Guardiola's City runs into Mateta

 

The striker catalyzes Crystal Palace's comeback, which goes from 2-0 to 2-2 and causes the current champions' fourth draw in six games.

Jean-Philippe Mateta is the leading striker of the most archaic, less pressing, more withdrawn and less reactive team in the Premier. The Crystal Palace that visited the Etihad this Saturday had the lowest shot rate in the English championship. An anomaly in a tournament that boasts the highest scoring rate in the last half century. A walking contradiction that was personalized in Mateta. The 26-year-old French nine spent the Manchester game isolated, fighting meter by meter with Días, Aké and Walker in a long solitary battle. Every ball sent to him from his field turned into an open field battle against some of the most powerful defenders that exist. Against all odds, Mateta won and City suffered its fourth draw in the last six league games.

Palace, trailing 2-0 in the 54th minute, ended the afternoon 2-2. After more than an hour of confinement in which he had fulfilled his script. In the best tradition of Roy Hondgson, the Selhurst Park team had stolen 440 balls in the third of the field closest to their goal in this league, something that placed them as the team that recovered the most balls in that area only below the Nottingham Forest and Luton Town. In Manchester, his tactics became radicalized, if that is possible. Not only did Palace not press high. He didn't press low either. Simply put, he did what so many Italian teams did in Laura Pausini's golden years: a dotcom catenaccio. He stayed in his area with his 11 players for long periods of the game to wait for one of his defenders to get a rebound. City finished 19 times to five of the visitors. Grealish made it 1-0 with a pass from Foden, who assisted him without being bothered by the defenders and pivots; and Rico Lewis scored 2-0 after a rebound.

Palace assumed the risk of being beaten. I was part of Hodgson's calculation: if the coin landed on its edge, or heads, he would have some chance of scoring against it. The game seemed over when around the 80th minute a long ball from center back Guehi shattered the prevailing optimism in the stands. The ball rolled across the empty field, Schlupp intercepted it before Dias and put in the center. In the small area Mateta won the hand-to-hand duel he fought with Aké. He stretched his foot and reached the top of the scoreboard with the 2-1 of hope. Palace, which was seriously approaching relegation places, pulled out its claws. Against the logic of figures and precedents. Against inertia. In the 93rd minute, a lost ball near the City area rolled around without an apparent owner in search of an accident. Foden rushed to clear it without paying due attention. Before the Englishman's foot touched the ball, he hit Mateta's leg. The sudden appearance of the indomitable striker surprised Foden and the judge ordered a penalty.

The 2-2, the work of Olise, represents an extraordinary blow to City's morale when the entire skyblue expedition was preparing to embark for Arabia to play in the Club World Cup. Immediately, Guardiola's team went from occupying third place, tied on 36 points with Arsenal, to plummeting to fourth place in the standings with 34 points. Tottenham, with 33, threatens to snatch the last place with the right to the Champions League and Liverpool, leader with 37, can increase its advantage to six points if it beats Manchester United this Sunday.