Manchester City have won the 2023 UEFA Super Cup after beating Sevilla 5-4 on penalties and lifting their fourth trophy of the year. Huge.
Pep Guardiola and his squad were given a pretty early shock to the system after the Europa League champions took the lead in the 25th minute thanks to a thumping header from Youssef En-Nesyri.
The 26-year-old Morrocan forward was the same man who dumped Man United out of Europe in the semi-finals back in April after scoring twice and his goal was enough to send the Spaniards into half-time 1-0 up at the Karaiskakis Stadium in Athens.
Sevilla nearly made it 2-0 around five minutes into the second half following an impressive counter-attack which was only foiled by an even more impressive save from Ederson. However, as they virtually always do, Man City soon reacted and found their foothold through Cole Palmer‘s equaliser. At it again.
Powering home a header of his own, the Wythenshawe-born youngster who scored the opener in City’s Community Shield defeat against Arsenal got Pep’s team back on level terms in the 63rd minute — what a great few months it’s been for him, having won the U21 Euros with England last month.
After drawing things up, City started to display more of the fluid football that we’ve seen so much from them in recent years and which helped them win the treble back in June, with 21-year-old Palmer himself being at the centre of a lot of it and nearly grabbing a second just moments later.
Despite having to do without the creative nouse of Kevin de Bruyne, who has now been ruled out for up to four months and could quite probably miss the rest of the year/first half of the new season, the Blues started making a few more chances and turning the screw.
However, Sevilla were still well and truly in the game, regularly threatening on the break and the longer the game went on, the more it looked like it would go to penalties — and it did. Thankfully for Pep, they managed to get over the line and win the shootout. Here’s the moment they won it:
Both sides delivered a truly incredible set of penalties but it was Nemanja Gudelj’s miss that stung the bar and sealed it for the Manchester side. A second European trophy in just a few months for City, the fourth piece of silverware in 2023 and a fourth Super Cup at a record-three clubs for Pep in his career.
They might have been favourites heading into the match but the opposition certainly didn’t make it easy for them and any team would have found it hard to make it past Sevilla, but they did. Treble-winners and even more emphatic champions of European than before. Not a bad start to the 2023/24 season, is it?
Meanwhile, earlier today one of their treble-winning squad members reportedly agreed to depart from the Etihad after five years as the club is said to have accepted an offer for defender Aymeric Laporte.
We don’t expect it’ll hold them back from winning even more trophies this season.
