Ruben Dias will welcome fans on trams and buses to the Etihad on Saturday to celebrate a special weekend for Manchester City and its charity. And the defender still believes that Pep Guardiola’s squad are on track to usher in more success for the biggest golden era in the history of the club.
This season has seen Dias and the all-conquering Blues thrown off course. For the first time since the 27-year-old joined the club in 2020, he will not end the campaign as a Premier League champion with City instead scrapping with Saturday’s opponents Brighton among others to secure a top-four finish that will enable a return to the Champions League.
Already out of Europe at their earliest point since 2013, not even the FA Cup will satisfy City in a season where pretty much everything that could have gone wrong has done. But after a year where the Blues have been forced to take their medicine, vice-captain Dias has a message for anyone predicting the end of City’s dominance.
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“At the end, we know what we have done together and what we have done together has never been done by anyone,” Dias told the Manchester Evening News. “We know the cost of how much we dedicated ourselves to achieving those things.
“Maybe this season was a cost we had to go through because of all the emotional availability we had in the past years. It's football, we take it gladly and there's no need to panic.
“We know very well who we are and the only way forward is to keep on working and being true to ourselves and keep on doing things in the way we believe. Then naturally things will come.
“It's who we are. When I talk of the cost we had to pay, I don't mean because of how much we won, it's only the fact that the effort, the emotional availability - it's not easy to go every season until the end fighting for everything being so strong and consistent.
“For all reasons, sometimes football adapts and you need to do it again and find other ways like we do every season. We know the impact we have on football and we know that everyone is watching and adapting.
“The better we are, the more people will want to beat us and that's the circle of life. The challenges are different and higher every season, but you wouldn't want it to be any other way because then all our victories wouldn't mean as much.”
Dias as much as any City player symbolises the unexpected struggles they have gone through. After 18 months of being fit enough to play basically every game for club and country and representing the best of the best, a knock on his calf picked up in training was not helped by a night out in Paris until 5am to celebrate Rodri winning the Ballon d’Or.
It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did, but the very next day Dias was forced into the starting lineup at Spurs when Manu Akanji pulled up in the warm-up and a calf injury kept him out for over a month.
He returned after only a few training sessions to start at Anfield with John Stones having been recently sidelined, and pushed himself through five games in 15 days, playing through a hamstring issue in the derby at the cost of another month of the season.
It has been a ‘rollercoaster’, to quote Dias, from a player and club that have made stability the cornerstone of their success and the lows have made the highs more difficult to hit. Even when the defender has returned, his performances have been mixed and an early error at the Bernabeu put paid to City’s chances of turning their Champions League knockout tie with Real Madrid around.
Despite the chastening lessons that have effectively written off the season, Dias has no worries about his fitness in the long term just as he has confidence in the team to bounce back right to the top.
“Normally [after injury] you come back and play, another in three days but then have a week before the next game. I did five in a row,” he said.
“I was feeling great, feeling normal. But at the end, at the last game of the sequence, I was in a good place but it took me to a high-risk situation by the end of the five games. And it happened a little bit on my hamstring.
“I am only telling you this to make it make sense, that I am not worried because in the end I am not feeling like I was weak in anyway - it was just what was coming.
“Maybe we didn’t manage the situation the best when I did my calf and the rest was accumulation. By then, when I came back playing those five games, then three others got injured - Manu got injured, John got injured, Nathan got injured - so from then there is no ‘management’, you just have to do it. It was then a rollercoaster.
“Just to say about the fitness, I am exactly what I’ve always been - it’s just circumstances. Sometimes it happens in a certain way and you need to remind yourself in those times of the process and the sense that things have.
“Because I live good and play good if I sleep well and when I do everything in my power to do so, I’m in my good place.”
Dias is in his element on Wednesday morning on a playing field in Newton Heath, a short walk but a long way from the £200m facilities at the City Football Academy. The defender is taking part in a City in the Community session with pupils from Chorlton High School ahead of the club showcasing their charity in the Brighton match.
It is a relief from the difficulties that have engulfed the first team for much of the first season and a reminder of how fun and pure football can be, even if Dias suffers another defeat when CITC trustee Nedum Onuoha sinks a winning basketball shot in a team decider.
The 27-year-old remembers how much he enjoyed coming through the youth system at Benfica, although even then he had the drive that has taken him to such heights in the game. After being told that extra strength training was probably required to help him through their academy, he added three kilograms of muscle mass and 40cm to his standing jump within three months.
Dias has never shied away from a challenge, and the idea of the squad rebuild that has already started at City is one he wants to lean into. Talks over a new deal are expected at the end of the season and the 2020 signing is currently vice-captain after Kyle Walker’s exit.
With Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis already showing why they were brought in to be part of the club’s future, Dias is ready to lead the next generation rather than be moved on by them.
“I'm 27 and I feel like I've a lot to give,” he said. “Not because my age says so, but because my feeling and will says so. This is my fifth season and I still want to win so much.
“In the end, we all want to win. The two centre-backs, Nico [Gonzalez], Omar [Marmoush] and Claudio [Echeverri] all come starving and they want to win.
“To be in a club like this, you want nothing else. You want people that are starving and want to win at all costs. We welcome them in a very happy and motivated way because they will be part of the process.
“Whatever happens you try and be there for whatever you are needed for. That is a responsibility as a captain but also as a player for this club and a team that wants to fight for everything. It’s the way to be around here.”
