Man City cannot give UEFA what they want this year in Champions League

Manchester City will find out their first Champions League opponents in Thursday's draw as they look to bounce back from last season.

Manchester City were defeated again at the Bernabeu last season

When Manchester City finally won the Champions League, it felt like they defeated every hurdle along the way. Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and then Inter Milan as their final three opponents is about as difficult as it gets, and they even found a way to make peace with UEFA before getting their hands on the trophy.

Much of City's time in the Champions League had been spent in vocal opposition to UEFA, both as a club and as a set of supporters. There were the big ticket issues such as Financial Fair Play and the time UEFA tried to ban City from the competition, but the anthem was being booed at the Etihad for many years before that.

Blues who were new to modern European football just couldn't accept the double standards that UEFA appeared to set, punishing City more for being late onto the pitch than for their players suffering racist abuse. The trip to CSKA Moscow in 2015 was a particular sore spot, with away supporters suddenly stopped from attending in order to 'punish' CSKA fans and then sponsors tickets for the home end turning into CSKA ultras on the night.

That ongoing conflict was painted as one of the many underlying reasons why City seemingly couldn't get over the line in the Champions League with Pep Guardiola, despite having a team good enough to win it every year between 2017 and 2022. Each defeat managed, inexplicably, to be more painful than the last as the Blues searched in vain for the final pieces of their trophy cabinet.

When, on the eve of the final in Istanbul, Guardiola used his press conference to call for the fans not to boo the UEFA anthem, it was significant. When, potentially because it was played on piano on the night and not across the sound system, City fans followed the request it felt even more significant.

After such agony over so many years, the ecstasy was there for all to see in Istanbul and City immediately set new plans. They had conquered Europe, but wanted to create a Champions League dynasty with multiple wins in a short space of time.

That didn't quite go to plan, though. City's sporting director Txiki Begiristain would later describe the 2023 summer window as 'awful' as he tried to improve the squad while moving on unhappy stars that hadn't featured as much as they wanted in the glory of the previous 12 months.

The fall wasn't immediately apparent. City weren't as good as the previous year as they were bested by Real for the third year out of four, but there were plenty of regrets from that tie as the Blues had plenty of chances and would have fancied their chances of successive titles if they had knocked the Spanish juggernaut out.

Then came last season. When City did fall, it was catastrophic.

Having once been the prickly outsider pushing against the establishment, City ended up giving UEFA their dream scenario as they tried to sell their new format that has essentially been designed so that clubs can make more money even if it means that player welfare and the cost for fans suffer.

There will have been gleeful disbelief at UEFA HQ in Nyon as City slid down and down the 36-team league that made up the new first phase, qualifying by the skin of their teeth but drawing Real in the play-off. The 3-2 defeat at the Etihad was as good as any other game in the competition as well.

What made it worse was that City were so bad it wasn't even painful. As Guardiola reflected on another defeat to Real, he said in the Bernabeu that previous years had been difficult to accept because City were the better team but here there was no contest.

“When you finish 22nd [in the Champions League group phase] it’s because you haven’t been good,” Guardiola said. “It’s the year we’ve been the worst. We don’t have the rhythm that Madrid has right now. There is nothing to add, they were the better team. You have to accept the reality.

“In the past maybe it has hurt more. [It’s not] impotence, no. We have been a great team and this year for many reasons we are not.

“We have achieved something unique in our country and in Europe, we have won once and we have been there many times. Decisions [are] to be made at a team level and by everyone and now to qualify among the top four or five to return.”

Failure is not tolerated at the Etihad and £275m has been spent in 2025 to try and make City challenge for the Champions League and Premier League properly this season. Some of the most exciting talent in Europe has been brought to Manchester with the intention of raising standards again under Guardiola - although it didn't stop them from repeating their UEFA gift by getting knocked out of FIFA's Club World Cup by a Saudi Arabian side this summer.

Even during the height of their dominance in the Premier League, the Blues have been entertaining to a fault in the Champions League. It is no surprise that the years in which they have gone furthest, 2021 and 2023, have been built on defence.

In many ways, it should be easy for City to move on from last season given the emotional baggage was so much more reduced than in previous campaigns. Everyone involved in that disappointment will have taken a knock to their professional pride, but there wasn't any great soul-searching to be done about why they fell short.

Their first task for this season is not to make it so easy for UEFA. Don't get people rushing to tune into your games because everyone can see a collapse against Feyenoord or a surrender against Madrid coming from a mile away.

The knockout stage can be a lottery, as Liverpool found out last season when topping the initial phase and then drawing PSG and going out in the last-16 to the eventual winners. But City need to avoid the play-offs if they want to be seen as convincing contenders again.

Business as usual is a phrase that has been used at the club for various different situations over the last few years as they have fought battles on and off the pitch. Everybody is less sure about what to expect from City this season as they try to return to their previous levels, but the fewer headlines they make over the course of this Champions League the better it will be for their prospects of being successful again.

Even if it knocks them out of UEFA's good books, City need to focus solely on what is in front of them as they look to find their way back to the top of European football.