TURIN, Italy – Manchester City are facing elimination and Pep Guardiola now looks as vulnerable and worried as any manager who has suffered a seventh defeat in 10 games. Both statements would have been unthinkable a month ago, but after Tuesday’s 2-0 defeat in the Champions League against Juventus, the old certainties no longer apply.

Second-half goals from Dusan Vlahovic and Weston McKennie put Juventus on the path to a play-off place and gave City 22nd place in the Champions League, one point ahead of 25th-place Paris Saint-Germain, who are currently under the cut-off point, which will see teams eliminated from the competition entirely. City face PSG in Paris in their next game and if they lose that they face elimination from the Champions League.

But while that prospect would be a humiliation for a club of City’s stature and ambition – they were Champions League winners in 2023 – the biggest problem may prove to be Guardiola and whether we are witnessing the beginning of the end of his incredible eight-year reign at the helm .

Is Guardiola’s position as City coach at risk after his team’s unprecedented collapse? It is highly unlikely that the club’s hierarchy, led in Turin by chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak, would so reflexively consider sacking the most successful manager in City’s history, a man who has won 18 trophies since 2016. But the trust and support of his superiors is not the problem.

Since Guardiola cut an unusually reserved figure on the touchline during that game in Turin – when he wasn’t slumped in his seat, he stood with his hands in his pockets and gave little direction to his players – the real question is how long he will last will be able to hold his own in a role where nothing works.

Guardiola has never been just a normal manager, one of those who has good days and bad days and ultimately runs out of solutions when problems start to mount. Yes, he has had poor results as manager of Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich and City, but Guardiola has never gone through a crisis like all the other managers. Until now.

A story of almost uninterrupted success since he won the treble with Barcelona in his first season in 2008/09, his illustrious career has lifted the 53-year-old above the trials and tribulations of his contemporaries, but now that he has them himself to deal with them. Guardiola fails for the first time in his career.

In Turin he watched his team struggle to beat a Juventus team that had gone into this game with just one win from their last six games, and he did virtually nothing about it. He watched Kevin De Bruyne (33) and Ilkay Gündogan (34) lose steam in midfield and let them toil until he made his first change in the 87th minute, substituting Matheus Nunes for Jack Grealish.

Erling Haaland, City’s goal machine, once again failed to contribute in a game in which he failed to score – he only managed 18 touches of the ball all night. But again, Guardiola was unable to make the crucial change to his selection or system to make the difference.

When asked after the game whether he was questioning himself now, Guardiola admitted he was, although with an air of defiance rather than suggesting a lack of confidence.

“Of course I question myself and have my thoughts,” said Guardiola. “I am stable in good and bad moments. I’m trying to find a way to do it.”

play

How Juventus and McKennie dealt a major blow to Man City’s UCL knockout hopes

Recap Manchester City’s 2-0 defeat to Juventus in the Champions League.

Asked if he was now facing the biggest challenge of his career, Guardiola insisted this was not the case.

“My biggest challenge is to get results in the first few seasons (at Barcelona) that continue to work,” Guardiola said. “It’s life, it happens. Sometimes you have a bad time, but I’ll persist until we get there.”

When Guardiola signed a two-year contract extension last month, he said he had begun to view this season as his last at City.

“I’ve been thinking a lot,” he said. “There were some moments, I have to be honest, I thought that should be the last. But at the same time, when the situation came and the problems that we had in the last month came, I felt that now is not the right time to leave. “I would let the club down and I felt that I had to do it.

“Don’t ask me why. Maybe the four defeats were the reason and I felt like I couldn’t leave.”

The four defeats in a row have now become seven out of ten defeats – one win in the same period – so the situation has worsened significantly. City have failed to recover thanks to Guardiola’s new contract and, despite their Champions League woes, are now eight points behind the Premier League.

And with City set to take part in the FIFA Club World Cup in the US next summer, there are still seven months to go in the season and Guardiola and his players already seem to be running out of energy and ideas.

They have become a team of old men, without the vibrancy and attacking verve of Guardiola’s great teams, and the manager himself is literally scratching his head for answers.

What we are left with is the scenario that City could be relegated from the Champions League and Guardiola’s new contract may be worth less than the paper it is written on.

Unthinkable? No longer.