What are the players who dug Manchester City’s first league title this century doing today?

It’s not often you see the kind of drama that English fans experienced in the 2011/12 season. Still in the 91st minute Manchester City players were two goals short of the title, but they managed to score them within the next three minutes and took all Manchester United supporters’ breath away. What are the Citizens heroes doing today?

Both Manchester teams had equal points, but Citizens had the advantage of a better score. So, everything played into the hands of coach Roberto Mancini’s charges when they also played at home to QPR. Manchester United travelled to Sunderland for their last league game.

On the other hand, Sunderland was already saved, while QPR was not, when it could be overtaken by Bolton Wanderers. However, the latter failed to win the last game of the season against Stoke City and only drew, so QPR stayed in the Premier League despite the defeat.

But back to the top of the table. Manchester United took the lead in the Premier League in the 20th minute through Wayne Rooney, and the scoreline lasted until the end of the match. Sir Alex Ferguson and his team on the bench shone. The Citizens were still trailing 2-1 in the 91st minute.

But Edin Džeko scored in the second minute of stoppage time, and three minutes later Sergio Aguero scored as well, which suddenly took the smile off the Red Devils’ faces and gave them an incomprehensible expression that they were still nursing for a long time.

So what are the heroes of the historic third league title doing today?

Sergio Aguero

For Aguero, it was just the start of things to come as he won the Premier League 4 more times after that. He stayed at Manchester City until 2021, when he moved to Barcelona.

However, he only managed to make five appearances for the latter when heart problems prevented him from playing professionally any further and he eventually retired. He scored 260 goals in 390 games for the Citizens and is the club’s all-time top scorer.

Edin Džeko

The other hero who engineered the turnaround against QPR, he played no small part in Inter’s victory over AC in the first Champions League semi-final match a few days ago. Now he is facing a spicy final duel with Manchester City.

He has played a total of 189 games at the Etihad Stadium and scored 72 goals. Apart from this league championship from the 2011/12 season, he enjoyed one more in the 2013/14 season.

David Silva

The Citizens fans’ favourite has already had a very successful career, adding to his 4 Premier League league titles a World Cup and two Euros. The Spanish midfielder left the Etihad Stadium in the summer of 2020 for Real Sociedad, where he has been until now.

Silva is currently 37 years old and has signed a contract with the Basque club for next season.

James Milner and Gareth Barry

Mancini’s then team also featured a pair of English midfielders who boast impressive stats. In fact, Barry holds the record for the most games played in the Premier League, which stands at 653. He played the most league games at Aston Villa – 365, at Manchester City 132.

Milner is the one still playing, having left Manchester City for Liverpool in the summer of 2015, where he will be until the end of this season. The English midfielder has 618 league starts, which puts him third behind Ryan Giggs with 632 starts.

Yaya Touré

Touré spent a long 8 years at Manchester City, having tried his hand at Olympiacos and China’s QD Huanghai before ending his professional playing career in the summer of 2020. He is currently in Tottenham’s academy.

Vincent Kompany

At this time Kompany was 25 years old and everything was still ahead of him. He won the Premier League with the Citizens three more times after this milestone, after which he moved to Anderlecht in the summer of 2019, where he subsequently started coaching. It must be added that this profession is going well for him, at least according to the results so far.

His Burnley absolutely dominated the Championship this season, when the charges of the Belgian coach managed to get a respectable 101 points, which is the 4th best result in this competition historically. Thus, next season he can very likely look forward to duels with his former employer.

Joe Hart

The then still 24-year-old Citizens number one worked at the Etihad Stadium until the summer of 2016, when he headed to Torino, then via West Ham, Burnley, Tottenham to Celtic, where he is still working now. This season has been a particularly good one for the Scottish outfit as they have completely dominated the league.

Other

But Mancini also had at his disposal at the time, for example, Mario Balotelli, who scored 13 goals that season, now based in Sion, Switzerland. Very important was Samir Nasri, who notched 9 assists, finishing his career in the summer of 2020 at Anderlecht. 4 goals were also scored by Carlos Tevez, who will hang up his cleats in the summer of 2021 after his stint at Boca Juniors.

The talented Denis Suárez (17 years old) – now at Espanyol, Karim Rekik (16 years old) – now at Sevilla, and Stefan Savic (20 years old) – now at Atlético Madrid – were part of the team, albeit for a while.

Source: Manchester City, Transfermarkt, Wikipedia