Imperious Manchester City hypnotise Mönchengladbach into compliance
The mesmerising dominance of Pep Guardiola’s side made a talented team look like a bunch of choreographed patsies.
😂
The critical passage of this game, you felt, arrived around an hour in, when Borussia Mönchengladbach – 1-0 down and having just enjoyed a rare shot on goal – threw on two attacking players in attempt to wrestle back control. On came Marcus Thuram and Valentino Lazaro, jogging on to the pitch with vim and purpose, pointing in various directions for no reason, in the way that substitutes often do.😂
At which point, with Ederson in possession, Manchester City simply walked the ball up the pitch and scored. Ten passes in total, broken only by a desperate sliding clearance from the midfielder Florian Neuhaus by his own penalty spot. Then 16 more passes, ending with João Cancelo’s pinpoint diagonal, Bernardo Silva’s header across goal and the finish from Gabriel Jesus. [That's 26 straight passes broken up only by a desperate clearance!] Thuram and Lazaro had been on the pitch for two minutes. Neither of them had yet treated themselves to a touch of the ball.
This, perhaps, was the perfect distillation of City in the early part of 2021: a team fuelled entirely by their own volition, a team who ultimately don’t care if you’re there or not, 😂 a team playing a game that doesn’t really require you to participate. Here, Marco Rose’s side were essentially treated as ball-feeders, shadow runners: choreographed patsies whose sole purpose was to make City look like they were trying.
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...in City’s mesmerising dominance there was an element of this display that felt partly acquiescent: a sense that at least in part Gladbach were simply hypnotised into compliance. City attack builds. City attack threatens. City attack breaks down. Here, City: have the ball back and try again.
From the start, City’s high press swaddled Gladbach like a baby, [City HAS flipped the script on opponents. THEY are the team high-pressing on defense. That discombulates opponents (see second paragraph below) as it is THEY who should be high-pressing. It’s a boomerang strategy: take your opponent’s strongest play and throw it back at him with even greater force. It is brilliant tweak by Pep Guardiola.] forcing the ball-player to take the path of least resistance: inevitably back to Yann Sommer in goal, or a hopeless punt up the field to a light blue shirt. At which point, your problems really begin.
The trouble with trying to win the ball off City, you see, is that you don’t just have to win it once. Such is the intelligence and aggression with which they swarm around the ball in numbers that even when you get the foot in, force the error, they gather up the second ball and come again. And so winning the ball off City really means winning it three or four times, by which time you are not only disorganised and a bit tired, but now surrounded by City players.
In the face of this onslaught, Gladbach simply disintegrated like a malfunctioning Wallace and Gromit contraption: players passing to teammates who weren’t there, players tripping over themselves, players dribbling the ball sideways, players making inexplicable errors. City’s first goal resulted from just such an implosion: two mistakes in quick succession from Christoph Kramer – a World Cup winner with Germany in 2014 – presenting the ball to Cancelo, who crossed for Silva to score.
...for a team who were basically in disarray three months ago, none of this was inevitable. What Pep Guardiola has done is to restore not just City’s principles and philosophy, but the aura too: the immeasurable assurance and control that makes opposition teams do stupid things.
