Towards the end of last season, Pep Guardiola was asked what might be left for him to achieve in the game if his Manchester City team completed the treble. “Score a goal against Spurs away,” he replied. He was joking, right?
City duly beat Internazionale in the Champions League final to touch immortality, but here, at last, was the crowning glory. City not only scored their first goal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at the sixth time of asking, they also got their first result.
Previously, it had been five defeats out of five—a bizarre and hard-to-explain sequence. But they cut through the hoodoo to energise their FA Cup defence, with Nathan Aké getting the longed-for goal towards the very end.
The Spurs goalkeeper, Guglielmo Vicario, was at fault. He found himself under pressure from Rúben Dias on a corner from Kevin De Bruyne, whom Guardiola had introduced as a 65th-minute substitute. Vicario wanted a foul, but it was not there, and when he punched weakly, Aké scrambled home.
The previous City player to score a goal at an actual Spurs stadium was De Bruyne in September 2015; that takes in the time the London club spent at Wembley while their home was rebuilt.
It looked as though De Bruyne would break the deadlock as City pushed hard in the closing stages. Bernardo Silva and another substitute, Jérémy Doku, shot too close to Vicario, and, in between times, De Bruyne had the big chance. Phil Foden robbed Pierre-Emile Hjbjerg as Spurs tried and failed to play up from the back, and when the ball was worked to De Bruyne, all eyes followed his shot towards the bottom corner. It kept on going past the post, and, at that point, it felt as though City would never score. Aké had other ideas.