Yokohama v Al Ain: Japanese club hope to follow in footsteps of cousins Man City

Late last July, the new club champions of Europe and owners of the English league-and-cup double visited the holders of Japan’s J-League.

Pep Guardiola, manager of the visiting squad, surveyed the opposition – the impression they made on him was favourable. “I’ve watched Yokohama and I like – a lot – what I see,” said Guardiola on the eve of a friendly that would jolt Manchester City quickly out of any pre-season complacency.

City’s last act of their epoch-making 2022/23 season had been to lift the Uefa Champions League in Istanbul, part of a historic treble. Their first half of football of the new campaign had them sinking, abruptly, to 2-0 down in Tokyo against the team that might just have claimed the AFC Champions League by the end of this month.

There would be a symmetry to that. Yokohama F Marinos, who host Al Ain in the first leg of Asian club football’s showpiece final on Saturday, are corporate cousins to City.

They are one of the 13 clubs in the City Football Group, or CFG, the umbrella body that aspires to elevate standards and cross-fertilise its expertise around member institutions spread across the globe. Right now, several of them are enjoying unprecedented success in various leagues and confederations.

But there was little fraternal kindness shown by Marinos to Guardiola’s men on the pitch that July evening last year. Certainly not in the way Anderson Lopes, the mobile Brazilian striker around whom Al Ain must devise their defensive strategy carefully, zipped past Manuel Akanji to put the Marinos into the lead. Ken Matsubara swiftly doubled the advantage.

“They are so aggressive, dynamic in their process, the build-up, in everything they do,” said Guardiola. “I say ‘Wow! Big respect'.”

Some measure of the