Trust the stars to deliver

Manchester City and Barcelona underlined the power of belief in their Champions League games

When Manager Manuel Pellegrini was asked how his Manchester City team won their crucial Champions League game in Rome last Wednesday, he gave a one-word answer: “Trust.”

After Barcelona came from a goal down to beat Paris St-Germain 3-1 on the same night, the winning coach, Luis Enrique, also kept it short. “We made use of our best players to hurt them,” he said.

In the television age, brevity is close to beauty.
Pellegrini’s City, missing the four players who form the spine of its best lineup, beat Roma, 2-0, thanks to a goal straight out of the imagination of Samir Nasri and a goal from the full-on attacking desire of a defender, Pablo Zabaleta.

No one from City said as much, but those goals were the players’ answers to suggestions that the team without the injured Sergio Agüero was a club without a finishing touch. Nasri had not scored this season, and Zabaleta had never scored in City’s sky-blue uniform before.

Barcelona faces no such problem when it comes to finding finishers. The biggest question after the club paid a huge fee to buy Luis Suárez last summer was how could three out-and-out scorers like Lionel Messi, Neymar and Suárez fit into one attacking force.

Simple answer: They all score. On Wednesday, there were three vastly different goals from three different men, but all with a common purpose.

Perhaps all of the above comes across as too simplistic, too eulogistic of the act of scoring. For sure, the coach’s job is to provide a framework behind and around these gifted individuals.

The Manchester City win against Roma was predicated on two fine saves from the goalkeeper Joe Hart; on immense solidarity in the midfield by the Brazilians Fernando and Fernandino; and on all 11 players knowing their job was first to subdue Roma in the Olimpico and then to strike when the home side grew weary or unsuspecting.

The opening goal, 60 minutes in, had to be seen to be appreciated.
Like Zinédine Zidane, one of the greatest players of all time, Nasri is a French-Algerian who hails from Marseille, France. Zidane was a frequent scorer and a huge presence on the field, while Nasri is the pocket-sized version.

He stands barely 5-foot-9 and weighs just 162 pounds, yet when he struck his goal, he was able to hit a 60-mile-per-hour missile from outside the penalty area, despite having almost no backswing on his kick.

Certainly, Roma’s players were guilty of staying off him and allowing him the freedom to shoot. But nothing in the game to that point, and little in Nasri’s history, suggested he packed such power or possessed such a decisive finishing instinct.

The ball rose from his right foot, clipped the inside of the post just beneath the bar and ricocheted down into the net. The whole act took seconds, happening in the blink of an eye.

Coach Pellegrini said he “trusted” in Nasri, or someone, to make up for the absence of their most important striker, Agüero.

Rome’s own hero, Francesco Totti, used to score such inspirational goals. But Totti, now 38, was in the shadows on Wednesday and was substituted — deflated and defeated — before Zabaleta sealed the victory.

The City players told themselves that they had to step up. Vincent Kompany’s leadership was missing, Yaya Touré’s great midfield strength was not there, Agüero will be out for a month and David Silva is only just coming back after injury.

But Pablo Zabaleta? Adventure might as well be his middle name because he usually is so eager to get forward on the right. But Wednesday he went further than he ever had for City, motoring through the middle until he became the farthest man forward and finished the opportunity from 10 yards when Nasri (who else?) slipped him the ball.

“Trust,” Pellegrini repeated on television, “was the key. Against Roma in Manchester we played our worst game of the season, and we got a draw. But tonight we played as we did in recent weeks, as we did against Bayern Munich, and we got a deserved win. I had a lot of trust in what we could do.”

Pellegrini, 61, is an old coach. Enrique finished his playing career for Barcelona a decade ago and only recently has he returned as the head coach at the Camp Nou. He has an overabundance of riches going forward, but a defense trying to heal.

Both elements were on display on Wednesday. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the prince of Paris St-Germain, returned to the stadium where he once played and stabbed his former teammates in the heart with the opening goal of the evening.

Who would bring Barça to even the score, and who would spark the revival?
The answer is self-evident when Messi and the playmaker Andrés Iniesta are on the field.

Four minutes after Ibrahimovic’s flesh wound, Messi evened the score. Neymar struck before halftime, and in the second half, Suárez put the game beyond the reach of PSG.

Three musketeers. Three strikes, all of them different, each of them consummate in the skills that the Argentine (Messi), the Brazilian (Neymar) and the Uruguayan (Suárez) bring to Barcelona.

Messi’s goal, set up by Suárez, looked simple because all he had to do was tap the ball in from a few yards at the far post. The genius was in getting there, in anticipating the opening and positioning himself for the final act.

Neymar’s goal came out of the blue, from way outside the penalty box, and had as much power and panache as Nasri’s goal for City. Suárez then finished off what he started.

All three forwards were involved. Neymar crossed the ball low into the goalmouth, Messi deliberately and instinctively let it run, and Suárez, who had been on the ground a few seconds earlier, popped up to poach the goal. Three stars all in a line, and all in turn doing their thing.
Talent, and trust.


New York Times News Service