Manchester City travel to Monaco in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday. Regardless of how it finishes, the teams will struggle to match the excitement from the previous meetings between the clubs.
Pep Guardiola is into his 10th season in charge at City, having won a stack of major honours, including Europe's top competition as part of his club's 2022/23 treble success.
But when Monaco came to Manchester for a Champions League Round of 16 tie in February 2017, Guardiola was still putting things together during his first season in England.
City were already as good as out of the title race and maybe didn't need an encounter with the most exciting young team in Europe, boasting one man taking his first steps to superstardom.
Everyone else could simply lap up the entertainment.
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What happened when Man City played Monaco?
The 2017 Champions League last-16 meeting between Manchester City and Monaco finished 6-6 on aggregate. With the away goals rule still in effect, Monaco's 3-1 win in the second leg at Stade Louis II was enough for them to go through after an astonishing game at the Etihad Stadium finished 5-3 to the hosts.
Even though the defence Guardiola inherited at City would require further work in summer 2017, his attack brimmed with quality, as evidenced when David Silva slipped a pass to Leroy Sane to set up Raheem Sterling for the opening goal.
A poor clearance from City goalkeeper Willy Caballero preceded Fabinho crossing for Radamel Falcao to equalise with an excellent diving header before the veteran Colombian's teenage strike partner took the spotlight.
There appeared to be little on when Fernandinho and Nicolas Otamendi hesitated under a raking ball forward, only for Kylian Mbappe to steal inbetween them and clatter his first Champions League goal into the roof of the net.
A ragged night for Otamendi looked like getting worse when he brought down Falcao in the box, only for Caballero to save the striker's tame penalty. That incident truly sent the game off the rails. Sergio Aguero, who was absurdly booked for diving when Danijel Subasic brought him down in the first half, blasted a near-post shot throgh the Monaco goalkeeper to make it 2-2.
Falcao exquisitely won his next joust with Cabellero as he got past John Stones to dispatch an exquisite chipped finish. An inexplicably unmarked Aguero thudded home a volley from Silva's right-wing corner before Stones capitalised on more slack set-piece defending and Sane completed the scoring for Guardiola's rampant side.
That hard-earned advantage was expunged when Mbappe and Fabinho struck inside the opening half hour. A shellshocked City improved after halftime, with Aguero twice going close before Sane dispatched the rebound from Sterling's shot 19 minutes from time.
Despite the Premier League team appearing to be in the ascendancy, Tiemoue Bakayoko headed the ultimately decisive goal to send Monaco through.
What happened after Man City vs. Monaco 2017
The defeat in Monaco ended a restorative 11-match unbeaten run across all competitions from City, who had been humiliated by heavy defeats at Leicester City and Everton during the winter.
Those setbacks ruled out a Premier League title charge and, following defeat in the principality, Guardiola was condemned to a trophy-less first season in England when Arsenal handed City an extra-time defeat in the FA Cup semifinals.
Even though a forward line of Sterling, Aguero and Sane carried boundless possibilities, especially with Silva and Kevin De Bruyne pulling the strings behind them, a busy summer in the transfer market was deemed necessary.
Guardiola was not the only top European coach looking longingly at Leonardo Jardim's stunning Monaco squad. They romped to an underdog Ligue 1 triumph at Paris Saint-Germain's expense, but the vultures were circling. Within two years, Benjamin Mendy, Bernardo Silva, Fabinho, Tiemoue Bakayoko and Thomas Lemar were out of the door.
Monaco's Champions League run ended at the hands of Juventus in the semifinals. PSG then struck the biggest blow to their rivals, signing Mbappe on an initial loan ahead of the 2017/18 season.
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Kylian Mbappe's record against Man City
Then as much as now, Mbappe seems to enjoy playing against the 10-time English champions.
Across his spells with Monaco, PSG and Real Madrid, Mbappe has seven goals in seven matches versus City.
Those numbers were heavily bolstered during last season's Champions League knockout playoffs, when he scored in a 3-2 win in Manchester before notching a hat-trick as Madrid won the return 3-1.
Mbappe's other goal against City came when he gave PSG the lead in a 2021 group-stage encounter at the Etihad, although the Ligue 1 giants then collapsed to a 2-1 loss.
Three things Pep Guardiola learned when Man City lost to Monaco
The two 2017 matches against Monaco are among the most shaping of Guardiola's record-breaking City tenure, as they did plenty to set a course that resulted in six Premier League titles out of the next seven.
Firstly, he decided he wanted Bernardo Silva and wanted him straight away. The diminutive Portugal playmaker produced a sparkling masterclass in the first game, where he was desperately unfortunate to be on the losing side. Guardiola made a note and made sure City's director of football Txiki Begiristain was aware of how much he admired Bernardo.
A £43.5million deal with Monaco followed that summer. It looks a steal now, with Bernardo having racked up 14 major honours in Manchester. He returns to Monaco this week as City captain, possibly in his final season with the club.
Bacary Sagna and midfielder Fernandinho filling the full-back spaces during the first game against Monaco highlighted a key area of need for Guardiola. Like Sagna, Pablo Zabaleta, Gael Clichy and Aleksandar Kolarov were fine full-backs on the wrong side of 30. Alongside Tottenham's Kyle Walker, Guardiola identified Monaco's Benjamin Mendy as a younger, physically imposing upgrade.
Mendy was the most expensive defender in world football when he joined City, but a cruciate ligament injury early in the 2017/18 season was the beginning of a career in England that would go badly off the rails and end in sordid disgrace. But Mendy's demise meant the start of one of Guardiola's signature innovations in England as Fabian Delph stepped in and excelled as a hybrid left-back/midfielder in City's 100-point season.
Those successes vindicated Guardiola's signature style and, as debates over whether he should change to a more dynamic, direct approach are splattered across the 2025 discourse, it is worth looking back over his comments in the aftermath of the Monaco defeat eight-and-a-half years ago.
"It's not about the defence and the goalkeeper," Guardiola said, amid enquiries over whether he would have to tear up his tactics " In the second half, there wasn't a problem with the defence. In the first half, we were not there. When the opponent has the ball, we have to be aggressive to pick it up and in that moment, we didn't. That is why we're out. In the second half, we won the second balls and they created absolutely nothing. My feeling now is that this will help us a lot in the future. We will learn.
"I did it all my career in that way. You can lose, but in the first half, we were not there. We forgot to do what we normally do. Of course, it was my mistake because I was not able to convince them to do that. I convinced them in the second half, but it was too late.
"We have to be what we are, from the beginning until today. If we had played like we did in the second half, it would have been enough."
Guardiola prompted raised eyebrows with his diagnosis that City "forgot" to play. A traditionalist view in England was that, with a two-goal lead from the first leg, they played too much.
City haven't forgotten to play too often since. Their coach's stubborn determination to double down rather than back down has been vindicated time and again.