No goals, no blood spilt, no real change of gear from a cautious, smothering start. For Manchester City the good news after the 0-0 draw with Real Madrid is that, in theory, they just need to avoid defeat in their next two Champions League fixtures to have a better than even chance of winning the competition.
Another nil-nil. A penalty shootout maybe. A shinned Fernando trickler at a corner. City won’t mind how they come. Mainly because suddenly this team are keeping their opponents out, shielded by that twin Brazilian midfield axis, and with Nicolás Otamendi in particular in buccaneering form, high-kicking his way through this Champions League run like a man juggling plates on the roof of a steam locomotive – sometimes wobbly, sometimes brilliant, always entertaining.
In the conventional narrative of the two-leg tie Tuesday’s draw leaves Real Madrid well set for a clinching home win. Zinedine Zidane’s team have won their past five home Champions League fixtures by a combined aggregate score of 18-0 to the team in white. They have an overload of attacking talent and craft on the ball. Their own one-man pump-action shotgun Cristiano Ronaldo should return.
Against that City are capable of scoring against any team, particularly opponents under an irresistible cultural pressure to attack in numbers at home. For all the manful door-bolting efforts of Casemiro, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva will be hopeful of ferreting out the counterattacking spaces they found only once or twice on Tuesday.
Plenty to play for then. Albeit for City to push on it seems likely Sergio Agüero, the team’s razor edge, is going to have to start joining in too.
Against Madrid Agüero was not so much marginal as marginalised, sandwiched between two excellent central defenders, unable to find the tiny sliver of space he needs to craft an opening. He had 32 touches, no shots at goal, won no headers and made 20 successful passes.
This is no real surprise. It was a cagey game. Agüero doesn’t need an overload of possession or a Jackson Pollock-style splurge of pitch map touches to make the difference. More interesting, as the competition narrows to its end point, is the fact that Agüero has gone four Champions League matches without a single shot on target.
This will surely end soon. Nobody who’s actually been watching for the past few years could doubt his qualities. Agüero is undeniably A-list, a player born and raised to move in the footballing overclass. He is Lionel Messi’s best pal. His genes have mingled with Diego Maradona’s. Who knows, he’s probably pen pals with Pelé. This is not an issue of stature or talent. All City have ever really needed to do is give him the tools. Put the ball in the Sergio zone. He will hunt you down. He will kill you.
Except this hasn’t happened in the bigger games this season. The bald facts are these: Agüero has one goal in 11 games against the combined might of Juventus, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Leicester, Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain and Madrid.
Whether this is a symptom or a cause of City’s struggles against the top six is best left to the guesswork of tactical hindsight. What is certain is this is not the Agüero way. In previous seasons he has scored regularly against City’s stronger opponents. He has a Champions League hat-trick against Bayern Munich. Something has shifted this year. But what?
The most obvious explanation is simply that the whole team have performed poorly in bigger games, right up until the sudden spike of form in the past three Champions League matches. There are various competing explanations, from bad timing to individual mistakes. This team have been in transition for much of the season, crunching their way through the last threads of the Touré Supremacy, with City’s talisman of the past five years vulnerable to being picked off by a really high-class opposition midfield.
It seems likely the main reason for Agüero’s passivity is the shifting of attacking systems around him. For the past four years the standard-issue Agüero goal has involved a clever Silva pass, an exchange at the corner of the penalty box, an opening crafted with slow-burn precision.
Silva-Agüero has been about unpicking defences, applying a steady point of pressure, finding an overload. Right now Silva is less of a defining presence. In the past few weeks, and indeed before his injury, it has been De Bruyne, master of the counterattack, who has curated City’s most penetrating movements. Give it to Kevin: as tactics go this has been a pretty decent one.
Common sense suggests the more De Bruyne and Agüero play together the better they will complement each other’s movement, just as an untidy game against Madrid is hardly the best measure of how far the regrooving of that growing partnership has progressed. Brilliant footballers tend to grow together, and before De Bruyne’s injury there were signs of this happening. Since his return it has been a partnership slightly at one remove, at least compared with the intimate combinations of the best of Agüero‑Silva. Against Madrid, albeit in a messy, tight game, De Bruyne passed to Agüero five times in 95 minutes. The last time De Bruyne made a goal for Agüero or Agüero made a goal for De Bruyne was in that Capital One Cup game against Everton in January, shortly before De Bruyne wrenched his knee.
This shouldn’t be overplayed. There are plenty of ways footballers combine that slip through the stats. De Bruyne’s most devastating skill is the ability to spring into a pocket of space and execute the right high-speed pass, but he isn’t simply an “assist machine”. His game is as much about movement and direction, the run that makes the space that makes the goal. The sight of Agüero skittering away ahead of him will disorientate plenty of defences in ways that open space for others.
Either way Agüero’s barren run against the best must surely come to an end soon. Not because of systems or new combinations but simply because he is too good not to make his edge felt. The plan has worked so far. City will continue to trust in that smothering, athletic spine and wait for the wheel to turn. Wednesday night in Madrid really would be an excellent moment for a flicker of the real big-game Sergio.
