80 2GM Thursday November 25 2021 | the times
SportChampions League
If Pep Guardiola and Mauricio
Pochettino, reportedly a top target for
the Manchester United vacancy, are to
eventually renew their rivalry on a local
stage then they will do so with the Man-
chester City manager having emphati-
cally won this encounter with his Paris
Saint-Germain counterpart.
With victory at the Etihad Stadium
last night came the guarantee of top
spot in group A and a ninth consecutive
season of the Champions League
knockout stages for City, no small level
of consistency.
It is one which is all the more
impressive when you consider that, in
his six seasons in charge at the Etihad,
Guardiola has won his group for five
straight years.
Simply qualifying for the knockout
stage is not the raison d’être for City or
Guardiola — winning the competition
outright is, a task they came close to
completing in last season’s 1-0 final
defeat by Chelsea.
As second-half goals from Raheem
particularly effective. Guardiola had
targeted PSG’s young left back, the
19-year-old Nuno Mendes, as a primary
point of attack, in the first
half especially.
One such move led to Navas, at full
stretch, saving well from the Algeria
international, although the closest
City came to a goal was Ilkay
Gundogan’s fierce strike hitting the
outside of the right post after a poor
clearance from Mendes.
Still, as they had the better of the
second half, City enjoyed a slice of good
fortune when Messi started a probing
attack, Neymar and Mbappé combined
and the Brazilian slalomed his way
through the City defence before,
inexplicably, missing the target with
only Ederson to beat.
Two minutes later Jesus scored the
winning goal and, for the first time since
United did so between 2007 and 2011,
an English team had finished top of a
Champions League group for five
consecutive years.How they stand: group A
P W D LGD Pts
Man City (Q) 540 1 912
PSG (Q) 522 1 2 8
RB Leipzig 51130 4
Club Bruges 5113-11 4
Fixtures: Dec 7 Paris Saint-Germain v
Club Bruges (5.45); RB Leipzig v
Manchester City (5.45).Manchester City (4-3-3): Ederson 6 — K Walker 7,
J Stones 7, R Dias 7, J Cancelo 7 — I Gundogan 7,
Rodri 8, O Zinchenko 6 (G Jesus 54min, 7) —
R Mahrez 8, B Silva 7, R Sterling 8.
Booked Rodri, Cancelo, Jesus.
Paris Saint-Germain (4-3-3): K Navas 6 —
A Hakimi 6, Marquinhos 6, P Kimpembe 6,
N Mendes 6 (T Kehrer 67, 6) — L Paredes 6,
A Herrera 5 (Danilo 61, 5), I Gueye 6 (A Di María
67, 6) — L Messi 8, K Mbappé 7, Neymar 7.
Referee D Orsato (It).S
hort of being able to get
Mauricio Pochettino into Old
Trafford for a face-to-face job
interview, here was a decent
enough alternative: to have
him stage an exhibition of his
managerial skills four miles away.
Among the key criteria in the
Manchester United job vacancy are
being able to manage one of the all-
time galacticos in the armchair years
of his greatness, and beating
Manchester City. Pochettino had the
chance last night to do both and you
cannot say he succeeded in either.
This opportunity to flutter his eyes
at the red half of the city, in a
Champions League date with the
blue, might have been considered
timely. The modern world of
courtship in football forbids openDisconnected trio
flirting; it is all nods and winks and
representatives meeting agents and
then managers having to endure
those excruciating media moments of
refusing to deny that, yes, they may
actually be interested in a job move. A
better way altogether would have
been to bring a real stamp of
authority to the game against City.
“Football is about today, it’s not
tomorrow,” was the clue that
Pochettino tossed out cryptically on
Tuesday. Within 24 hours, it had been
so completely digested that it seemed
to be not an either/or about his
departure but a sense of inevitability.
The only question, apparently, was:
when?
Here in the Etihad, the assumption
that the Argentinian is the only man
for United was put to an intriguing
test: City enjoyed a first half of utter
dominance, Paris Saint-Germain
being pressed so urgently that they
had to execute the most intricate of
one-touch sequences to get even a
few yards beyond their goalline,
Pochettino pacing back and forth
unable to do anything about it. How
is that job interview going now?Owen Slot
Chief Sports
WriterSterling and Gabriel Jesus
completed this comeback
against PSG, City’s
credentials as potential
European champions
looked far more
credible than a solitary
one-goal victory may
suggest against the
French side, who will fin-
ish second in the group.
This, after all, was a tie
against the self-styled best for-
ward line in football history, a
manager who is thought to be the
No 1 target for the vacant post
across
town,
and,
above
all, City had
to recover
from conceding the opening
goal to Kylian Mbappé just
after half-time.
But respond they did.
Sterling slid in to claim a
deserved City equaliser, arriv-
ing unmarked to convert Kyle
Walker’s cross, from Rodri’s
through-ball, which took a
helpful deflection off the
PSG central defender
Marquinhos.
It was Sterling’s 23rd
Champions League goal,
putting him equal with
Frank Lampard and
behind only Paul Scholes
and Wayne Rooney,
with 24 and 30 goals
respectively, among
Englishmen.
It was no more than
Sterling, Guardiola and
City deserved, as was the
winning goal, claimed
by Jesus 13 minutes
Ian Whittell
Aggressive City deliver a
later after the forward had already
forced the French side’s goalkeeper,
Keylor Navas, into a reflex save.
Riyad Mahrez’s deep cross from the
right was met by the excellent Bernardo
Silva, who laid the ball off precisely
for the Brazilian to finish clinically from
six yards.
It was a just result, although one
which had looked in doubt as the game
threatened to follow a similar pattern to
the first meeting between the clubs in
September, when City dominated for
large spells before conceding twice to
Pochettino’s team.
“Of course, what a team PSG is,
what players, what can I say?”
Guardiola said afterwards.
“But the [City] performance was
quite similar to how we played in Paris
a month ago. We’re happy to be in the
next stage, congratulations to everyone
at the club for another year of being in
the last 16.
“Now we’ll focus on the Premier
League, come back in February and try
to reach the quarter-finals.”
The visitors’ front three of Lionel
Messi, Mbappé and Neymar had so
little service during the evening that
Messi, in particular, often appeared in
front of his own back four to try to
become involved in the build-up.
City’s trademark high press was
aggressive and effective. Simplistic as it
may sound, when facing the best three-
man forward line in history, perhaps
the best policy is to keep their team
penned inside their own penalty area.
“They have a lot of quality, you try to
keep those players far away from goal,”
Guardiola said. “And we made some
adjustments from the first game. We
learnt a little bit what they do.”
“They were very aggressive with
their press high up the pitch,” Pochet-
tino said of his side’s opponents.
“We did some good things
and some things we need
to improve. Of course the
two teams qualify [for
the round of 16] but
credit to Manchester
City, they’re a really
good team.”
Late in the first half an
error by John Stones in-
vited Neymar to set up a
chance, which Mbappé hur-
riedly deposited high over the
City goal, but not until the 49th
minute did PSG carve out an
opening of their own and,
with it, the lead.
For once, Messi
dropped into a vacant
space he found
outside the
City area,
exchanging
passes with
Ander Herrera to create
room and an angle in the
City area.
From there his cross
deflected off Walker and
presented Mbappé with a
chance, which he drove
through the legs of Ederson
in the City goal.
In Paris, City had
conceded early and, to
Messi, late while missing
chance after chance to
score themselves, yet
despite the absence of
arguably their best two
creative players here in
Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden —
because of illness and injury respec-
tively — there were no such concerns in
the rematch.
Mahrez, who enjoyed two fine
performances against PSG in City’s
wins against them last season, wasMan City
Sterling 63, Jesus 76PSG
Mbappé 502
1
Jesus seals City’s
comeback victory
at the Etihad
after Sterling’s
equaliser, below23
Champions League goals
for Sterling, now behind
only Wayne Rooney (30)
and Paul Scholes (24)
among English players