GRAEME SOUNESS: Keeping Champions League final low-key will help City
GRAEME SOUNESS: Keeping the final low-key was the secret for my Liverpool team… If Manchester City do the same against Inter Milan, they’ll win the Champions League by half-time
- It feels that winning the Champions League is in this Man City’s side’s destiny
- In my experience, maintaining a sense of normality is key in these big finals
- If Pep Guardiola’s side can do that, they may have the game won by half time
We arrive at the occasion which many people will view as the pinnacle of this football season, though in years to come we may remember this Champions League final for the dominance of one team. There is a real possibility Manchester City will have the game won by half-time.
I see the match against Inter in Istanbul being potentially an easier one for City than last Saturday’s FA Cup final against Manchester United, which was not exactly a struggle for them.
I envisage City creating most of the chances and having the vast majority of possession. I said several weeks ago in these pages that I feel winning this trophy is City’s destiny. Nothing has happened since to dissuade me of that.
My own experience in finals like this with Liverpool tells me that maintaining as much of a sense of normality as possible will help City.
We won three European Cups in my six years, and my first final was against Bruges at Wembley in May 1978, four months after I arrived at Liverpool. I was lucky to have joined a team of serial winners, the current European champions, whose approach that night was: ‘It’s just another game. Of course, we’re going to win it.’
The key to my European Cup success with Liverpool was treating the final like just another game
When we won in Rome in 1984, we flew in the same way we always had and even ignored an extra press conference when we landed
If Man City can foster the same sense of normality for such a big game, they beat Inter Milan before half time
There was no, ‘Let’s go down to London early. Let’s eat different food. Let’s stay in a different hotel, sleep in a different bed with strange pillows.’
The Liverpool coaching team kept it all extremely low-key and it was very much like us playing any other league game at Spurs, Arsenal or West Ham. We travelled on the Friday: a train from Liverpool Lime Street to Euston, where a bus awaited us.
We stayed at the Hertfordshire hotel we often used, Sopwell House. It was only when we walked out at Wembley that this became something more than just another game of football. Of course, Wembley was a far more special occasion back then. A place reserved just for finals.
There was the same air of normality when we played AS Roma in their own city, six years later. We flew from Speke Airport on the Tuesday morning, on an Aer Lingus jet as always, and arrived to find they’d planned a press conference at Rome Airport. Joe Fagan, our manager, ignored that and we went straight to our hotel.
In the dressing room, half an hour before kick-off in Rome, Alan Hansen was telling one of his stories and had us doubled up, as usual. Big Al could tell you a story today, tell you the same one tomorrow with a few different details and still have you in stitches. He was the memory man and had an incredible recall of detail. I remember Fagan coming over and telling us, ‘By the way, you do know we’re playing a f*****g game in half an hour?’
Joe had done his talking — such as it was — that lunchtime at our hotel, an hour’s drive from the stadium. We were having lunch when he stood up, tapped a glass and asked the hotel staff to leave us. We were all wondering what he was going to say, as he gazed at the ceiling and searched for some words. ‘Big game tonight,’ he eventually said, looking for some back-up from Ronnie Moran.
Man City may find their European final easier than their FA Cup win over United last weekend
Even if the Italian side can keep Erling Haaland quiet, the likes of Ilkay Gundogan will simply pop up elsewhere
I expect one or more of these City players to write themselves into Champions League history, and I just can’t see them getting beaten
‘These must be a good team. They won their league last year. They’ve got a couple of good Brazilians and several Italian World Cup winners… and by the way, the bus leaves at 5.30.’ Joe was reassuring himself, more than anything. But that gave us all huge belief.
We felt exactly same about playing Rome in their own stadium, where we won on penalties, as we did playing Bruges in front of 90,000 of our own fans at Wembley, where we won 1-0. I think that says a lot about our mindset.
Where City may differ from us is in the significance they attach to this trophy. For us, the priority was always the league, because at Liverpool they always felt that was the one which said most about you as a player, and a team. Handling the disappointments over a gruelling nine months. But this City team have now won five out of six titles. They’ve parked that bus. Winning a first Champions League is critical to how history will view them.
In some ways, our Bruges match reflected what we can anticipate in the Ataturk Olympic Stadium. Just like City on Saturday, we were the more powerful side by some distance and a team who everyone feared at that time. Inter are to this game what Bruges were to that one. I don’t think they’re the kind of Italian team we have seen historically, who can sit in, defend and threaten on the counter-attack.
City have the firepower to create many chances. I expect the margin to be wider than ours was in 1978 when we won 1-0.
I come back to it — City are not just relying on Erling Haaland to get them goals. As I reflected a few weeks ago before the Real Madrid semi-final second leg, playing this City side is a bit like the challenge facing Peter, the lock-keeper’s son, who put his finger in the dyke, in the Dutch fable. Water just comes out somewhere else. Keep Haaland quiet and another problem will pop up: Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin de Bruyne or someone else.
I expect one or more of City players to write themselves into history now, and it could very well be the start of a period of prolonged Champions League dominance for the club. This is their moment. I just can’t see them getting beaten.
No flag planting for me on Galatasaray return!
I returned to my old club Galatasaray in Istanbul last weekend and was given a flag reminiscent of the one I planted at Fernerbache all those years ago
I was treated to a reminder of the unique Turkish football experience last weekend, when I was invited to Istanbul by my old club Galatasaray, who have won the domestic title, for their match against Fenerbahce and asked to walk onto the field with a huge flag.
On the last occasion I handled an object of that size in the city, I planted it in the centre-circle of Fenerbahce’s ground after my Galatasaray team had won the Turkish Cup. It was my response to one of their vice-presidents, who’d called me a cripple because I’d undergone heart surgery.
I didn’t repeat the gesture this time. That flag has been planted only once. It will only ever be planted once. And things were not quite so spontaneous this time. I had to carry the flag around a huge stage in the centre of the pitch, after Galatasaray’s 3-0 win.
But when my old director of football Adnan Polat had given me a commemorative plaque, he told me the supporters were calling for me.
So I headed over to the home end for the ceremony where you make a shush gesture, and everything goes quiet, before you gesture to them three times and all hell lets loose. What a phenomenal football city.
It will be some atmosphere there over the weekend.
I’m over halfway towards the charity fundraising target of £1.1million we’ve set for my English Channel relay swim later this month.
I have raised over half of my £1.1 million fundraising target for my English Channel swim
I was touched and hugely grateful to find that one well-known figure from within football has added £3,000 to the pot. Contributions great and small all help.
We are raising money to fund vital research to help those living with Epidermolysis Bullosa, a life-threatening skin condition also known as ‘butterfly skin’, which causes skin to blister and tear.
Please support the cause if you can. It would mean the world to me. Every penny raised will help in the fight to bring relief to the children who have this horrendous disease.
You can donate via this link.
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