Manchester City have done it – Pep Guardiola’s side will go down in history after wrapping up the treble last night. An achievement of this magnitude will be felt all over the footballing world, so who are the winners and losers after this result?

Winners

Pep Guardiola

Clearly now the all-time G.O.A.T of football management, Guardiola has won two trebles, first with Barcelona in 2008/09 and now with this Man City side. The Spanish tactician has been given the platform to deliver footballing perfection at the Etihad Stadium, with everything at the club built around his vision and his desires. Few football managers get this immense privilege, but to say it’s all about money does Guardiola a gross disservice – just look at PSG.

The players

As cynical as some may be about City’s resources and the calibre of players it means they’re able to bring in, it’s worth remembering that, as Jack Grealish shows us in this emotional video below, that they’re still young men living the dream after years and years of hard work and sacrifice, with families behind them that have given them huge support on their way to helping them achieve greatness…

"This is what I have worked for my whole life" ??

An emotional Jack Grealish reflects on completing the treble ?#UCLFinal pic.twitter.com/0kpHjbK3ND

— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) June 10, 2023

Erling Haaland

52 goals in 53 games in his first season at Man City, and now a treble – Erling Haaland must surely be the favourite for the Ballon d’Or now. The Norway international wasn’t at his very best last night, but he’s more than played his part in this success and few can boast ever having a season quite like this one.

Man City fans

Again, whatever your justified qualms about City’s ownership, their fans didn’t choose any of it, and now fully deserve to enjoy this memorable success after sticking with their club through some difficult times in the lower leagues and mid-table mediocrity in the last couple of decades. The nature of how this success came about doesn’t make City supporters’ joy any less genuine.

Losers

Manchester United

No longer the sole treble winners from England. And to top it off, they lost 2-1 to their rivals in the FA Cup final to help them on their way to matching their greatest ever triumph.

And, let’s be honest here, if this City side took on United’s ’99 side, they would probably play them off the park, such are the ridiculously high standards Guardiola has set at the Etihad.

Arsenal

Now the only big English club not to win the Champions League. Forced to remind us all again about the ‘Invincibles’ – an undoubtedly great achievement, but a reminder that they haven’t done anything of note for 20 years.

Gabriel Jesus & Oleksandr Zinchenko

Left City for Arsenal. Thought for the best part of a year that they were going to pip their old club to the title. Ended up with nothing while City won everything.

Lionel Messi

See Haaland above – Lionel Messi may finally have won the World Cup but this result might cost him an 8th Ballon d’Or. Also, how much must he be regretting that he didn’t get to play under Guardiola for more than just those four years at Barcelona.

Romelu Lukaku

It was a shocker of a game for Romelu Lukaku, who missed a sitter and who also blocked a goal-bound effort from one of his teammates. Once compared to the great Didier Drogba, his struggles to really make an impact in the biggest games show he’s a long way off the Ivorian who absolutely relished these occasions.

Football as a whole

Let’s not beat around the bush here – City’s entire project is bad for the game, and the shadow of those 115 charges against them will continue to hang over this success. As much as PSG show that it’s not all about money, it’s also clear that Guardiola would surely never have reached these heights if he’d been managing Stoke City. And while the football may be great to watch, this level of dominance from one team, who have won five of the last six Premier League titles, and now a treble, often whilst blitzing genuinely top class opponents like Liverpool, Arsenal and Real Madrid along the way, is not what we’ve come to expect from the game we love, or indeed from any sport. There’s little to get excited about from what is as close as possible to a flawless team, who can achieve unprecedented success whilst barely breaking a sweat.

We’ve seen Bayern Munich win 11 Bundesliga titles in a row, and counting, while we recently saw Juventus win nine Serie A titles in a row, and PSG win nine of the last 11 Ligue 1 titles. Some of us here scoffed that this couldn’t happen in the far more competitive Premier League, and for a while we were right, but the tide is starting to turn now, and we may not even be that far away from City turning the Champions League into a non-event as well in terms of its competitiveness.

Football has produced some great stories – Nottingham Forest’s remarkable back-to-back European Cup wins, Man Utd’s original treble snatched from the jaws of defeat and without the backing of an entire state, Jose Mourinho announcing himself by winning the Champions League with Porto, Leicester City’s shock Premier League triumph seven years ago, West Ham’s Europa Conference League final win just days ago, and indeed Guardiola’s Barcelona winning the 2011 Champions League final with seven academy graduates in the starting line up. The nature of City’s success robs us all of these great footballing stories and leaves our great sport a shadow of what it once was.

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