When Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi headed east and west, out of immediate sight if not mind, some forecast the end of an era in which the cult of the individual had dominated European football’s discourse to an unprecedented extreme.
This was not a good week for that theory. Sure, Real Madrid crumbled at Anfield, looking like the poorest iteration in years just at the moment they have reverted to the Galactico philosophy of celebrity soccer. But Paris Saint-Germain do not exactly look much better for flipping the other way, left, by defeat to Bayern Munich, with just one win from five Champions League matches and somehow outside the qualifying mass of 24.
At Villa Park, Emiliano Martinez paraded his new Yashin Trophy and brought last year’s prize for the world’s best goalkeeper along for good measure. Waving two yellowed gloves to all corners, he looked more like like the back-to-back winner of the Washing-Up World Cup. Annoyingly, the Argentine justified the charade with a quite brilliant save to deny Juventus a 1-0 win.
The most telling act of totem worship, though, came at the Etihad. Now if you were really longing after something - an ex-partner or a departed pet, say - you probably wouldn’t want reminders plastered all over the one place you go for weekly escape. But there, ahead of kick-off against Tottenham on Sunday, was Rodri and his gammy knee, toddling out across a gigantic canvass bearing his own name to accept the adulation of thousands of Manchester City fans on account of his recent Ballon d’Or win.
Big miss: Manchester City are struggling badly without Ballon d’Or winner Rodri
AP
He stood for a while, in front of yet more big letters, in pretty much the exact spot in City’s midfield where no one at all has thought to stand in weeks. And then he buggered off to watch his team lose, for the fifth game in a row, and this time by four goals to nil. It was like baiting a starving child with a Happy Meal and then chucking it in the bin.
Ahead of Sunday’s trip to Premier League leaders Liverpool, City’s losing run has been halted, but only by a result almost as alarming, the 3-3 home draw with Feyenoord in which Pep Guardiola’s side led 3-0 with 16 minutes to play.
With each inexplicable faltering of an all-conquering side, the search for reason expands, this week into analysis of Guardiola’s mental wellbeing. It can’t all be Rodri, can it? One player, surely, cannot make that much difference. Except maybe he can.
Supporting evidence comes from Arsenal, where Martin Odegaard’s return to fitness has transformed Mikel Arteta’s team overnight.
From the blunt, labouring force that beat only Preston in a five-match run prior to the international break has reemerged something more familiar in the zesty outfit that ran City close two years on the spin.
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Three wins in a week have brought 13 goals, including five on Tuesday night at Sporting in Lisbon, more than in all of Mikel Arteta’s previous Champions League away games combined.
Odegaard has needed no reintegration period and his teammates - Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz in particular - have been immediately lifted by the playmaker's smooth return. Every facet of Arsenal’s play, in fact, looks slicker, quicker and more incisive.
Influential: Martin Odegaard’s return from injury has transformed Arsenal
Arsenal FC via Getty Images
“You can’t have one player away… and go from here [high] to here [low],” Gary Neville claimed on Sky Sports earlier this season, but for both Arsenal and City, that is exactly what has happened.
That the two most system-oriented coaches in the division have managed to build teams so heavily reliant on one player is in one sense baffling and in another entirely logical. Every machine needs someone to turn it on.
Still, both managers have appeared surprised by the extent to which their teams have been impacted and neither have been well enough prepared to cope; City perhaps because they have weathered long-term absences of players like Kevin de Bruyne before, and Arsenal because Odegaard’s fitness record had been exemplary.
So, what of Liverpool and Arne Slot, who have profited most to scamper eight points clear at the top of the table heading into this weekend?
Contract uncertainty: Mohamed Salah remains as important as ever to Liverpool
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Perhaps Slot ought to get ahead of the game now and instigate a George Smiley-esque hunt for the mole within. Find the traitor who might dare go down injured to betray this unexpected title charge and layer him, his car and his home with bubble-wrapped cotton wool.
Mohamed Salah? Virgil van Dijk? Ryan Gravenberch? Each have their merits and all have been central, but who is the one player this team genuinely could not live without? As Arsenal and City have found, sometimes you do not know until you try.