Club threw all their attention into a novel tournament with extremely bad PR, when the summer could have been devoted to rest, planning and recovery
Manchester City were back in the 5-2 thrashing of Juventus in their final group game at the Club World Cup. Then they were not back after the round-of-16 clash with Al-Hilal served up a harsh reminder of the deeply worrying problems of last season.
City’s attack in the tournament was excellent, no doubt about that. They scored 16 goals in four matches. They were the highest scoring team in the group stages. Phil Foden looked sharp and more like the player who won the Premier League player of the season award in 2024. Erling Haaland delivered, and so did Jeremy Doku. It is difficult to say what more Guardiola could have asked of his forwards.
In fact, City scored within the opening ten minutes against Al-Hilal. The problem was that their defence was brutally exposed, just like it was many times in that horrid run last season. Ruben Dias was run ragged. Simple one-two passes from Al-Hilal unlocked the defence.
The representative picture of the problem was the view of Malcom running half the length of the pitch to put his Saudi Pro League side in front seven minutes into the second half. If City must push up as high as they do in games, then rapid breaks are a potential issue that needs addressing and they know that.
Even more worrying for Guardiola was the trouble in midfield. Rodri, after months of rehabilitation from an ACL tear, came on and then had to go off again, which is never a good sign. If he suffers a setback, it could seriously hamper Guardiola’s chances of making his team competitive again next season. It has been evident for over a year that the Spain international is not easily replaced. How could he be? He is factually the best player in the world at the moment.
City have Tijjani Reijnders, who was signed in the summer and has shown glimpses of class, but he was brought in to be more of a younger version of Ilkay Gundogan than to assert Rodri-esque authority on the pitch.
Rayan Cherki has shown promise too, and Rayan Ait-Nouri will be the linchpin of a Manchester City returned to power. But can their addition offset the risks accompanying the Sky Blues’ vast gamble this summer?
Many of City’s players have played football continuously for much longer than a year. Bernardo Silva, for instance, played the Euros in 2024 with Portugal, and after a long season, went straight into the Nations League, playing the final just a week before the Club World Cup commenced.
The Portuguese has said that he and his teammates didn’t want “more vacations”. That may well be true but can they really step away from the tournament at the United States, half recover, and then outcompete and overpower the other much better rested sides of England across an entire year? Can they return and outmuscle Liverpool and Arsenal to the title? City have just a month and a half before they face Wolves in the Premier League on 16 August.
Guardiola’s side have been known for slow starts in the past due to a lack of preseason. The Club World Cup could have been argued to represent some kind of preseason for City, but not when it came without any proper break and felt more like a post-season engagement grudgingly played than preparatory activity for the new season. It would be interesting to see how City cope when the Premier League resumes.
The 10-time English champions made a lot of money from the Club World Cup, which seems to be the justification for the tournament, but they have also spent up to £288m in 2025 – more than seven times what they made from the competition this summer (£37.8m) – and there are still clear signs of the problems that derailed their season at the tail end of 2024.
And now Guardiola must figure out life in 2025-26 with a likely-to-be-fatigued squad, with a defence that will scare City supporters, with a concerning goalkeeping situation given the form of Ederson, with Rodri’s fitness a concern, with how to replace Kevin De Bruyne’s creativity and leadership in midfield needing to be figured out. These are all problems that could have been tackled without throwing all attention into a novel tournament with extremely bad PR.
Guardiola says the mood is still positive and that the squad can recover and reset before the Premier League season begins. City fans would certainly hope so.
