CITY fans like to sing about not being really here but it was their team who went missing in Athens for an hour.
Anyone watching the game inside the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium would have been able to make out blue shirts on the pitch, but the football played by them was for a long time unrecognisable from that of the Pep Guardiola team that battered Bayern Munich and Real Madrid before going on to beat Inter Milan and win the Champions League.
Rescued by the youngest player in their team, Cole Palmer's header brought a penalty shootout that belatedly brought out perfection from the Blues five flawless kicks to make another piece of history in another ancient setting.
For the second European final in a row, City put a poor performance behind them to claim the silverware. If that will satisfy them as they fly back to Manchester for the Premier League carousel, everyone will know there is much room for improvement.
Guardiola blasted the schedule again before this match and took another swipe at the commercial lust of clubs that orders players to spend their summers on poor pitches in sub-par conditions. Having been unable to train during their ten-day trip to Asia because of the heat and humidity, the City boss did not have to think too hard for examples of this.
To say this fixture is a final of sorts, it has had the air of a continuation of the tour. Either side of their training session on Tuesday night, the players took their time to mingle with VIPs and a 29,500 crowd that was only 20 per cent full of fans from Seville and Manchester.
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