Catalan newspaper Sport cover Manchester City’s victory over Borussia Monchengladbach in their Thursday edition, and the praise is huge.
Going with a headline of ‘Pep Guardiola has his Messi’, it’s Sergio Aguero who gets the most praise.
Sport say that despite the ground being nowhere near full, something they only partly attribute to the match being rearranged, Manchester City were rampant and ‘thrashed Borussia without making concessions’.
For a Barcelona newspaper to compare a player to Lionel Messi, in any way whatsoever, is quite something, and it shows just how good Sport’s Manchester correspondent thinks the player is.
Perhaps most striking is the player ratings. Outside of England, high player ratings are usually much more difficult to get. An 8 is considered an excellent performance, and 7 is a good performance, rather than the average it would often be here.
Sport gave Aguero a ten, a mark only given out for the most impressive of performances. Aleksandar Kolarov and Ilkay Gundogan both received a 9.
The Catalan press are hugely impressed with Guardiola’s work at Manchester City so far, but it must be said the poor attendance is brought up repeatedly in reporting.
Whereas Manchester City have, often unfairly, faced accusations down the years of not being able to fill their ground, the Champions League attendance on Wednesday night is something covered around the European media on Thursday.
Guardiola’s comments have obviously brought a much greater spotlight on it, but with the European media falling over themselves to praise Manchester City’s performances, there’s a genuine confusion as to why fans aren’t packing the place out for such a game, rearranged or not.
That Tottenham managed over 85,000 at Wembley on Wednesday night isn’t helpful for the perception of the Etihad attendance of around 32,000.
