ATATURK OLYMPIC STADIUM, ISTANBUL — Kevin De Bruyne has laid on 12 assists for Manchester City goal-machine Erling Haaland this season.
The combination between the goalscoring phenomenon and the Premier League champions’ long-standing assist king is one that many of a sky-blue persuasion will be hoping can take down Internazionale in Saturday’s UEFA Champions League final.
So, was it love at first sight between the two potent attackers?
“No, no. I’m happy with my wife,” De Bruyne quipped.
It generally doesn’t take much to get a laugh in a press-conference setting and, as such, the City playmaker had a packed auditorium at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium virtually rolling in the aisles before returning to an analysis of what makes him and Haaland tick.
“It’s something that I can’t really explain – you just have a feeling with a player,” he said. “You understand what he wants, he understands what I can do.
“He started scoring at an incredible rate, it helped him settle. Even in the last games he’s been really important for us in different ways.”
Ah, yes. Those last games. Haaland has scored a mind-bending 52 goals in all competitions this season, laying waste to the record books. But only one of those has come in his past seven outings.
“If you have doubts about Haaland scoring goals, you will be a lonely person,” Pep Guardiola said when asked about his frontman’s recent dry spell.
“I don’t have any doubt. Tomorrow he will be ready to help us win the Champions League.”
Earlier in his coaching career, “doubts” and “Champions League” did not belong in the same sentence for Guardiola.
His era-defining Barcelona side won two in three seasons in 2008/09 and 2010/11. You’d have received a few quizzical looks by declaring then that he would not claim the big trophy again for at least 12 years, but here we are.
Three semifinal defeats in a row at Bayern Munich were added to by a heartbreaking reverse at Real Madrid last season. City avenged that loss emphatically this time around and a return to the final means a chance to right the one remaining wrong for the treble-chasers.
In the 2021 final against Chelsea in Porto, Guardiola started the match without a recognised holding midfielder. City were horribly disjointed for long spells and lost 1-0 to a Kai Havertz goal. Seven players from that starting XI are likely to line up at kickoff on Saturday.
“Following the plan gives us stability and it helps during the uncertain moments in the game [to] come back to our plan. It gives us security. It’s important in a final to know exactly what you have to do,” he said, in what felt a mea culpa for the most infamous example of Guardiola previously being too clever for his own good on these occasions.
Over that decade of disappointment, Guardiola’s affection for a trophy he first lifted with Barcelona as a player in 1992 has never waned.
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"It's absolutely a dream, yes,” he added. “To achieve things, you always have to have the correct proportion of obssession and desire.
“It's a positive word for the desire and will to win it. It is, of course, a dream for us.”
It was not as instant as the connection between Haaland and De Bruyne but Manchester City, with all their oddities old and new, have finally grown to love the Champions League. In Istanbul on Saturday night, as history lies within their grasp, Guardiola and his players will try to take the relationship to the next level.
