City manager replaces buoyant expectations in Europe with fears that the Champions League is slipping away
The last time Roberto Mancini delivered his Friday press conference after a midweek Manchester City defeat in the Champions League, Carlos Tevez's behaviour at Bayern Munich was overwhelming the headlines and consideration of City's performance. Mancini was smiling then, relaxed, even radiant, and his position at the club had been paradoxically strengthened, as all the staff, up to the chairman and owner Sheikh Mansour, swung behind him in outrage at Tevez.
City eased back into Premier League action with a 4-0 victory at Blackburn, and Mancini's security of tenure was then strengthened with nine straight wins, including the 6-1 victory at Old Trafford which City's hierarchy saw as their watershed for a change in the balance of football power in Manchester.
This week, although the Tevez affair continues to drag on like a sore throat, and Mancini again refused to discuss it, a weariness about the saga and how it will eventually be concluded meant that this time it provided no diversion from the stinging 2-1 defeat in Naples. For all the investment, revealed a week ago in City's 2010-11 accounts to be that unimaginable �800m from Mansour in under three years, Mancini has not negotiated their first ever Champions League group stage triumphantly.
This time, his radiance was a little dulled, he was not smiling quite as much, and what he said was so downbeat as to sound almost defeatist about the European aspiration which Mansour and the chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, made a priority for their lavish Abu Dhabi spending on a squad to deliver success. Prefacing his assessment of City's position in Europe with a clutch at the hope that they can beat Bayern Munich at home on 7 December and Napoli fail to beat Villarreal away, which would see City through, Mancini seemed almost resigned.
"We have to be realistic," he said. "I don't think we have a team to win the Champions League because Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Milan maybe are better and have more experience than us in the Champions League."
That is true and understandable of course and, allowing for nuances, in Mancini's limited English, to be lost in translation, this could constitute his trademark managing of expectations and an acceptance that big-time European status takes a while to attain. But then he expressed a hope for an easy draw if City did get through, not a relish to take on the greats. "I hope we can stay in it because the Champions League can be strange. If you get to the second stage you can meet Apoel Nicosia or Bayer Leverkusen."
Yet at City the contradiction remains even more clearly this week than in September when the determination to unite in condemnation of Tevez submerged analysis of the defeat in Munich. City lost again, and qualification is unlikely now ? 30% as Mancini put it in the week ? because Napoli also attacked City with gusto in Manchester and came away from that first leg with a 1-1 draw. However, once again few challenging questions are being asked of the manager who shrugged his shoulders at the more likely prospect of the Europa League, rather than Champions League football, after next month.
Contrary to the view of most observers who watched City have 70% of the possession at the Stadio San Paolo but pose little sharp threat until their final frantic efforts, Mancini put Tuesday's defeat down to misfortune. "We played well in Naples but we were really unlucky there. We made some mistakes but this can happen. I'm not disappointed. I'm only sorry for the guys because of the result, because it wasn't deserved."
Declining to explain his thinking about where his team have fallen short in Europe and what he and they have learned, Mancini simply said it would take more experience for his team to perform better in Europe. "It's very important to play in the Champions League for two or three years for this reason," he explained. "It's important to reach the second stage to gain experience. We have good players but others teams are used to playing Champions League for many years."
Invited to grumble as most managers do about the prospect of cold Thursday nights in the Europa League, Mancini insisted City will try to win it if they are in it, yet it was odd to see him almost resigned to disappointment about City's Champions League debut.
Financially, an exit in the group stage could cost �10m-�15m in lost Champions League pool and match income, while the Europa League earns clubs very little.
City need all the income they can generate, to turn the 2010-11 record �197m loss declared last week into something approaching Uefa's required ?45m (�39m) loss permissible in total from this season until the governing body's financial fair play rules come into effect in 2014. If their total loss greatly exceeds that, they could face sanctions including, most extremely, disqualification from European competition in 2014-15. "I hope we can stay in the Champions League but if we go into the Europa League we'll try to win it," Mancini promised. "The Europa League is an important trophy."
It is also, as participating clubs often complain, awkwardly timed to allow players' recovery for weekend Premier League fixtures. Contemplating City's contest on Sunday at Anfield, Mancini was careful, pointing out that while City have started with a flowing gallop, they are still early in the race, on the threshold of winter. The trip to play a Liverpool team without European distractions, fresh from their best result of the season, the 2-1 victory at Stamford Bridge, is not the easing back which the Blackburn fixture represented.
"We know it will be a difficult game," Mancini acknowledged. "The Premier League is hard. We've played only 12 games and the season is very long. The squads that Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea have now, they can battle for the title. We had a fantastic start but United are there, five points behind. The Champions League and Premier League are a different situation. Now we have lost against Napoli we might have less chance of going through, but in the Premier League we're top and we want to continue to do well if it's possible."
Asked if he may suggest that Sheikh Mansour buys him Edinson Cavani and Ezequiel Lavezzi, who excelled for Napoli, Mancini shrugged again: "I think Cavani and Lavezzi are strong players, but they play for Napoli at the moment."
The manager of the new Manchester City, given unprecedented cash to assemble a winning squad, is reaching the point where he must make the very best of the players he has, at football's highest levels.
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