Quick Hits: Man City win the treble
The last game of the European club season had no surprise ending
It wasn’t a great game, but big finals rarely are. We were spoilt rotten by the World Cup final last December, and this is what we should generally expect from showpiece matches. I doubt any of Man City’s fans or players will care a tiny bit.
Just as in his previous two Champions League final wins, Pep Guardiola did not overthink it. He played what has been broadly the template for the second half of the season. In the only real “surprise”, John Stones started at right back instead of centre back, but still pushed into midfield. That meant City often had a back three of Manuel Akanji, Rúben Dias and Nathan Aké, with Stones joining Rodri deep in midfield. Both Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gündoğan had licence to push forward and join the attack, but De Bruyne (who was replaced by Phil Foden through injury) in particular could look like a second striker at times. Jack Grealish and Bernardo Silva would hold wide positions, while Erling Haaland was obviously the focal point. We’ve seen this all before. It’s the reason City rallied from looking like they might lose the title race to winning the lot (minus Nathan Jones’ valiant efforts). It’s good and it works.
Except it didn’t work particularly well here. Inter pressed City high from the start, though the aim wasn’t to win the ball back as much as disrupt Guardiola’s side’s build-up play. Few Premier League teams play with two strikers against Man City, meaning Edin Džeko and Lautaro Martínez were able to press Akanji, Dias and Aké in a way that made the build-up uncomfortable. This meant Ederson and the defenders had to play it long more often than Guardiola would probably like, and couldn’t get the fluidity in possession to create their usual chances.
As strategies to stop Man City go, “make them play it long” isn’t a bad one. And they were pretty sluggish in the opening period of the second half with Inter starting to take control. And then they worked it from side to side as they liked for one of the first times in the game, allowing Rodri to arrive late in the box and score.
“In all team sports”, Guardiola explained in Pep Confidential, the book chronicling his first season at Bayern, “the secret is to overload one side of the pitch so that the opponent must tilt its own defence to cope. You overload on one side and draw them in so that they leave the other side weak. And when we’ve done all that, we attack and score from the other side”. I’m sure he’s said the same thing to the City players many times, because it’s exactly what they did. They work it from side to side a couple of times, sucking Inter players towards the ball, before finally getting enough space for Rodri to score from a low cross. It was a scruffy goal. It wasn’t the beautiful positional play goal we associate with Guardiola. But it was absolutely a goal that came from his methods.
Seven sides have won the “treble” in a top-five league. Apologies to Celtic, Ajax and PSV Eindhoven, but they were long enough ago that I’ve never watched those teams and it’s harder to comprehend how difficult it was. So we’re left with the following sides:
Man Utd 1998/99
Barcelona 2008/09
Inter 2009/10
Bayern 2012/13
Barcelona 2014/15
Bayern 2019/20
Man City 2022/23
Of those teams, I definitely think the two Barcelona sides were the strongest. The first had the best possession control any of us have seen, marrying Guardiola’s methods with players coached in Cruyffian ideals all their lives. The second has become underrated, keeping the underlying principles but going a little more direct to Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suárez. Are City the next best? I personally don’t think Man Utd could control games to this extent (they were better in 2008 for my money), and Inter were more defensively solid but less good in possession. Bayern 2012/13 could make a real case, but today let’s give it to City.
Can't comment on PSV and Ajax, but Rangers also reached a European final in 1967, losing 1-0 to a Muller and Beckenbauer powered Bayern, showing the strength of the league then. So Celtic's '67 treble has to be up there, at least anecdotally. Obviously for a proper claim you'd have to sit through a lot of old games which I'll pass on haha