The Champions of Europe
Football has an irritating habit of allowing you to become comfortable before reminding you exactly where you stand.
The Supercoppa defeat to Fiorentina had been disappointing, although I continued insisting to anybody prepared to listen that it was little more than an elaborate exhibition match. The league campaign remained alive, the Coppa Italia was gathering momentum and, almost unnoticed, we’d stumbled our way into the knockout stages of the Champions League. By the beginning of March I had convinced myself that this was already a successful season.
Then the draw paired us with Manchester City.
There are certain clubs that no longer require an introduction. Manchester City had become the measuring stick by which every ambitious European side judged itself. If you wanted to know whether you belonged among Europe’s elite, sooner or later you would have to play them. I had simply hoped it might happen a year or two later.
The sensible objective for the first leg was obvious enough. Remain competitive. Stay in the tie. Give ourselves something to play for in Manchester. Nobody inside the Olimpico was expecting anything more than that.
Which perhaps explains what happened next.
After six minutes Ilias Akhomach collected the ball and gave us the lead. It was an encouraging start, but one that felt temporary, rather like discovering you’ve managed to overtake Max Verstappen after the first corner of a Formula One race. You enjoy the moment, but you assume normal service will shortly resume.
Instead, Pietro Pellegri made it two.
Even then I wasn’t prepared to believe what I was watching. Manchester City had too much quality. At some point Haaland would score, De Bruyne would begin conducting the game like an orchestra and we’d all quietly return to reality.
Haaland did score just after the half-hour mark. I remember almost feeling relieved. There we are, I thought. Reality has finally caught up with us.
It hadn’t.
Danilo Cataldi restored our two-goal advantage before half-time, and by now the atmosphere inside the Olimpico had changed completely. Supporters who had arrived hoping to witness a respectable performance had begun entertaining thoughts they had wisely dismissed before kick-off.
When Akhomach added a fourth shortly after the hour, disbelief slowly gave way to excitement. Pellegri’s second with ten minutes remaining finally pushed the evening beyond the boundaries of anything resembling normal football.
The final whistle blew.
Lazio 5.
Manchester City 1.
For several moments I simply stared at the scoreboard. Football Manager occasionally produces results that make you question whether you’ve accidentally loaded the wrong save file. This felt very much like one of those occasions.
The statistics offered remarkably little explanation. We hadn’t dominated possession. We hadn’t peppered their goal with endless chances. We had simply taken ours with ruthless efficiency while Manchester City, for once, looked strangely ordinary.
Which, if anything, made the return leg considerably more frightening.
Travelling to the Etihad with a four-goal advantage sounds like an enviable position. In reality, it is deeply unpleasant. You spend ninety minutes calculating increasingly improbable ways in which everything might still collapse. Every Manchester City attack feels like the beginning of an avalanche.
They came exactly as expected.
Wave after wave of possession.
Twenty-three shots.
Corner after corner.
The sort of relentless pressure that makes you wonder whether somebody has quietly slowed the match clock.
They won 4-2 on the night, and had this been any other fixture I would probably have spent several days analysing everything we’d done wrong. Instead, when the final whistle arrived, the only number that mattered was seven-five.
We were through.
Long after the celebrations had died down, I found myself wondering where that tie ranked among the matches I’d managed. It certainly wasn’t the cleanest tactical performance, nor was it the most dominant. In truth, Manchester City probably played better football over the two legs.
But football has never been an examination in which the neatest working earns the highest marks.
Sometimes it rewards courage.
Sometimes it rewards good fortune.
And every so often, it rewards one unforgettable night when everything you touch somehow turns to gold.