The Portuguese No 7 made a dramatic mid-season exit from a Manchester club where he had been a transformative figure. Sound familiar?
Joao Cancelo is not Cristiano Ronaldo. For starters, Bayern Munich were interested in him. He found a suitor in the European elite, not the Saudi super-rich. The conversations that led to his departure took place with Pep Guardiola, not Piers Morgan. There was no explosive interview: indeed, as Cancelo was unveiled at Bayern, he denied it was because his relationship with the Manchester City manager “was not the best”. Yet the clues were that it had deteriorated rapidly.
And, compared to his compatriot, Cancelo’s move represents the real shock. Ronaldo did not rank in Erik ten Hag’s strongest team. Cancelo helped define Guardiola’s side in the previous two seasons. He had seemed at the peak of his powers. And, though there is a clause in his loan that means Bayern have the option to buy him for £61.5m in the summer, the reality is that City have let an outstanding footballer go for now without recouping a transfer fee or replacing him when they had not really replaced Oleksandr Zinchenko either.
All of which does not simply happen when a player wants more minutes. “My decision had to do with the playing time that had been little in recent weeks,” Cancelo said. He had started just three of 10 games since the World Cup; in one of those, he was replaced at half-time after playing on the right wing. He did not figure at all in their last three matches; as City know from 2019-20, he can start to eye the exit when not playing.
Meanwhile, Guardiola, in one of his stranger rants, had taken aim at the “happy flowers” in his squad, the players he seemed to deem guilty of complacency. Phil Foden, another languishing on the fringes since Qatar, looked the most prominent among them; it now seems Cancelo was the first flower for the chop.
Especially as the two Guardiola has praised most in recent weeks are Rico Lewis and Nathan Ake; it would have felt improbable a few months ago that they would have displaced Cancelo from the full-back roles but Guardiola is savouring his underdog tale, of the converted centre-back and the teenage rookie.
Lewis is shaping up as the boy who has made Cancelo surplus to requirements, the budding Philipp Lahm who can go into midfield and act as a deep-lying passer in possession. The 18-year-old is a different type of distributor, with a pass completion rate of 93.4 percent. Cancelo’s success rate in recent seasons has hovered around the 86 percent mark, partly because of his greater sense of adventure. In his double act with Rodri, Cancelo was likelier to attempt the ambitious pass. He was the playmaker full-back, the man who got a hat-trick of assists in a Champions League game.
He was also the revolutionary, the symbol of Pepball. Guardiola is famously fond of midfielders and Cancelo, a former winger, brought a midfielder’s skillset in the back four. But his positional innovations have arguably been the false nine and the full-back regista.
When City won back-to-back Premier League titles, they had both. Everyone scored and everyone created. Cancelo finished behind only Kevin De Bruyne and Gabriel Jesus for Premier League assists for City last season. He was the defender-creator, less metronome than the man who could provide a defence-splitting ball.
And if the dynamic is different with Erling Haaland, with the requirements altering deeper in the pitch, with no false nine, with Cancelo recording a solitary league assist, the tactical element only feels part of the equation. Guardiola has been restless of late, talking of how his hunger as a player diminished after winning four consecutive La Liga titles. He has looked to shake things up.
If it is unsurprising that City have backed up, he has a history of exiling big names. The biggest – Ronaldinho – came at the start of his managerial career. The most memorable, given the striker’s eloquent rejection of the cult of Pep, was Zlatan Ibrahimovic, one of his biggest signings.
Yet neither felt a quintessential Guardiola player. Cancelo is; or, perhaps more accurately, was. Players have taken time to win Guardiola’s favour before with Ake, now in his third season at the Etihad Stadium, a case in point. But Cancelo has already done that: rewind to his first season and Guardiola did not deny he could be sold then. “Complications with the coach,” he later reflected. “My fault.” But then he emerged as a creative catalyst.
Now his fall from grace has been sudden. He started each of City’s first 19 games of the season: he will not be at the club for their last 18 Premier League matches. It may mean two awkward seasons bookend two brilliant ones, that he proves a player who, for a relatively brief period, was exceptional. Because the two players who reinvented the full-back’s role most in England were Trent Alexander-Arnold and Cancelo. Each looked unique, not copyable. And now Cancelo culture at City has taken on a different meaning. Now it is about his sudden exit, not the classy way a one-off showed his passing range.
