, is absurd. It’s anti-competitive.”
Despite these tensions, City expect to be in a position to strengthen this summer. Inter boss Roberto Mancini is publicly courting Yaya Toure, while the likes of Edin Dzeko, Stevan Jovetic and Aleksandar Kolarov could also depart for significant sums to bolster the transfer budget. Begiristain is aware the squad requires younger talent, while Pellegrini believes there is a dire need for another superstar to remove some of the burden from the fragile Sergio Aguero.
Everton starlet Ross Barkley is a top target despite a relatively disappointing second full season in the Premier League. City officials held talks over a deal for Monaco full-back Layvin Kurzawa in London last month, and Begiristain is also taking a keen interest in Atletico Madrid defender Toby Alderweireld, who has impressed on loan at Southampton this season.
Whoever he pursues, Begiristain knows he must do his work well. The gulf in class between the Catalan giants and City at the Etihad Stadium was far wider than the 2-1 scoreline suggests and even if Pellegrini’s men pull off a miracle comeback at Camp Nou, the window for this group to make a serious Champions League run is closing. The Chilean’s most picked starting XI in the Premier League this season boasts an average age of 29 years, seven months and nine days.
City’s resources and infrastructure fuel a confidence within the corridors of power at the Etihad Stadium that the Champions League will be conquered one day. As Begiristain plans for the future, Pellegrini and his players are running out of time to prove that they can be the ones to do it.
Goal.com
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