Sergio Aguero made headlines last night with his equalising penalty against Porto making it 40 Champions League goals for the Manchester City striker, but despite making his way into the competitions 14 top scorers, he’s never mentioned as a great of the competition.
With the best goal per minute rate in Premier League history, four time winner Aguero is considered by many as the league’s greatest ever foreign player, but despite being City’s record holder in Europe, he has far from the same reputation in the continental competition.
And when you drill down into the numbers, explanations begin to appear. 30 of Aguero’s 40 Champions League goals have come in the group stage, while nine of his 10 knockout goals have come against Dynamo Kyiv, Monaco, Tottenham, Schalke and Basel, with a strike in a 2-1 loss against Barcelona in 2015 perhaps the exception that proves the rule.
That’s not to say Aguero is a flat track bully, far from it, he’s scored the highest pressure goal in the history of the Premier League to clinch the title in 2012, while he’s bagged more goals against the top six than most players in league history.
And while that could lead to the argument Manchester City are holding him back, not getting past the quarter finals during this 12 year period, maybe European football is a different beast in and of itself.
Pep Guardiola is now well known to overthink the knockout rounds of the competition, often coming up with bizarre second leg tactics, but it was also widely reported on his arrival that the Spaniard was going to favour Gabriel Jesus as his number nine, as he didn’t view Aguero tactically disciplined or intelligent enough to get the best out of his system.
And with everything considered, including the level of investment, City just haven’t been good enough in the Champions League, and neither has Aguero, and it can be argued that they’re both holding each other back.
However, the closest City came to an illustrious semi-final was against Spurs in 2019 where, after missing a first leg penalty, Aguero scored what looked for a while like the winner before more late drama and bad luck, and with Guardiola now trusting him implicitly, injuries aside, things might soon come together.
