Manchester City and Pep Guardiola navigate the business end of Big Cup

Big Cup football returns to our television screens tonight, and unlike last weekend’s Match of the Days, we’re absolutely certain the normal, full-fat, bangs-and-whistles version of The Manchester City & Leipzig Show will go ahead without being compromised by the absurd grandstanding and sinister manoeuvres of piss-poor populist politicians. That’s because the match is going out on BT Sport, which unlike the BBC nobody pays the blindest bit of attention to, and presented by Jake Humphrey, who unlike Gary Lineker … and this is where the comedy of repetition is our friend.

So it’ll definitely get broadcast. Socialist chat! Cooperative theme tune! All the penalty calls! The programme will also feature several pre-match interviews, which, as is traditional during March, consist mainly of City players trying to convince themselves they really, truly, honestly don’t care that much about Big Cup, with arguable success. “I don’t regret the things I do,” insists Kevin De Bruyne. “We’ve not won [Big Cup] but we have done really well in it.” That objectively fair assessment was only slightly undercut by his immediate segueing into a morose review of those Real Madrid and Tottenham defeats. “We deserved to go through. Moments happen. People base everything on only winning but there has been a lot of circumstances.” Oh Kevin! You nearly had us believing it was true as well.

Naturally his manager also wanted a slice of that sweet denial pie. “It’s lovely … it’s special!” began Pep’s paean to Big Cup, a tournament that has remained tantalisingly out of reach during his decade in Munich and Manchester. “So nice to show our club all around Europe!” However, that relaxed petal-strewn reverie could only last so long, and soon enough he’d