Amid the carnage it was barely noted, but in the first half as Bayern Munich played Arsenal came a moment that surely holds the key to it all for Pep Guardiola.
Manuel Neuer collected a back pass just outside his penalty area, to the right of the D. He controlled it with the outside of his right foot. Alexis Sanchez came in to close him down. Neuer took it further right, still outside the area, towards the corner tip.
As Sanchez increased his pace, Neuer looked up – that’s important – and unloaded a 50-yard pass, which dropped on to the chest of Arjen Robben, inside the Arsenal half. Robben brought it under control and Munich were away.
There, in miniature, is what Guardiola wants from his goalkeepers at Manchester City. So why doesn’t he just go out and get it?
Pep Guardiola is willing to spend big to bring Bayern Munich Goalkeeper Manuel Neuer to the Premier League. [TMW] pic.twitter.com/iCPkBlXwED
— City Chief ️ (@City_Chief) February 21, 2017
Or at least try. Instead of wasting time with impostors, we know the goalkeeper who would make Guardiola’s blueprint work. There is only one, and it is Neuer.
The world record transfer fee for a goalkeeper is still the £32.6 million that took Gianluigi Buffon from Parma to Juventus in 2001. So, double it. City would not think twice about paying that much for a forward who could complete Guardiola’s vision. But he has the forwards. He doesn’t have the keeper. Neuer would make sense of Guardiola’s exacting philosophy.
He tried that same pass a few times against Arsenal. It didn’t always come off. It won’t always come off. It wouldn’t come off if a midfield player tried it, either. It is ambitious and can be read. But when it does work, it is a game-changer.
Bayern went from back to front in a moment when Neuer played Robben in. He took most of Arsenal’s midfield out of the game. Other times he kept it simple, a well-struck lay-off for a defender to build from the back. But Neuer looked, as always, a genuine player. Not a goalkeeper who was being asked to behave in an unnatural way.
"He is the only goalkeeper I have seen who, if asked to join in a five-a-side at a club – and I mean a good club – could do it," Pat Nevin told me afterwards.
You’ve got to be good to play top quality five-a-side. It’s fast, it’s technical, skill and thought levels must be high. Guardiola is trying to make footballers out of hacks. It is not their fault they are uncomfortable. Nobody expects Fernandinho to catch corners.
Why would Guardiola persist in working with inferiors next season, too? What will change if that happens? Claudio Bravo, bought for his use of the ball apparently, has one move and it is the clip to the fullback, man-marked or not. Willy Caballero is slightly more ambitious, but, like Bravo, an accident waiting to happen as a stopper.
Joe Hart was better than the pair of them put together, but Guardiola thinks he can’t play. Neuer solves the whole problem. He is a fine goalkeeper and a uniquely talented sweeper-keeper. He would realise Guardiola’s game plan, and improve confidence levels in the City defence, overnight.
Could they get him? They could at least ask. Neuer is immensely important for Bayern, and Germany too, a talisman for club and country. Equally, Bayern are a financial powerhouse with no need to sell, whatever the price. They could brush aside an offer of £65m, as if it were spare change. But would they?
Goalkeepers are notoriously undervalued. In the list of most expensive transfers, you have to count down 37 names before finding one. So to double the Buffon fee would be an enormously tempting offer, historically.
And it would change City in a way no signing this off season could. Not even Lionel Messi. – Daily Mail