Wembley exposed the flaws in City's unbeatable facade

Pep Guardiola identified the culprit, the man who cost Manchester City the double.

- RICHARD JOLLY

It was not Josko Gvardiol, though he lobbed his own goalkeeper Stefan Ortega with a header to give Alejandro Garnacho an open goal in the FA Cup final. Nor was it Kevin de Bruyne, though he produced one of his most ineffective performances in a City shirt. Nor Erling Haaland, who hit the woodwork but still has not scored in a final for City. Nor Mateo Kovacic and Nathan Ake, who both got the hook at the break.

It was him. “My mistake, my gameplan was not good,” he said. A match that promised to be one last occasion when Erik ten Hag got his tactics wrong instead saw Guardiola forced into a halftime double change, followed by a shift of system to 4-4-2. The mea culpa, however, may not have been necessary. “He’s the last man I’m going to question on tactics because he’s a genius for what he’s done,” said captain Kyle Walker, whose dream of lifting a fourth trophy in his first campaign with the armband had ended.

Two, though, were the spoils of last season’s success, the Club World Cup and the European Super Cup. In one respect, City have done back-to-back trebles. But this was not the treble, just as another prestigious achievement eluded them. “The double double has never been done, that’s why it’s so hard,” reflected Walker. At the last, City delivered their worst performance of 2024. The result was a first defeat in 36 games; caused not by overthinking – the familiar diagnosis for some of Guardiola’s defining defeats – as much as by a strange sluggishness.