What happened to Man City's first ever Champions League line up

After a rare weekend without Premier League commitments, Manchester City return to action on Wednesday evening when they take on Borussia Dortmund in their second match of the Champions League group stage.

City got their European campaign off to the perfect start last week, recording a convincing 4-0 win against Sevilla in Spain. Tonight they'll be looking to build on that, but the evening also marks an important anniversary in the club's history.

11 years ago on 14th September, 2011, City played in the Champions League for the first time in their history. The Blues had qualified for the group stages for the first time thanks to a third placed finish in the Premier League the season before, and their reward was to be paired with Bayern Munich, Napoli and Villarreal.

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Napoli were City's first ever Champions League opponents, with the two sides playing out a 1-1 draw at the Etihad Stadium. The Italian visitors took the lead in the 69th minute when Edinson Cavani finished off a counter-attack, but Aleksandar Kolarov replied six minutes later with a sumptuous free-kick.

City ended the group stage with 10 points, but finished in third place and dropped into the Europa League. For many years that remained the highest points tally a team had amassed without progressing to the next stage.

Progressing to the knockouts is now something of a formality for City, but what happened to those pioneers that came so close?

Joe Hart

City struggled to live up to expectations in the Champions League following their debut campaign - a woeful group stage in 2012/13 was followed by round-of-16 exits in 2013/14 and 2014/15 - but Hart certainly wasn't to