Pep Guardiola left the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday night with a familiar feeling — the haunting, hollow sensation of another Champions League exit at the hands of Real Madrid. The third in as many seasons. The fifth time in six years the Spanish giants have ended his European dream.
Speaking to Amazon Prime in the aftermath of the 2-1 second-leg defeat — 5-1 on aggregate — Guardiola struck a note of defiant optimism that will have reassured some and frustrated others. "The future will be bright. Next year we will be back," he said. He refused to criticise Bernardo Silva for the handball red card that effectively ended the tie. "It is not a mistake, it is a red card, the first of his career. It is not a decision that is avoidable. I will never blame my players for that, even less Bernardo."
But away from the rhetoric, the numbers tell a sobering story. This is the second consecutive season in which City have failed to reach the Champions League quarter-finals. Guardiola, across 15 previous campaigns at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City, had only once before failed to reach the last eight. The gap between his team and Europe's elite has never been wider.
There is some comfort. City face Arsenal in the Carabao Cup Final at Wembley on Sunday — a genuine chance to rescue the season with silverware. Guardiola even went as far as calling Arsenal "the best team in Europe" after the match, a candid acknowledgement of the standard his own team needs to close. "We will challenge against the best team in England," he said. "They have maybe lost three or four games this season. We have to play them in the Carabao Cup and in the Premier League."
With one year remaining on his contract, the noise around Guardiola's future will only intensify. City have not committed to a renewal. The manager himself has given no public indication of his plans. What happens at Wembley on Sunday may say a great deal about where this extraordinary era is heading.
