No love is greater than City fans’ love for Sergio Aguero

Editor F365
Sergio-Aguero-Manchester-City

A tribute to Sergio Aguero from one of his greatest fans…

It’s generally quite easy being a Manchester City fan these days. It wasn’t always the case, but there’s nobody who’s a regular at The Etihad (in a non-Covid world, anyway) that’s getting any sympathy from the outside. “Ooooh, you’ve had it tough with your third title in four years. Grow up.”

The good times have been rolling for some time, but there’s still a sizeable number of City fans whose schooldays were dominated by daft own goals, relegations and doing stupid sh*t that would make even the writers of Hollyoaks go, “Woah, steady on…”.

So, against that backdrop, the emotional attachment that formed to the first bunch of 20-odd adults that were competent enough to lift some silverware at the Etihad is stronger than strong. Even stronger for the bunch that held it together to finish top of the Premier League for the first time the year after.

What nobody realised – or maybe they did, but chose not to think about it – was that forming that deep-rooted emotional attachment was flagging down a black cab and taking the scenic route to Heartbreak Street. One by one those legends had to leave, as time caught up with legs and younger blood came in to replace them.

In 2016, it was Joe Hart. In 2017, it was Pablo Zabaleta. In 2018, it was Yaya Toure. In 2019, it was Vincent Kompany. In 2020, it was David Silva. In 2021, it’s Sergio Aguero.

Really, just f*ck that crushing emotional baggage because there is no physical pain that even comes close to the internal agony that is watching as people you love and idolise say goodbye. It hurts your brain, but there’s no remedy because there’s nothing physically wrong or broken. There’s no sticking plaster or paracetamol that eases that wound.

It might be the right time. Injury has decimated Aguero’s 2020/21 season, with his recurring knee problem – and a bout of Covid – likely to have caused him considerable turmoil over the campaign. He’s a player that has always needed rhythm, famously needing several matches to get back into the swing of things after picking up a knock, and the nature of this injury and this season has meant that couldn’t be afforded to him.

Could he stay for another season? Sure. Why not? But there’s no guarantee his knee injury won’t prove to have the same impact next year as it did this – and, as much as the victory over Everton was evidence he’s not lost his scoring touch, it is still the outlier and hasn’t reflected how his season has gone. You know that they say: Always leave them wanting more.

It will never feel like the right time and it will never feel fair.

And where the hell do you even start with Aguero? There’s nobody reading this who doesn’t know what his most famous Premier League goal is. Nobody who has clicked onto this page is wondering if he is one of the all-time greats or not. There is probably no combination of words left in the English language that does Aguero justice for what he’s done at Manchester City, and means to both the club and the fans.

Sergio Aguero

When he joined in 2011 – and trained in Roberto Mancini’s boots because he’d arrived without any and there were no other spares in his size – it was clear there was excitement around what he could achieve. Some knew enough about him from his time in Spain to know that he was going to set the Premier League alight, but most had just heard rumours or seen snippets of videos online.

Half an hour against Swansea was all it took to highlight that there was somebody special at the club.

Even that game showcased one of Aguero’s biggest assets: The variety in his finishing ability. He opened his account after just eight minutes on the pitch, darting in to be Johnny on the Spot to tap home Micah Richards’ low ball into the middle. City had signed a classic fox in the box, then?

No – about 25 minutes later, he punted one past Michel Vorm from 30 yards.

After ten years of watching Aguero stick the ball in the net for City, it’s clear there isn’t a type of finish that Aguero doesn’t have in his armoury. He’s short, but decent in the air. He’s right-footed, but hits a good proportion of goals with his left. He’s hit all corners of the net from short, medium and long range. He’s been there to finish off other people’s hard work, to bag at the end of a wonderful passing move, and he’s done all the hard work himself to create his own opportunity.

There is practically no stereotypical Sergio Aguero goal – the closest being the way he belts it in at the near post before the goalkeeper can react, but even that is a small majority in a vast ocean of different finishes.

He’s done it against all-comers, too. His detractors spent seasons clinging to the idea that he was a so-called ‘stat-padder’, scoring plenty of goals against mid-to-bottom-of-the-table teams and rarely showing up in the big games. It doesn’t add up: He’s faced 33 Premier League sides in his time in England and scored against 32 of them.

Bolton are the ‘lucky losers’ who stopped him from scoring in his only appearance against them – but they were relegated at the end of his first season, still yet to return to the top flight. Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal are in his favourite five clubs to score against.

His other records are equally impressive. He became City’s all-time leading scorer in a 4-2 win over Napoli in November 2017. He became the all-time leading Premier League foreign scorer on the same day he broke the record for the most Premier League hat-tricks, in a 6-1 win over Aston Villa.

Saturday’s 5-0 win over Everton saw Aguero score twice from the bench, after coming on for the final half an hour – in a mirror image of how the striker’s Premier League career started against Swansea in August 2011. His two goals made him the player with the most Premier League goals for a single club.

But the raw numbers don’t tell the whole story. The connection to Manchester City and the fans runs deeper than being very good at football (something that always helps, mind). He’s the player that stood up for the fans who were being manhandled by police and stewards when, through no fault of their own, they had been forced onto the pitch at Bournemouth because of a surge behind them.

He’s also the player who, when asked which Manchester United player he’d have at City if he could pick anybody, answered: “I prefer no-one. No.”

There’s more. When out injured and during the close season, he became a Twitch streamer – and ended up muting the word ‘Messi’ when the speculation blew up over the summer and people kept asking him about his international teammate. That was around about the same time he did a video where he commentated over his worst challenges.

He – who else? – also livestreamed the time he scored an added-time winning goal in the online game, Fall Guys. The webcam he’d set up was balanced on two of his Premier League Player of the Month trophies.

There’s probably your reason why it’s hurt City fans so much to see Aguero unable to be a part of this season to any real extent. Players will always come and go and the team will always continue to move forward – but sometimes players come that leave a lasting impression.

Each of the legends that left before did that, and as Aguero becomes the final player from the City’s first Premier League title-winning team to depart, there comes with it a sense of closure that it truly is the end of an era.

“I swear you’ll never see anything like this ever again,” was a line once used to describe his most famous goal, but it could so easily describe him. He was the best and he will forever be the best.

As good as whatever comes next is, it will just never be the same – and that’s good. It means everything that happened in the last ten years will remain special for everybody who got to enjoy it.

David Mooney – subscribe to his Blue Moon podcast here…

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