John Stones bidding to complete emotional City journey with Champions League

John Stones says a Champions League winners’ medal around his neck on Saturday night will complete a journey from rock bottom to the summit. The reinvention of Stones in his hybrid No 6 role has been one of the standout narratives of Manchester City’s barnstorming charge to the treble.

Yet as ‘the Barnsley Beckenbauer’ prepares for the ultimate test of that new role, he insists it is the foundation blocks put in place three seasons ago, when it looked more likely he was heading out of the club, which enabled a rebuild to the point where he will be one of the first names on the team-sheet on the night.

“It was probably one of the hardest times in my career,” said Stones of the 2019-20 season when he started just 12 league games and watched every minute of the Champions League knockout stages from the bench. “I literally went back to firstly looking at myself, being super critical of myself and what I could do better.
 
“It was looking into every fine detail, down to food, what food, training, what training, what extras. It came down to doing stuff here and then going home and doing work, even late at night, or straight after the training.

“It was about finding these small margins and putting them all together. It was a big learning curve for me and maybe made me who I am today.” Who he is today is one of Pep Guardiola’s most valuable assets going into a final which will see them emulate Manchester United’s 1999 treble.

And while the shift in position to a hybrid role may have been a creation of his manager’s unceasingly innovate tactical mind it is worth pointing out that design was made real by Stones’s application, intelligence and talent.

“People have always said from a young age that they can see me playing in there and I think I have showed that I’m able to do it,” he said.

“Maybe showing some attributes that I didn’t know that I had, but the manager has seen something in me. I’m just trying to show what I can do in there, and show what the manager sees in me and be able to help the team win with my attributes.”

Inter will test those attributes but given with a 3-5-2 formation if City stay on the front foot Stones’ role will be key to overloading the middle. Stones is rightly respectful of the three-times winners even if their route to the final was less taxing than City’s with Porto, Benfica and AC Milan on route to the final comparing to City’s RB Leipzig, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

“They’ve got incredible players, we can all see that,” said Stones.

“We know what we’re up against, they are an incredible team but we have to be ourselves and focus on us as well.”

Inter are almost certainly not as incredible as City given they finished a sizeable 18 points behind Napoli in third place in Serie A.

Yet if City reach the summit in Istanbul, Stones says the journey will be complete. Asked whether it will be particularly sweet for him, he said: “Probably yeah. For me personally, if I hopefully look back after Saturday, with a winner’s medal. Yeah, it will be super sweet, I suppose. Ask me after that.”

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