Pep Guardiola’s judgments about his team’s opponents often slide into superlatives, and if one day, at the perhaps not-so-distant end of his coaching career, he puts his hand on his heart, today’s Manchester City coach might become that himself put one or the other into perspective. Whereby: He has won so often and so much that he was often very fluent in praise of the respective rival.
On Wednesday evening, the Catalan, who also coached FC Barcelona and FC Bayern, registered his 300th game as coach of Manchester City against RB Leipzig and scored his 219th win with a tennis result: 6: 3 (3: 1 ). But in the 90 minutes that had gone into the country in his 750th game as a coach (527 wins), he probably only switched off when the referee had blown the whistle.
Leipzig has now lost four of six competitive games under Marsch
Guardiola said after the game that he analyzed Leipzig’s games against Stuttgart, Wolfsburg and of course against “his” FC Bayern, and he saw a team that “follows a clear strategy” and maintains “no matter what.” Even if they are three goals behind, they reduce the defensive network and, if in doubt, send a striker onto the field, “they play” all or nothing “. Always, regardless of losses.” You have to be in the game. And stay! Always! The whole game! “, He said to his players before the game,” they will create opportunities and possibly score goals because they do that all the time. “
Jack Grealish and Riyad Mahrez must have forgotten that by now; Guardiola bored them verbally into the lawn, because it was the case that the Leipzigers came back over and over again on Wednesday evening. And so in the not completely sold out, but well-filled Ettihad Stadium, a “spectacle” occurred, as Guardiola’s Leipzig colleague Jesse Marsch called it, with an afterthought full of regret for nine goals in 90 minutes: “It was maybe something too much spectacle. “
Definitely from Leipzig’s point of view. Leipzig has now lost four of six competitive games under Marsch, and it doesn’t help much that RB bend their knees in front of FSV Mainz 05 (at the time weakened but strong), VfL Wolfsburg, which is still free of point losses, FC Bayern and now just before City had to. The debates about whether Leipzig is grooving itself into the first crisis in its first division history are becoming more audible.
“We need rewards and trust on the pitch,” said March in Manchester. Only: If you defend as if the team were taking part in a casting for the remake of the psychiatric classic “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, that turns out to be rather difficult. City may have been looking for a proper center forward for three years, but Guardiola’s team gets along quite well without a real nine. In the last three games she scored 16 hits and did an excellent job of whitewashing the fact that she too has her cuckoo nest moments.
Nathan Aké (16th), Riyad Mahrez (45th + 2 / penalty), Jack Grealish (56th), João Cancelo (75th) and Gabriel Jesus (85th) met against Leipzig; In between, Leipzig’s Nordi Mukiele put on – cuckoo! – a cross of the rightly celebrated Kevin De Bruyne into the nest of his own team.
The Leipzig goals, all of which were scored by Christopher Nkunku (42nd / 51st / 73rd), who is rarely so accurate, were almost dramatically worthless. “I score three goals, but every time they hit again immediately …” lamented Nkunku, who made it into a special gallery: He is the third player after Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero to have three in a Champions League game Hit against a team supervised by Guardiola succeeded.
Marsch was angry too; exemplary about the first goal that came after a corner. The standards in particular had been prepared particularly intensively, and then everything got out of hand. The comparatively thin Tyler Adams was tasked with blocking the mighty city defender Aké, but the Dutchman was able to run ten meters in the penalty area before jumping over Willy Orban and Lukas Klostermann at the six-yard area and headed the ball into the goal.
Grealish could have signed autographs between receiving the ball and finishing the game
At this point, after a good quarter of an hour, one could fear the worst from Leipzig’s point of view. City let the ball circle to their liking, Leipzig’s coach Marsch puzzled afterwards whether his team had shown the opponent “too much respect” and was therefore “not aggressive against the ball”. Marsch was asked whether he had given a similar sermon in the dressing room at halftime as he did a few years ago in Salzburg (“This is no fu * king friendly game!”). The American’s answer made a deep impression: “I was this time not as positive as back then. “
The result was that his team performed better in the second half. But what you could see before half-time was still valid, City was always able to “shift up a gear”, as Marsch said. Translated: Even after the goals to 2: 3 and 3: 4 by Nkunku City surprised his guests.
And here, too, there were again cases of inadequacies that were somehow exemplary. For example: At the goal of Grealish, which was a feast for the eyes because he first turned in seal-style from the left to the inside and then pulled off, which was worth seeing, but the Leipzig team gave him so much space that he was still between receiving the ball and closing it could easily have given out autographs to the fans.
Not everything was bad, stated Emil Forsberg afterwards, only: All in all, the result was “sobering”, he added. His colleague Klostermann even called it “extremely sobering”. Leipzig have had good phases, but it is not enough to show that “only in between”, “we need consistency over the entire season.” The next opportunity is at the weekend at 1. FC Köln, where his team is expecting “a fight that will definitely not be easy,” as Marsch said. A fight in superlatives, so to speak. Because the people of Cologne are currently being trained by Steffen Baumgart.
– .
