A returning hero at the Etihad, invited back for the night. Ali Benarbia, the mercurial midfielder, is considered a legend of a former Manchester City era as they won the First Division title in the early Noughties. He knows the second tier well etcetera, etcetera.
But then there was the other guy. The other guy didn’t do club media and interviews on the pitch but his presence fills an arena regardless.
Flat caps became a thing for Pep Guardiola when Mike Summerbee took him to tailors Williams & Gill on Chapel Street after taking over. He bought one for £75 and has in the past worn them as a tribute to the late life president Bernard Halford.
It was, at one stage, a symbol of Guardiola and Manchester. Less of a symbol when heading inside the place he called home for a decade on Wednesday. Instead, apparel to slightly conceal the identity of somebody who wanted to keep this return as low key as possible.
He emerged from the Chairman’s Lounge in the Colin Bell Stand nine minutes before kick off, taking a seat on the third row of the directors’ box behind Ferran Soriano and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, just as the club started playing a montage of great moments – Yaya Toure at Wembley, the Dennis Tueart bicycle kick, Bernardo Silva and Real Madrid – that stirred a fanbase visiting here for the first time since their world fell in.
Guardiola was sat alongside confidante Manel Estiarte in the seats he had spun on his heels and pointed towards hundreds of times when celebrating goals during a period of dominance that City’s fiercest critics want expunged entirely from history.
Pep Guardiola might have wanted to hide under his flat cap upon returning to the Etihad but his presence – a show of support – shouted loudly
Seated a few rows behind the current Man City hierarchy Guardiola was frequently locked in conversation with his old coaching assistant Manel Estiarte
He winced and he scratched the beard as Paris Saint-Germain ripped through the team he loves so dearly in a first half of glitteringly rapid dominance, with quickfire goals bearing some hallmarks of a few painful European nights on the Catalan’s watch.
This is a City side in its infancy and will need more nights against the very best in Europe, which PSG obviously are, before they look more comfortable in their new skin. Yet as it stands, those opportunities are likely to end once this season is over. A team destined for League Two cannot possibly compete with the vast riches of the Champions League kings.
The hierarchy, including chairman Al Mubarak, will have felt it important that Guardiola made the journey. As a show of support behind the club’s insistence of innocence heading into their appeal.
The 55-year-old had been in Abu Dhabi, where he is having a property built, last week and arrived in Manchester hours before this tie. He entered the main stand at a time when the congregated thousands were not waiting for the arrival of the coach carrying Enzo Maresca’s squad and clearly did not want to detract from those players or provide a distraction for his successor.
City didn’t make a song and dance about his attendance and that is how he’d rather it. Guardiola flashed up on the big screen once as some supporters inside this place must have been wrestling with how to feel and react to what has been a deluge dumped upon them over the past fortnight.
The volume dialled up once City found a foothold and started bossing the ball with more certainty, albeit three down by that point. It proves that watching this team play well, irrespective of what it ultimately may mean over the coming months, can provide some escapism for people who are suddenly having to morph into legal and financial experts – with an outside expectance for them to act as moral arbiters – around something that is supposed to be a hobby.
That will not stop until this whole thing ends. And even then it might not. Yet as City fought back, attacking with heart and gumption, there will remain performances to cherish for however long the fans’ purgatory lasts.
