Hiram Moreno
New year, same story for Manchester City. The Sky Blues has once again fallen short of glory in the Champions League despite having obtained a good result in the first leg of the match. They lost 6-5 on aggregate to Real Madrid in a series that will go down in history as a late comeback saw them crash out of what would have been their second Champions League final following 2020/21.
It will also go down as yet another disappointment for Manchester City, who are still struggling in this tournament more than 10 years after the arrival of the “petrodollars” and the team’s new owners – who practically re-founded City from the ground up. Since the Abu Dhabi United Group took over in 2008, Manchester City has won everything it could win domestically speaking.
- Five league titles (they had two prior to 2008).
- Six EFL Cups (two prior to 2008)
- Two FA Cups
However, the “Orejona” seems to be a forbidden desire for the “Citizens”, who have spent more than 2 billion euros since 2008 — 1,077 during the “Guardiola era” — to improve the team season after season without succeeding on the continental stage.
Here are some of City’s most notable Champions League defeats.
The tragedy of Porto
The most recent was perhaps the most painful, as the 2020/21 season saw City reach their first Champions League final in Porto, Portugal, where they faced an underdog Chelsea side.
City’s core of players has remained nearly unchanged since then, but a goal by Kai Havertz in the last minutes of the first half was an impossible mountain to climb for the “Citizens”, who saw their dream come to an end after having fallen down at the moment they had been waiting for so long.
Unexpected elimination in Lisbon
Between 2018 to 2020, Manchester City was caught in a loop in which they failed to advance beyond the quarter-final stage on any occasion. Perhaps the 2020 elimination was the most unexpected of all, having faced the likes of Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur in previous years.
But… being eliminated at the hands of Lyon? That is low. There is no need to confuse things. Lyon has long been one of the most recognizable clubs in France, but their glory years at the continental level are behind them, and the fact that the knockout phase was played in a single match that year did not help Citizens to believe in “a comeback in the second leg”.
Falling to another French team
2016/17 was also a major setback for the English side, since they were eliminated in the first knockout stages. Their Round of 16 series against a Monaco side that had been the surprise package in the group stage by topping their group looked straightforward on paper.
City won the first leg at home 5-3 and appeared to be on track to win the series but a setback in the return leg saw them become the new victims of a Monaco side that would go on to reach the Champions League semifinals that season thanks to a very young Kylian Mbappé and other promising players.
The first steps of Manchester City
Considering these were their first steps in the Champions League, they may not have been entirely disappointing instances, but it should be remembered that City’s early seasons in this competition were quite poor. In both of them, they were eliminated at the group stage — including one season in which they failed to win a single game.
In their defense, in 2012/13 they were paired in a group with Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid and Ajax, while 2011/12 saw them share a group with Bayern, Napoli and Villarreal. In retrospect, this helped him to gain experience, but the fruits of this have yet to be discovered.
