Maybe Manchester City’s hopes of reaching the 2024-25 Champions League’s round of 16 were not over within five minutes, after Kylian Mbappe’s early goal, or even eight, after John Stones’ game-ending early injury, but were actually over before last night’s second leg started.
When news filtered through that Erling Haaland would not be in Pep Guardiola’s starting line-up against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu, City’s task for the evening suddenly seemed even more monumental than it already was given the 3-2 first-leg deficit.
It turns out that during City’s bad run, which now spans four months, Haaland’s presence has been taken for granted.
Look, the Norwegian striker’s absence was not the reason for City’s meek performance in the 3-1 defeat that followed; their problems run far deeper. It has been evident for ages now that their midfield is “old” — in Guardiola’s words — and with that, they are slow and weak, and their defence is blighted by injuries. On top of that, they are scarred mentally and exhausted physically.
They generally need to put the ball on a plate for Haaland to make a difference because he is not a player like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in their primes or even current Kylian Mbappe, who can change a game by getting the ball outside the box and creating something special.
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But he does occupy defenders and the very idea that he might run in behind keeps the opposition honest. It does not always work, but it is something that can never be overlooked, and while City’s season is hardly going well — they have long been out of the Premier League title race and now they have been ejected from European competition, too — Haaland has still scored 27 club goals.
It begs the question: without Haaland at the moment, what is left of this City team? On Wednesday night in the Spanish capital, we may have got our answer: not a lot.
They were limp, toothless and frankly lucky to get nil, let alone one.
Guardiola says the knee injury Haaland picked up against Newcastle on Saturday is “nothing serious”. So he should be back soon, which is very good news for City because anything major would be a significant blow to their hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League from their current fourth place, a point ahead of fifth and sixth and three clear of seventh.
At their best, City would be able to live without Haaland more comfortably, but like this, they cannot do without him.
Haaland will always score goals in this City team, but to reach their previous highs, everything needs to work in harmony. Were it not for Guardiola finding a way to make everything click together in his first season in England, which ended with that 2022-23 treble, Haaland might have broken all the scoring records but had no trophies to show for it.
It was only once Guardiola found a way to get the “extra man” in midfield — Stones stepping up from defence — that City became the unstoppable force that won the lot two years ago. Haaland was firing from his first game for the club, but as a unit, they only clicked in the March.
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The reason they needed that extra man was because Haaland could not — and still cannot — be the kind of striker who links up well with his team-mates outside the area. He has other strengths, ones that are especially important now because any goal will do, but at their best, there needed to be more nuance in City’s play.
There was even a time in his second season when it felt like City might be better off without Haaland… in some matches anyway.
He undoubtedly adds goals and menace, but considering he often has so few touches in games, when he does not take his chances, which happened often last season, it can be hard to justify his place.
At the start of last year, when he was struggling in front of goal and City needed to get a grip on games, Julian Alvarez did an admirable job of starting up front and dropping deep to link up the play, which helped mitigate Stones’ absence in midfield. It was just like the old days.
But if there was one game that underlined Haaland’s importance in that second season, and one that showed his merits compared to a more diminutive striker, it was against Nottingham Forest in the April, when the opposition defenders were entirely comfortable dealing with Alvarez, allowing one of them to step up into midfield and get stuck into City’s midfielders.
As soon as Haaland came off the bench after an hour, though, Forest needed two centre-backs to guard him, allowing Kevin De Bruyne space for the first time, and he duly set up the Norwegian to score. Simple as that.
This season, he has been one of very few City players to avoid any criticism. In fact, other than Josko Gvardiol, there might not be anybody else and even Gvardiol has made a few mistakes.
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Considering City’s other forwards have been so patchy this season, Haaland’s goal threat has been more important than ever. It was easier to make the case that City could live without him when they had goals coming from Ilkay Gundogan, De Bruyne, Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden, but that argument would not stand up to scrutiny now.
Omar Marmoush scored a fine hat-trick on Saturday but was quiet in Madrid, just as Savinho sometimes shines and sometimes flounders. Jeremy Doku’s season has been beset by injuries and Jack Grealish barely gets a look in now. De Bruyne could not get off the bench at the Bernabeu either as his fitness issues continue and Foden has not made the next step up that seemed to be coming at the end of his Premier League Player of the Year award-winning 2023-24 season.
Given Haaland signed a nine-year contract recently, he is not just part of the new generation being built at City, but the figurehead of it.
Saturday’s 4-0 win against Newcastle suggested that new signings such as Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez and Abdukodir Khusanov can take this team into the future, and surely they will, but the tepid display last night made it clear that nobody in the team right now looks capable of stepping up and making any kind of difference.
Had Haaland been on the pitch, there would have been that menace, that threat that something could happen at any moment.
Without him, there was nothing.
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(Top photo: Javier Soriano/AFP via Getty Images)
