Manchester City is a superb football team.
Since Pep Guardiola took over in 2016, his side have amassed more Premier League titles (six), points (736), wins (231) and goals (774) than some other team within the country.
They have conceded fewer goals (258) than some other team to spend all nine seasons in the highest flight, while playing exciting football.
Yes, the continued legal battle with the Premier League is dampening the mood – but add to that two FA Cups, 4 Carabao Cups and a Champions League and a transparent picture emerges of Guardiola's side as top-of-the-line teams the English have ever graced Game.
They are so good that they don't need false records to prove their greatness.
To be clear, Manchester City didn’t break a Manchester United record in Europe this week. Manchester City haven’t been “undefeated” in 26 Champions League games.
City lost to Real Madrid within the quarter-finals last season. They know this because Madrid reached the semi-finals (and ultimately won the cup against Borussia Dortmund at Wembley), while City were eliminated and were capable of think about the tireless and successful pursuit of a fourth consecutive domestic title.
It's hard to assume a defeat more clearly than this: one team continues, the opposite is eliminated.
The incontrovertible fact that City's defeat to Carlo Ancelotti's side was sealed on penalties after an exciting 4-4 draw on aggregate is irrelevant. A defeat is a defeat, irrespective of the way it comes.
Real Madrid have fun their win – and it was a win – at City (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
But IFAB – the legislators of the world game – disagrees. In Law 10.2Penalties, together with away goals and time beyond regulation, are only certainly one of three “permissible methods for determining the winning team”. This signifies that if a team is beaten in a penalty shootout after the draw and the ultimate whistle blows, they’ll still claim that they’ve not “lost”.
It's an odd state of affairs. Although “wins” by away goals are a gray area within the record books, nobody disputes that the team that emerges victorious at the tip of time beyond regulation won the sport. So why not apply the identical thought process to punishment?
We've come a great distance from the times before the Shootout, when tied ties were sometimes decided by completely arbitrary coin tosses. Penalty shootouts, introduced within the early Seventies, are removed from this type of “lottery” – the cliché that has attached to them for thus long – or just a convenient and comparatively quick way to make your mind up a game between two evenly matched teams IFAB law proposes.
They test the utmost nerves and skill and are practiced by the very best teams just as conscientiously as their tactical form and standard situations.
“There's more to it (than luck),” said former Croatia goalkeeper Joey Didulica Omnisport in 2018. “The mental game, you have to be confident. A lot of this also depends on research.
“You have to know who takes the penalty, how they approached the penalty before, where they slow down, whether they slow down and in which corner.”
“As much as people think it’s 50-50, amateurs say that too. I think at the highest level a good goalkeeper can definitely have a better chance than 50-50 in a penalty shootout. Usually your best goalie can win it for you.”
There at the moment are countless analyzes that function the idea for the penalty shootout methodology.
In 2022 the Barca Innovation Hub has compiled data on how one can increase the possibilities of success, suggesting that taking the primary penalty, enthusiastically celebrating successful shots, delaying runs after the referee's whistle, and using a team's best penalty takers on the primary and fifth shot to extend your possibilities of winning.
Punishments are a serious test of skill and nerve (Luciano Bisbal/Getty Images)
None of this implies that penalties are a bet. On the contrary: Even though they require different disciplines than the free play during a game, penalties still represent the final word stress test of a player's ability to think clearly and execute their skills even under the best pressure. We're not talking about deciding a game of rock, paper and scissors.
They also feel like an element of, or an extension of, the sport we've just seen, in a way that other random decision aspects – just like the coin toss – could never be. And generally the higher team wins because also they are higher at penalties.
This was perhaps more questionable within the City-Madrid game last season, when two excellent pairs of players competed against one another and there was little to choose from them. However, there isn’t a doubt that Real Madrid won this game and City lost it.
However, that doesn't change the incontrovertible fact that Guardiola's City are top-of-the-line teams English football has ever produced. But it means their latest “record” is fallacious.
They are a team for the ages with a blinding array of trophies and records. They do quite well without fake ones.
image credit : www.nytimes.com