De Bruyne had sustained a four-inch gash on his foot in City’s Champions League clash against Atlético Madrid on Wednesday. It had been stitched closed before he returned to England, and he had been prescribed a course of antibiotics to stave off an infection. It was starting to heal. Introducing him into a game three days later, though, would risk the reopening the wound. “Then we would lose him for more games,” Guardiola said. “At the end, I didn’t want to take that risk.”
It is hardly surprising that Guardiola was a little coy on why, exactly, De Bruyne was dispatched to the touchline to warm up, given that he evidently had no intention of allowing him into the game.
Perhaps it was a psychological ploy for the benefit of his teammates, a little boost as they sought to build on Jack Grealish’s second-half goal and reduce still further the three-goal lead Liverpool had established in a dominant first half. Or maybe it was a little ruse to unnerve Guardiola’s Liverpool counterpart, Jürgen Klopp, to force him to contemplate what he might do if De Bruyne, arguably the most creative player in English soccer, suddenly entered the fray.
Either way, the fact that De Bruyne was reduced to playing the role of an entirely theoretical threat encapsulated the greatest challenge these teams will face over the course of the next six weeks.
Both have been swept to the cusp of not just glory but some multiple of it — City hopeful, still, of winning both the Premier League and Champions League, Liverpool now in contention to complete a sweep of four available trophies — by the prowess of their players and the brilliance of their coaches, by virtue of being not only the most gifted teams, but the most intense, the most intelligent and the most industrious.