Old friends are best as rivals eye first leg edge

Barcelona midfielders Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta should recognise their surroundings when they emerge from the tunnel for tonight’s Champions League last 16 first leg at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium.

Xavi and Iniesta have been there before — for City’s first ever game at what was then called the Millennium Stadium — an August 2003 friendly in which Kevin Keegan’s home side (which contained Richard Dunne, Sun Jihai and Shaun Goater) ran out 2-1 winners.

A lot has changed in the blue half of Manchester in the decade since, especially since Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour began to invest hundreds of millions of euro to turn a sleeping giant into a European superpower.