The longer you charge a throw, the faster it will go, and you'll automatically lock on to any enemies that are within range. Whether it's with a person or a rubberized ball, that basic act of throwing and catching is the core of Knockout City. It's risky, though: if the other team catches you, they can throw you right back. It sounds rude, but it's a winning strategy when there aren't any regular balls nearby - or even if there are, since balled-up players do extra damage. Having declared himself “the happiest man in the world” on the eve of the match, Guardiola has ended a season that threatened to be remembered as his masterpiece on a note of bitter disappointment, his 10-year wait for a third European title going on and complicit in his own misery.Knockout City lets you press a button at any time to make your character tuck into a ball and start rolling, which lets your teammates pick you up, pass you, and lob you at enemies. Sergio Aguero came on for Rahem Sterling, whose run of one club goal since February rarely threatened to improve, but one last act of injury-time heroism was beyond City’s all-time top scorer, for whom the tears flowed after the final whistle. Even with Kevin De Bruyne off injured, it prompted City’s most convincing spell of the match – admittedly a painfully low bar – and that should gnaw at Guardiola. Hard as it was to discern the plan as the men in sky blue engaged in chaosball, it was maybe designed to suffocate Chelsea’s back three and Jorginho and N’Golo Kante – again, naturally, imperious on the grandest stage – and not let Tuchel’s team out.īut City’s disorganisation allowed Chelsea to make merry in the Fernandinho-Rodri shaped hole behind the forwards, exploiting it plenty of times before Mason Mount’s delicious throughball allowed Kai Havertz to round Ederson for the decisive goal.įernandinho’s introduction for Silva in the 64th minute meant the plan had failed. Heading into the game, since the start of the 2019-20, City’s win rate against teams playing three or five at the back (P46 W32) was 69.6 per cent, down on 76.7 per cent against those using a back four – not insignificant for a club that does an awful lot of winning.Īdditionally, Guardiola’s respect for Tuchel is very well documented and that high esteem meant he was perhaps loathe to give his opponent something predictable. It was the season where the concept of Guardiola “overthink” died until it was resurrected in Porto.įor all that Guardiola said City’s two defeats to Chelsea recently, in the FA Cup semi-final and the Premier League with heavily rotated line-ups, counted for “zero” they were evidence of the problems Thomas Tuchel’s rigorously well-drilled 3-4-2-1 could cause. In tough knockout encounters with Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain he didn’t blink and prevailed. City won the title without a conventional striker for the bulk of the season as false nines become the undisputed truth, he switched between a back three and a back four in-game during the side’s most purple patch as Joao Cancelo – now off form and more understandably benched – roved. What was more, this felt like the season when Guardiola had normalised his cerebral approach.
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