Before this match Vincent Kompany had suggested Manchester City would play with “anger” at the Etihad Stadium against the champions of Italy. And perhaps there was a little rage in the way, having seen his team play in bursts of controlled energy against a cautious, assured Juventus, Kompany effectively forced Giorgio Chiellini to score an own goal 12 minutes into the second half, holding his opposite number down by the shoulders at a corner as though forcing Chiellini’s head under water in the local swimming pool, until he had no option but to head the ball into his own net before coming up spluttering and spitting about what was an obvious foul.
City needed the inspiration. If they were never exactly overrun in this 2-1 defeat by last season’s finalists, there was evidence here both in the opening hour and in Juventus’s equalising goal of the level to which they still have to aspire. Quietly but assertively Paul Pogba, Juve’s prized asset and the most coveted young player in the world, not only shaded the midfield battle, but provided the fine deep cross to set up Mario Mandzukic’s equaliser on 70 minutes. Pogba’s presence here had been widely trailed as a “return to Manchester”. In the event it was simply a demonstration of how far the former United man has moved on, the hub of this fine, evolving Juve team in which the excellent Juan Cuadrado was another black-shirted Banquo’s ghost.
This is not a match, or an individual duel, Yaya Touré will enjoy watching again. Of all City’s players it is probably Touré who has been at the centre of that vague feeling of drift, of shrinking from the occasion, a player so often capable of influencing big games in the Premier League, but shut down too easily in Europe. Before tonight he had played 16 matches in his past three Champions League seasons and had a total of just eight shots on goal, scoring three times and delivering one assist.
Here the temptation was to anticipate a concussive battle within a battle between the Premier League’s dominant midfield powerhouse of the last five years and world football’s rising star, 10 years his junior, as from the start Pogba and Touré were immediately straying into the same areas, their first collision a tug back under a high ball by Pogba during which he briefly resembled a man trying to shin his way up a postbox.
Pogba was, of course, a tentatively mooted replacement for Touré in the summer: never close, but City, like everyone else, have had a crack. His decision to stay at Juventus for another year was hailed as “good for football” by Gianluigi Buffon this week. No doubt it is a good thing for Juventus and for Pogba himself, whom Buffon has also claimed, a little unhelpfully, is already in the same league as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Pogba has many qualities. But he has scored just twice for Juventus and France since January. Messi has 35 goals in the same period (Marouane Fellaini has 10).
He is, though, a thrilling player to watch, a midfielder of genuine drive and guile who here gave a demonstration of exactly why he is the most coveted young player on the planet. If Touré faded by comparison, there is no shame in this. He is simply a wonderfully high grade, and wonderfully youthful midfield machine, on the verge of entering what should be a considerable prime.
Pogba began to move up through the gears with 10 minutes gone. First he bounced Fernandinho off the ball inside City’s half, and then surged away from Samir Nasri. Then he had the ball in the net, heading Cuadrado’s skimming cross powerfully past Joe Hart only for Mandzukic to be flagged offside, perhaps a little unfairly. There was a ruthless, decisive kind of beauty to these early thrusts, a mixture of elegance, craft and effortless acceleration, although steadily City got closer to Juve’s most obvious source of incision. Fernandinho began to assert himself, on one occasion robbing Pogba and grooving forward to have a shot from distance.
Touré, meanwhile, was inconspicuous, limiting himself to the odd interception, and in fact finding himself brilliantly pressured by Juve’s forward line as at times City were simply too slow, unable to find any slivers of space, wormholes in that black-shirted high press.
Pogba was still by some distance the most elegant mover in the midfield, those spindly legs instruments of fine-tuned torture as at one point he flipped the ball over Touré’s head – “putting a hat on him” in the Brazilian phrase, a grave indignity – before spinning around to pick up the return with Touré still engaging the reverse thrusters.
As the second half opened out into a more full-throated, expansive affair, Pogba continued to flit and dart, popping up in defence and also leading Juve’s transitions into attack, spinning and pirouetting and showing his ability to find a team-mate in small spaces. With five minutes left Touré finally had a shot on target, drawing a fine save from Buffon. By then City were trailing to Álvaro Morata’s winner, and to a team with a breath of genuine high class in the centre of its midfield.
