Tottenham vs Man City: The curious case of Pep Guardiola and his obsession with the Champions League

Tuesday night’s 1-0 defeat against Spurs was just the start of their three-game ‘mini-series’ but there is something about Europe that seems to get the Guardiola like no other competition does

There were many curiosities to Manchester City’s performance at Tottenham Hotspur but perhaps the oddest was that it was only once they’d actually been defeated 1-0 that Pep Guardiola finally relaxed.

The Catalan actually seemed very upbeat after the match, even saying his side had “played an incredible game”. Many of his players backed that view up, and the word from inside the dressing room was the squad were quite satisfied with the situation. “We were expecting this game,” Riyad Mahrez said. “I think we managed it good.”

They were genuinely content, but it’s impossible not to think some of that comes from the wider context, especially with Guardiola himself. A 1-0 defeat is much easier to overturn in the second leg than last season’s 3-0 at the same stage against Liverpool, let alone some of his previous defeats.

The time since his last outright victory in 2011 has seen a 4-0 loss to Real Madrid with Bayern Munich, 3-0 to Barcelona and then a 3-0 defeat against Liverpool.

Against that, a mere 1-0 defeat by Spurs is obviously much better, and there’s also the fact that even his great Barcelona team only ever won one knock-out first leg. This narrow defeat, then, was something like a norm.

Maybe the mere acceptance of that in itself shows how much this competition plays on Guardiola’s mind and causes him to make strange decisions.

It is worth remembering that Guardiola is a Barca supporter who grew up when the club had a real neurosis about the old European Cup and just couldn’t seem to win it – only ending that drought 37 years into its history – who is now at another club who have no real legacy in the competition. There’s a lot of hardwired hang-ups there.

Many City players before the game were struck by how conspicuously tense Guardiola had been the last few days, in a way that just hasn’t been the case at all with the relaxed figure through this properly tense title race. There was then the eyebrow-raising starting line-up, and the ongoing fixation with how “physical” the game would be.

Mahrez mentioned how they weren’t surprised by that either.

That is despite the reality that City have had no such problems with Spurs in the league over the last two years, and instead beaten them rather easily and repeatedly. It was as if the Champions League caused Guardiola to hone in on their traits rather than his own team’s strengths, and then as if the starting line-up made the expectations a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Guardiola appears to have a curious relationship with the Champions League (EPA)

Guardiola rested his most distinctive and fluid attackers in Kevin De Bruyne and Leroy Sane, to bring in his brawniest players in Nicolas Otamendi and Fabian Delph. The result was a real fight, and not a lot of football.

Sure, things might have been entirely different had Sergio Aguero scored that penalty – and Guardiola might have finally produced the kind of closed-off win he was criticised for not being capable of last season – but a perfectly reasonable argument at this point is that that in itself showed just how this competition causes this team to tense up.

There was then the wonder over why he only eventually brought on De Bruyne and Sane 10 minutes after the Son Heung-min goal, and just two minutes before the end of the regulation 90.

These are questions that are set to dominate the next seven days, until he plays the first of another two massive matches against Spurs in quick succession.

But, to be fair, that is one huge caveat – and maybe the point.

Spurs and City are set to play one another three times in eight days (Getty)

In such a testing run of fixtures, and in a “series” against Spurs that will involve the two managers having to intensely second-guess and surprise each other, perhaps that was just the start of that.

Perhaps he wants to be able to change, not to mention keep his best attackers fresh.

There’s then the reality that even the most relentless run won’t see a team at full pelt all the time. It will see dips and lulls, but not insurmountable ones. Some City figures have spoken of a slight “mental fatigue” coming in, but nothing too complicated.

This is why the team are content, and fully feel they can blow Spurs away and out of the competition next week. If that happens, all of these questions and concerns will be blown away with them.

Why did Guardiola wait so long to introduce Kevin De Bruyne (Reuters)

It’s just that it might be needlessly tough, because Guardiola got needlessly nervous about the Champions League.

City have maybe the best team in Europe, probably the best manager in Europe, and definitely the best-resourced squad left in Europe.

They act like that in the domestic league. They don’t always act like it in the Champions League. It’s another curiosity.