There was a wonderful kind of chaos about the aftermath of Manchester City’s victory over Newport County in their FA Cup fifth round tie last Saturday as crowds of home fans clustered around the makeshift building that houses the changing rooms at Rodney Parade, waiting for City’s Harlem Globetrotters to emerge.

Journalists making their way down from the press box in the Hazell Stand were directed around the back of the building to get to the post-match press conferences on the other side of the stadium.

They walked past Pep Guardiola, pacing around outside with his phone pressed to his ear, a picture of restless energy, and looked through an open door to see City’s players celebrating with gusto.

Pep Guardiola refused to surrender his football identity, and Manchester City have flourished

It was fascinating to see City taken out of the environment of the Premier League and how they dealt with it. Guardiola said he was more proud of their victory in south Wales than he was of times when they beat another elite team.

Later, the City players invited their beaten opponents into their changing room to chew the game over. It meant a lot to the Newport players, according to manager, Michael Flynn.

‘Their players are full of class and their manager is full of class,’ said Flynn, as he looked back on City’s 4-1 victory.

The other thing about City that day was the way they played. They did not make any concessions to the environment. They had been issued with dire warnings about the state of the pitch, which still bore the markings of the rugby matches played there by Newport Gwent Dragons, but they did not compromise their style. Phil Foden dominated the game with his elusive movement and his slick passing. Ederson still insisted on playing the ball out from the back.

At a time when other leading clubs — particularly Arsenal and Chelsea — are struggling with crises of identity, City will attempt at Wembley on Sunday to win the first of the four trophies they are chasing this season secure in the strongest identity of any team in the top four divisions, with honourable mentions for Liverpool, Spurs, Leeds and Norwich.

City were taken from their Premier League environment at Newport and warned of a poor pitch

We know what we are going to get with City whether they are playing on a poor pitch on the banks of the River Usk, in the Champions League first knockout round against Schalke 04, on another poor pitch in Gelsenkirchen, or at Wembley in the Carabao Cup final against Maurizio Sarri’s struggling Chelsea.

In the midst of his first season at the Etihad, when some analysts said Guardiola would never be a success in the English game because his style would not suit the Premier League, he was adamant that he would never surrender his football identity.

‘I’m sorry, but never in my life am I going to change the way I want to play football,’ he said. ‘It’s the only way I have. I can make mistakes, be judged for many things, but I have only one power: my teams play the way I want. There are storms, problems, but what is nice is to improve on that.’ 

City have been a joy to watch ever since. Sarri said last week that Guardiola was lucky to have kept his job after the travails of that first season, but City are reaping the rewards of keeping faith with their manager and eschewing the trigger-happy approach of their opponents at Wembley.

Chelsea have achieved great successes in the Roman Abramovich era but not since Jose Mourinho was fired after his first spell at the club, when he really was special, has the team’s identity been able to survive the dizzying changes in the man at the helm of the team.

City must better Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea at Wembley to win the first trophy of the season

City became a byword for upheaval in the years before Sheik Mansour’s takeover but now they stand for continuity of style. There is a maturity about Guardiola’s side that makes them better equipped to take a tilt at the greatest season any English club has achieved.

They can still look vulnerable, of course. There was a worrying fragility about them in the first half against Schalke but the way they came from behind to win that game in the last five minutes suggested a greater mental toughness.

Of course, they may lose to Chelsea, and there are huge obstacles in their way in the Champions League and in the Premier League. Maybe winning all four is an impossible dream, but the point with City is this: it will be fun watching them try.

Phil Foden was a star against the minnows, and typified how City will not alter their approach

I spent a few days in Innsbruck last week, transfixed by watching men and women ski up mountains. From the early morning, these fitness addicts began to climb the Muttereralm on cross-country skis with special rough-edged ‘skins’ on the bottom to help stop them sliding backwards.

As downhill skiers hurtled past them, there was something beautifully methodical and placid about the slow, dogged climb towards the summit. Tortoises among hares, they always got there in the end. 

Sorry, Bale has priorities right 

It was strange to see Thibaut Courtois’ sly digs at Gareth Bale for going to bed early and missing a Real Madrid players’ night out gain some traction.

We seem to spend much of our time tut-tutting about pictures of players stumbling out of clubs and stories about them being busted for drink-driving.

All Bale, who has won the Champions League four times at the Bernabeu, was doing was being professional and taking his career and his responsibilities seriously.

Courtois may be a follower who needs the approval of the big boys. I admire Bale more for knowing that he doesn’t.

Gareth Bale is setting a good example by preferring golf to nights out in Madrid

‘Breaking’ could feature in the 2024 Olympics

Olympics right to break with the norm 

In the directory of events listed at early modern Olympic Games in Paris, St Louis and London, it is possible to find running deer shooting, plunge for distance, singlestick, jeu de paume, rope climb, and even, in an associate event, duelling.

Those events seem archaic to us now. More than a century later, it seems funny that they were ever included. Times change, which is part of the reason I find the outcry about the proposal to include break-dancing, or breaking, in the 2024 Olympics in Paris misguided.

I understand the outcry because in some ways it seems as outlandish as including plunge for distance in the Games roster but the fact is that when it was included in the Youth Olympic Games in Argentina last year, it was a sell-out success.

It challenges established conceptions of what sport is but then so does watching some events where logic and bitter experience tells you that many of the competitors must be doped up to their eyeballs.

Particularly given its doping problems, the Olympics has to innovate. It moved on from plunge for distance a long time ago. If it stays still, it will die.

The split that cost £844m

The commercial value of modern sports stars was demonstrated more powerfully than ever before last week when a kid who is not even a professional yet fell over.

Zion Williamson, a college basketball player who has been anointed a once-in-a-generation star, the successor to LeBron James and Michael Jordan, was playing for Duke against North Carolina when the incident happened.

When Williamson fell after he took a shot during the game, it became obvious his Nike trainer on his left foot had split apart.

As Williamson lay injured on the court, the cameras zoomed in on the offending trainer as if it were a murder weapon.

Nike’s value promptly fell by 1.7 per cent, which meant £844million was wiped off their stock market value.

The Super Bowl once gave us the world’s most notorious ‘wardrobe malfunction’. Now, basketball has provided us with its most embarrassing ‘apparel failure’.