Well, Rodri was right about one thing. We definitely need a few less games like this one. Welcome to the new world of Uefa expansionism, a competition without structure, designed solely to provide another roll of TV wallpaper, and on this evidence a place lacking some vital degree of tension or shape.
The most dramatic moment at a room-temperature Etihad Stadium arrived on 78 minutes. As Inter missed one of several good chances on the night, Simone Inzaghi, their thrillingly energetic manager, could be seen literally on his hands and knees in cat stretch position, beating the turf with his hands, as though performing a steamy 1980s soft rock music video dance, whipping his hair, grinding the knees of his elegant dark suit into the grass.
It is said in Italy that Inzaghi is obsessed with the 2023 final between these two teams, fixated on revenge, on a correction, on reaching that level again. He is certainly a great, permanently enraged spectacle on the touchline. He was definitely more interesting than this game, watching him more rewarding, the physical expression of his alleged revenge fixation providing at least a narrative arc, some dramatic tension.
Otherwise this 0-0 draw was interesting only for the questions it raised. City were in their Definitely Maybe kit for the occasion, a homage (ie corporate cash-in) to that album’s 30-year anniversary. This is a sensible commercial exchange. Oasis have cultural cachet. City have money. Life is expensive.
But the actual home kit is a classic. Whereas this looks like you’re wearing a faded orange bib with comic sans numbers on the back. It looks like something you find on the last sale rack in TK Maxx with a label that says it’s made by Guido Ferrenti. If this is what Definitely Maybe gets, just imagine what kind of monstrosity they’re going to come up with for Be Here Now and Heathen Chemistry.
Still, it was also fitting as for an hour City produced a late-period Oasis kind of performance: derivative, complacent, familiar patterns without any real edge. Generally it was just such a cold midweek occasion, another match piled on the matches solely because more matches can be piled. For long periods the ground was more or less silent. Take out the away support and it would have been hard to detect that any kind of public spectacle was actually happening.
Through all this Inter looked like what they are, a very well-organised team. If Marcus Thuram was a better finisher they would have been two up by half-time. For City the most interesting thing here, the story of the game, was how porous they looked.
Usually there is an unbreakable geometry to the City midfield, the angles, the sedimentary layers overlaid, leaving no spaces, no channels, nowhere to go. Here Inter were able to beat the first challenge, to find lanes to pass and run into. Has any team passed this easily through City’s midfield in the last two years?
The front line pressed so high and so flat. Inter set their left winger Piotr Zielinski wide, pinning Rico Lewis after a few early bursts, taking away City’s usual overload inside. Kevin De Bruyne and Rodri looked weirdly isolated. At times Rodri seemed to be patrolling his own enormous central space. He looked rusty. Frankly he looked like he could do with a few more games. Was he already on strike?
And yes, City will be fine. They always get better. We have seen this before. Erling Haaland had 14 touches. Jérémy Doku, who came on with 10 minutes to go, had 16. This is also fine. We’ve seen this before. It works out. But it is also a slightly different kind of moment. How good is this late-Pep, Haaland-centred team? It is such a stripped back entity now.
Guardiola’s City teams used to feel like an aesthetic statement, the pursuit of victory but also an intellectual exercise in how to get there. These days it’s pretty much just winning, which is an art in its own way. At their best there is a stifling, suffocating quality to this late-Pep iteration of City. Playing them, losing to them must feel like being very slowly put to sleep by lethal injection.
Does it have to be like this? Here it was the absence of creative invention that seemed most startling. Without Phil Foden on the pitch City basically had one reliable creative player. Jack Grealish was arguably their liveliest presence. But again, you wondered why has Guardiola done this to Grealish, turned him into a kind of resting point, a defensive winger, there to slow things down and retain control.
Grealish is at least a first in his own way, a winger who makes the crowd sit down when he gets the ball. Guardiola brought on Ilkay Gündogan and Foden at half-time and immediately improved his team. They will be back, perhaps as soon as Sunday. But this was hardly a good advertisement for the new world.
