adminMANCHESTER. — Manchester City’s Champions League quarter-final success over Paris Saint-Germain demonstrated that reports of the team’s demise under Manuel Pellegrini have been greatly exaggerated.
Pellegrini has been cast as a dead man walking ever since the announcement on February 1 that Pep Guardiola will succeed him as manager at the season’s end and City’s dwindling league form of three wins in eight games was held up as proof that his players had downed tools.
Instead, they pulled off the most eye-catching European result since the club’s acquisition by super-rich Emirati owner Sheikh Mansour in 2008, giving Pellegrini a moment of sweet personal vindication.
“I came to City because I had good performances in Europe, so to leave this club without taking them to a new state would have been a bad thing for me,” said the Chilean, who succeeded Roberto Mancini in 2013.
“It is very important to me to be in the semi-finals because that is my job.”
It is the third time Pellegrini (62) has broken new ground for a club in the Champions League, having led Villarreal to the semi-finals in 2006 and steered Malaga to the last eight in 2013.
An urbane, understated figure, Pellegrini has already brought one Premier League title and two League Cups to the Etihad Stadium, but although it took the might of Barcelona to oust City from the Champions League in his first two seasons, he has been seen as something of a tactical ingenu.
Pellegrini, it was said, was too closely wedded to attacking football to achieve success in Europe, but the manner of the triumph over PSG showed that City could play on the front foot in the Champions League, and prosper. — AFP.
Online Reporter