Sergio Aguero's Brilliance Means Flawed Manchester City Remain a European Threat

Hard as it might be to believe, sometimes the clearest, most concise observations of any major event come from those who are closest to the action.

That certainly appeared to be the case on Tuesday evening, after Sergio Aguero’s hat-trick propelled Manchester City to a 3-2 victory over Bayern Munich—a win that kept the English club’s flagging hopes of qualifying for the knockout rounds of the Champions League very much alive.

"He [Aguero] is our special player," City captain Vincent Kompany told ITV, just moments after the final whistle. "He makes things achievable that otherwise wouldn't be."

With 10 minutes remaining at the Etihad Stadium, City’s European dream looked to be on the verge of another premature end, with Bayern 2-1 up and looking comfortable despite having been reduced to 10 men after just 20 minutes.

That was before Aguero, who had already scored once from the penalty spot, twice took advantage of defensive mistakes to turn the game on its head, staring down Manuel Neuer—almost unanimously regarded as the best goalkeeper in the world—and beating him twice, in one of the most clinical attacking performances you could wish to see.

“He is something incredible,” Frank Lampard, who has played with his fair share of top players over the years, subsequently noted to Sky Sports. “When he runs through you expect him to score. He is at the top of his game and one of the top strikers in the world."

The last sentence is not hyperbole. Aguero already has 17 goals for his club this season, a record that compares favorably with every striker in Europe bar Cristiano Ronaldo, who is operating in another goalscoring stratosphere at the moment.

The Argentine has 12 goals from 10 starts in the Premier League (he came on as a substitute in each of City’s opening two games), a rate that leaves him on course to score 38 goals over the course of the campaign. Last season’s Premier League top scorer, Liverpool’s Luis Suarez, scored 31 (albeit from only 33 appearances).

Such exploits saw the Uruguayan seem to become almost unanimously lauded as the division’s best player, especially as his goals seemed to be almost single-handedly driving Liverpool’s unexpected title challenge.

In the end, of course, both club and player fell short, with City finishing the stronger and ultimately emerging victorious despite Aguero, their primary attacking option, being hampered by a series of niggling injuries during the run-in.

Those injuries continued into the World Cup, preventing Aguero from making the impact he would have hoped for on the biggest stage of all. Fully fit and back in club colours, however, he is making up for lost time by reasserting his qualities.

As a result, despite Diego Costa’s fast start to life in England, he already seems to have (re)claimed the title Suarez abdicated when he moved to Barcelona in the summer.

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Capable with his left foot and his right, despite his lack of height, his manager, Manuel Pellegrini, also seems comfortable playing Aguero as a lone striker. That is a measure of his talent; an all-round package that few other strikers in the game currently have.

"At the moment he is one of best players in the world," Samir Nasri told ITV. "Apart from Cristiano Ronaldo, who is on another planet, he is up there with [Lionel] Messi and Suarez.

"He has been unbelievable this year. He was last year as well, the only problem was his injury. This year he has been more fit and when he is one on one with the keeper it doesn't seem like he will miss the target."

Bayern saw for themselves his clinical ability in front of goal, even if both late chances came from defensive mistakes.

“We lost the game because we gave them the game,” their manager, Pep Guardiola, said (per The Telegraph). “But that is football.

“We were tired in the last ten minutes, which is why we made changes to regain control, but we lost. When we lose, if we play s***, we accept we play s***, but we are happy because we didn’t deserve to lose.”

Perhaps there was an element of sour grapes to that assessment, Bayern having declined the opportunity to buy Aguero back when he was a 17-year-old playing for Independiente.

Then-club president Uli Hoeness went to watch Aguero in one game but was unsure of his assessment, so he sent Felix Magath, then the first-team manager, to South America for a second opinion.

“Never waste my free time again,” Magath reportedly told Hoeness (per the Daily Mail), “It's too precious to watch a player who does nothing but stand around for the whole game.”

Some things don’t really change. Much of Aguero’s game is based on a remarkable ability to loiter just outside the defence’s range of vision before launching himself into the thick of the action (City’s opener, which resulted in Medhi Benatia’s dismissal, came from exactly such a buildup).

But the 26-year-old is now more than capable of getting involved in the action in any way his team requires, whether that means dropping deeper to get the ball in dangerous passing areas or playing on the shoulder of the last man. Guardiola, a man who seems to covet versatility and tactical flexibility in his players, would surely love to work with someone like Aguero.

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Having revived City's evaporating European ambitions, Aguero will now be pivotal to what they go on to achieve over the remainder of the season.

It remains to be seen if Aguero can propel City to a successful title defence, with Chelsea already looking almost unstoppable. In Europe, however, they are already back from the dead. If they can beat Roma in two weeks—and assuming CSKA Moscow don’t cause a remarkable upset against Bayern—they will be into the knockout stages. That is no foregone conclusion, but it remains eminently achievable. From that point, every team will have to respect City and their most lethal of forwards.

After all, City have now beaten Bayern three times in the last three seasons, something few other teams can boast. City may still have grave weaknesses in other areas of the pitch, but, as Tuesday night reminded us, Aguero’s presence will always give them a puncher’s chance in any fight.

As Kompany noted: "If you want to succeed at anything, you need a special player in special form—otherwise you just don't win anything."