Somehow, there’s a sneaky feeling developing these few days that Lionel Messi’s move to Paris Saint-Germain could actually come back surreptitiously, and not too far down the line, to give Manchester City a vicious nip in the Champions League gambit when the new season begins.
In the end, it’s all about what you actually wish for so badly you can’t see the wood for the trees.
Pep Guardiola could soon be feeling like the child who excitedly unwraps his presents on Christmas morning and is thrilled to find the toy Ferrari he actually wished so hard for, only to watch the younger brother unwrapping his gift to reveal a glittering, real one.
Jack Grealish’s highly-anticipated unveiling on Monday saw a talented creative player with 37 goals and zero trophies to his name pledge himself in all earnestness to delivering a first Champions League title for his new club.
The recent Wednesday also saw another talented creative player – albeit one with only 671 goals and a smattering of 35 trophies flanking him – go through the same ritual for his new club, Paris Saint Germain, across the Channel.
Young, talented and with loads of gas in the new tank, Grealish is undoubtedly an exciting signing.
But be that as it may, he is still no Lionel Messi. Not by a few long country miles. No-one is.
PSG’s parading of the greatest player of the generation, and probably of all time, is a chest-thumper par excellence for the club’s Qatari owners – and one with a carefully-defined ambition behind it.
When the emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani bought the club a decade ago, his twin ambitions were to bring either Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo to his club and also to win the Champions League.
With part one now achieved, the latter part looks to be a lot more likely to happen over the course of Messi’s signed two-year contract. And it is this past part that has deep implications for City as they are also targeting the same final destination on their oil-and-gas-powered path parallel to that of Messi’s Qatari owners
City’s lavishly-funded but agonizingly torturous progression towards attaining European supremacy appeared to have reached its tipping point with defeat to Chelsea in last season’s “oh-so-close!” final.
There were no more learning experiences left to be ticked off. If the status quo around Europe had been maintained they would have been favorites for the Champions League this season.
One signing has changed all that. The captures of Sergio Ramos, Gini Wijnaldum and Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma by PSG were one thing, Messi’s quite another.
His sunny arrival in the French capital following his dark departure from Barcelona a few days prior – a Swiss weather house mood change if ever there was one – brought with it a significant power shift.
Messi completes what is possibly the most lethal front three ever seen in European club football alongside Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. In such company he will be hungry for another nibble at European football’s greatest prize after only gracing one Champions League final in a decade.
The presence of the Argentine genius does not guarantee PSG will lift the trophy in St Petersburg next year or Istanbul in 2022 but the undisciplined bunch City pushed aside at the semi-final stage last season have suddenly become a whole lot more scary.
In this vital context, one can’t help but feel that Guardiola and his strategic planners at the Etihad have been perhaps a tad too careful and possibly too forward-thinking in their approach when planning their new summer acquisitions. If City rather than PSG had signed Messi on a free transfer how different the landscape would have looked.
Could they have done so? Most certainly.
After all, which other coach-mentor than Pep Guardiola enjoys an enduring, strong relationship with Messi from their Barcelona heydays? Which was why City were all over him when he was earnestly desirous of leaving the Nou Camp last year. But fast-forward a year and by the time Messi suddenly became available due to the Barca debacle, the £100m deal to sign Grealish was already signed, sealed and delivered – at almost the same time. So now they press on.
Viewed through a long-term lens the current investment in Grealish – even for the eye-watering British record transfer fee – probably turns out to be the smarter one in the long run. After all, Grealish is 25, Messi is 34.
The much younger gun will improve over the next few years in the City environment whereas Messi’s powers will probably start to wane a bit more. However in football the long term somehow isn’t what matters most, or even at all. The short term is EVERYTHING.
Since Guardiola arrived in 2016, £1bn has been spent in the transfer market by City in an attempt to secure the Champions League trophy.
Two more years as bridesmaids would take Guardiola to the end of his contract, possibly bitterly disillusioned, and with City driven completely insane and still clueless.