Man City players' evolution under Guardiola makes them Champions League favourites

Quarter-final triumph against Bayern Munich shows how Catalan manager has redefined his side

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola talks to John Stones during the 3-0 Champions League quarter-final first-leg win against Bayern Munich on April 11, 2023. Reuters

Few of Manchester City’s rivals in Europe were in much doubt that they came into this season’s Champions League with the most "complete" squad to win it.

The questions surrounded shortcomings of the recent past, the list of surprise failings in knockout phases, the hindsight judgements on manager Pep Guardiola’s team selections, especially in the losing final against Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea in 2021.

So perhaps the most pleasing aspect of Tuesday’s 3-0 triumph in the home leg of the quarter-final against Tuchel’s Bayern Munich was how far beyond completeness City travelled. This was a victory, by more goals in 76 minutes than Bayern had conceded in 12 hours of previous action in Europe this season, in which Guardiola channelled something extra from almost every individual.

Tuchel identified that when he challenged the idea that his Bayern had slipped up when they conceded the first goal of an electric night at the Etihad Stadium. The scorer was Rodri, the effort bold and magnificently curled past Yann Sommer’s stretch.

Should somebody in a Bayern jersey have better closed Rodri down?

“When you look at video analysis, you can say anything is defendable,” said Tuchel of Rodri’s stunning left-foot strike. “But this is City’s holding midfielder, from 20 metres out, shooting with his weaker foot. It can happen sometimes.”

So can a Bernardo Silva bullet header, for the second goal, although that hardly rates as typical Bernardo, the shortest man in the City line-up.

Nor would forecasters have imagined that three of the several good saves made by Sommer would be from shots by defenders Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake, who like Rodri, like Bernardo, showed off aspects of their games well outside their core skill-sets.

John Stones collected a man-of-the-match for the contribution he made in the hybrid role that maximises his defensive vigilance, positional instincts, secure passing and physical assets.

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The redefining of Stones, a central defender by upbringing, into an all-rounder who eases quickly from stopper to full-back to auxiliary midfielder has been a project signposted by Guardiola for some weeks.

In the evolving City game plan, it has many beneficiaries. Rodri’s responsibilities in central midfield are shared, allowing the sort of surge that gave the Spaniard, on his 44th match in the Champions League, his first goal in the competition. “I should shoot more,” Rodri smiled as he enjoyed the milestone.

If Tuchel admitted his team were confounded by City forever finding the extra element in individuals, spare a thought for Joao Cancelo.

Barely three months ago, he was a City star, celebrated as the epitome of versatility in a squad that so values the quality, under a manager who has made coaxing hidden assets out of footballers a trademark element of his success.

Some of Cancelo’s finest demonstrations of his ability to play in either full-back position, left or right, and seamlessly strengthen midfield have been in a City jersey in the Champions League.

But he was abruptly invited to leave the club in January, at odds with Guardiola about how many opportunities he was being given in the starting XI. He joined Bayern. His role on Tuesday was as an 81st-minute substitute, at 3-0 down, to relieve left-back Alphonso Davies, who had been worn out by the inspired Bernardo.

Kyle Walker has more recently been told by Guardiola that his admired mastery of the right-back’s role, classy enough to have earned 75 caps for England, lacks aspects of what Stones can bring to the evolving City machine. Evolution can seem ruthless for those who do not keep up.

It can look unstoppable to opponents, too, especially now that a phenomenal centre-forward is providing compelling arguments why this, City’s 12th successive campaign in the Champions League, really should outlast all the others and end with the club lifting a first European Cup.

Rather more predictable than a Rodri super-strike, or a Bernardo header was that Erling Haaland should appear on the scoresheet against Bayern, and with his goal, shatter another record.

Haaland’s positional instincts are no less sophisticated that those being mastered by Stones, but he uses them best in the tight spaces of the opposition penalty area. Haaland was, once again, in the right place at the right time to volley City’s third goal of the night past Sommer, from Stones’s headed pass.

It was the Norwegian’s 45th goal in his 39th game since joining Guardiola’s troupe of self-improvers.

No footballer employed in the English Premier League has ever scored so many in a season.

And he still has a possible 13 matches across competitions to add many more – and very possibly to spearhead City to a Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup Treble.