You Would Not Let İlkay Gündoğan Play For Your 5-A-Side Team Right Now

Not Man City's Biggest Problem, But Probably Their Most Relatable

Can you even imagine? Launching a substack where you make a big thing about ‘covering all the teams! not just the really big ones!’ and then doing your first three posts entirely on Manchester City players?

Disgusting. An outright betrayal. Everything that’s wrong with football. What could *possibly* be worse than that?

Well, for a start, this…

And you’ve played football with your mates, you know *exactly* what that is. That is the player who is about to score an embarrassingly easy back-post tap in, running past his marker like he’s a training cone.

That’s Gary from work on the right there. A man who’s spent the last two months trying to wrangle an invite to your Sunday afternoon kick-about by telling everyone that “yeah, I used to play a bit, had trials at Leeds an’ that, play centre-mid normally, will take it easy on you haha”. But now he’s ruining everyone’s fun by constantly screaming PICK UP and LOCK ON despite never once “picking up” or, indeed, “locking on”.

That’s Ali, the aspiring personal trainer in your 7-a-side team (went to uni to do criminology but dropped out for a Sports Science BTEC at your old college) who is demonstrably 10x better than everyone, but turns up every week hanging out of his arse. He’d have bossed it, yeah, but they had a lock-in after work last night. At half-time he’s sick in a carrier bag.

But wind it back a scant five seconds.

You’ve played this exact game with these lads. You’ve wiped flecks of spittle from your own face after this exact goal goes in and they demanded to know who’s man that was. They pointed! They shouted at you! But Quelle Sur-Fucking-Prise, Gary!, that was actually your man.

There is a weird comfort in these images, though. To see such a universal experience being lived out, in real-time, to a television audience of millions, in an actual Premier League game by five-time Premier League winner and actual European Champion İlkay Gündoğan is… well, probably something that the German language has a very satisfying word for.

But no, good point, it wouldn’t be fair to zone in on one solitary example here. This man’s pedigree is beyond reproach, and there’s simply no way this was a constantly recurring pattern in this match that I have painstakingly rewatched the footage of in order to highlight, right?

Right?!

In the entire history of ‘pointing’, no man on earth has done it more in two hours than İlkay Gündoğan did at ‘men he should literally have been marking in the Spurs game’.

What’s my favourite example? Really glad you asked actually because it’s from the third goal. Here we see not only something that plays on the established rules of the point I’m making, but actually comes with a surprise twist at both the beginning and the end!

First off, İlkay Gündoğan is pointing at Son Heung-Min as Tottenham race in behind for the (approx) 400th time in the match.

Rico Lewis ahead of him is, currently, the only living thing preventing Dejan Kulusevski from just slipping Dominic Solanke a cutesy and demure 1-on-1. But, for reasons he’s too young to understand, he now also has a loud voice in his left ear telling him to forget that and pick up Son instead. Sure! Makes sense!

You’re over 550 words into this article now so, presumably, this won’t come as a shock; this was the situation about three seconds prior. Gündoğan (physically!) has a hold of Son as the move develops, but doesn’t keep up with the run. Classic Tuesday night Powerleague stuff. Someone’s flatmate has come to make up the numbers and dramatically underestimated what Elf bars have done to his lungs.

Later in the car park he’ll tell him that he only got away there because of the age gap. Which is technically correct here, but Son is only about 18 months younger so there’s not really any excuse for Gündoğan looking like he’s trying to run in a pair of jeans.

Surprise Twist Number 1!

Rico Lewis actually did as he was told here. Leaving Dominic Solanke as the cross was overhit, and following Son to the back post, he allows his teammate to follow them in at a relative canter. For purposes of both entertainment and cruelty I have frozen this moment in time, at the exact instance they both spot Pedro Porro running into the yawning chasm this decision has left.

There is a brief moment of hesitation. A pregnant pause in the air as İlkay Gündoğan summons all the experience of the 667 professional games he’s played, to consider if a lay-off to a goal-horny roving full-back 10 yards out would be “possibly quite bad”. He decides it is, but is neither quick enough to get out and block the shot or - small mercy - stand and point at him.

It is a crisp autumnal evening in the midweeks of your early 30s. The 5-a-side game on the other side of town is a trek but, with the nights drawing in, vital for your sanity. You’ve got Bayer Neverlosen tonight, and a win takes you top above Men Behaving Chadli. But there’s actual football on tele this evening, so you’ve spent your lunch trying to round up another two relative strangers to make up the numbers.

Someone brings their uncle. He has both his knees strapped to within an inch of their lives and inexplicably gets his knob out in the changing room when getting ready. He plays but the game has long since left him, and doesn’t venture out of the centre-circle for 26 of the allotted 30 minutes. You finish second that season and resent him in your heart for the rest of your adult life.

Surprise Twist Number 2!

The entire scenario only develops in the first place because, in the midst of a 50-50 deep in the opposition half, he gets the ball slipped through his legs with a comedy ‘whooop’ noise. You would remove this man from the WhatsApp group.

For the three of you who’ve come here looking for some serious insight, this is actually a really strong example of what’s currently going wrong at Manchester City. Gündoğan is 34 years old, and is cast in the role of the ‘single pivot’ in the centre of their midfield three. He’s supported in there by Bernardo Silva (a forward-thinking creative player) and Rico Lewis (a small boy), so is required to do almost all of the heavy lifting.

He is strong, but can be bullied. He covers the space, but can be outrun. He is a fantastic footballer that I already worry I have been too thoughtlessly mean about in this post, but he is not going to offer the necessary protection to a team that commits fully seven players to every single attacking phase. To put that into data for you, here’s a relative comparison of how he ranks for his in-possession work vs out-of-possession work.

If you’re new at these that’s his FBRef profile. The decimal points represent how often he does that per 90 minutes, and the coloured bar is how that ranks against all the other players in Europe in that position. Red, just in case you’re wondering, is bad. Across the continent, 97% of midfielders win the ball back more than he does.

Pep Guardiola has entrusted the team’s most vital off-the-ball role to a player who really, really struggles with those responsibilities. And he’s doing it at a time when he’s reformatted from inverting a defender, to pushing both full-backs all the way into the front line. It’s a genuinely baffling combination of issues that’s seen Guardiola make the team even more dependent on a strong, dominant holding midfielder, immediately after they lost Rodri for the season.

One final example for you and then I promise I’ll shut up about City until Christmas. Here we see the famous finger again deployed, but this time not in a frantic attempt to get someone to pick up his own man. Tottenham have the ball at the back, and Gündoğan, as easily the most senior player in that area, instructs Phil Foden to get out to press the defender.

If you watch the clip, Foden looks back at him and seems slightly reluctant. Likely because during the preparation for this game it will have been flagged that the one thing on this earth Tottenham want you to do is meekly press their defenders and, in doing so, open up a pass into the midfield.

Which is precisely what happens. On Gündoğan’s instruction, Foden moves off Sarr, and Vicario immediately then splits the attackers with a ball into him. He swivels, gives it to Maddison, and all the German can do is then promptly foul him and alleviate what little pressure was being applied. I’m sorry! He seems like a nice man! I’m not having a go! This just clearly isn’t what he’s good at it!

All the same though, if he rocks up at Shoreditch Powerleague next week with his boots in his hand and a song in his heart, I’m telling him we’re full.