If not impressively, Manchester City have at least importantly made club history

Richard Jolly writes that as Manchester City slogged through a goalless draw with Dynamo Kiev on Tuesday night, the sluggish style of the match masked the momentousness of the outcome for City.

Manchester City's Joe Hart acknowledges the fans after Tuesday night's advance to the Champions League quarter-finals. Phil Noble / Reuters / March 15, 2016

History can be made in the dullest of fashions. The atmosphere was muted, the opponents limited, the mood one of concern as Manchester City lost two centre-backs in the space of 17, damaging minutes. The first half had more injuries than shots on target, the second little more drama.

It scarcely felt like a landmark night. Yet it was; a goal has not been realised yet but City are a step closer. A debt-ridden mid-table club in 2008, when the Abu Dhabi United Group purchased them, they are now Champions League quarter-finalists for the first time. In the future, this may been seen as a night of seismic significance, not a stalemate of drab dullness. Manuel Pellegrini may have overseen regression in the Premier League but he can point to progress on the continental stage.

“It is a very important achievement for the club,” he said. “This is a club is growing and will continue to develop as a big club.” The Chilean has supervised incremental improvement. City reached the last 16 for the first time on his watch two years ago. Now they are in the elite eight.

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The imminent arrival of Pep Guardiola is designed to catapult them further. Certainly the Spaniard’s imagination represents a welcome addition. Two tired teams, shorn of ideas as much as energy, played out a stalemate that had the minimum of incident. A low-key, low-quality affair meant City progressed by stealth.

They will need to play considerably better should they draw Real or Atletico Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich or Barcelona, assuming the latter pair qualify.

The underwhelming feeling meant there was no fanfare and no fireworks when the final whistle blew. Manchester derbies have a propensity to overshadow other occasions, all the more so when City are set to be weakened for a weekend meeting with their neighbours.

The 14th calf injury of Vincent Kompany’s City career may not end his season but it certainly could preclude his participation in Europe, unless they make a maiden foray to the semi-finals.

“It is a minimum a month [out],” said Pellegrini. When Nicolas Otamendi also hobbled off, it fashioned fears that the declining Martin Demichelis and the undistinguished Eliaquim Mangala will be teamed against Manchester United.

Pellegrini allayed them, saying: “Hopefully Nicolas Otamendi can recover in the next couple of days.”

It alleviates the blow but while City kept a clean sheet without Kompany for 85 minutes, they have mustered too few shutouts in his absence this season.

They played with the handbrake on, to borrow Arsene Wenger’s phrase. Pellegrini preferred to reflect on their solidity: “It was a tactical game. We normally are a team who always score so we get criticism about not keeping clean sheets. We have kept three clean sheets for three games in a row now.”

The other interpretation is that City have failed to score in the last two.

Neither side posed much of a threat. The needless negativity of Dynamo Kiev, who did not play with the belief they could progress, and who only sprung to life in the last 10 minutes. They seemed tamed by City’s first-leg triumph, intimidated by their wealth.

“It’s not easy to play against a team who cost $250 million,” said their manager, Serhiy Rebrov.

He is a bona fide Kiev legend. City displayed their own. Arguably their greatest ever player, Colin Bell, was paraded on the pitch before kick-off, a belated celebration for his recent 70th birthday. If the midfielder has lost that title, it is only in the last few years and because of the exploits of Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Yaya Toure. None burnished his reputation on this occasion, although the Ivorian was the brightest.

But few illuminated the occasion. It made for a lower-calibre affair than these sides’ meeting in the Europa League five years ago, which was at least enlivened by Mario Balotelli’s red card and Aleksandar Kolarov’s crisp strike.

But then Kiev knocked City out of the lesser competition. Five years later, there was a role reversal and a greater prize.

City claimed it, not impressively, but importantly.

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