These two rivals have had peculiar summers in their own way, City coming to terms with the possibility that this could be Pep Guardiola‘s last before a possible departure, United under new part-ownership but having returned to England at the end of a pre-season tour which saw Erik Ten Hag‘s team lose three of their five games. In the midsummer sunshine of a slightly lethargic Wembley Stadium on Saturday afternoon, both managers will have emerged feeling slightly pleased but also with questions to answer ahead of everything starting to get considerably more real, next weekend. 

In the end, it took a penalty shootout to separate the two teams, with Jonny Evans blasting his kick high over the goal to allow Manuel Akanji to slide in the winner. But at this point of the season, the result of a match like this isn’t the most important aspect of the afternoon. What matters is the performances of the two teams playing a match that was always going to be more competitive than any globe-trotting friendly would be. Playing at Wembley, with a piece of silverware on offer for the winners, offered the best opportunity yet to assess the progress, or lack thereof, that these two teams have yet summoned forth. 

Of course, the circumstances weren’t quite ideal. August has been a meteorological curate’s egg of a month, and North West London was close and humid enough for the air to feel like a weighted blanket on this particular afternoon. And with this still being an extremely early point of the season and the European Championships having only ended four weeks ago, it would have been unreasonable to expect the players to be in the absolute peak of their condition. But for all this, it was a decent game with chances at both ends, although it packed most of its drama into its closing stages.

With eight minutes left to play Alejandro Garnacho cut inside and carried the ball to the edge of the City penalty area before shooting in to give United the lead. It looked like that was going to be enough, but modern football sure does seem to love a late goal and with two minutes to play Bernardo Silva headed in from a corner to bring the League champions level again. At least the FA weren’t daft enough to make us sit through what would surely have been an extremely soporific extra thirty minutes of football in order to separate the two teams. Instead they chose to cut straight the sugar rush of a penalty shootout. 

First advantage in the shootout fell to United when André Onana saved City’s first penalty from Silva, a kick so poor that it felt somewhat as though he may have believed himself to have done everything he needed to do by scoring that late equaliser in the first place. United held that advantage until their third penalty was also saved. Jadon Sancho, whose late appearance from the substitutes bench marks the start of a return that can hardly be less successful than his first period at Old Trafford, will have to wait for another day to start penning the next chapter of his redemption arc.

So the kicks rumbled on until City won 7-6. In an era of supreme technical ability, the penalty shootout has become a rather unedifying spectacle, perfectly placed kicks against goalkeepers who look half-beaten before the kicks are even taken. But all of this is reckoning without Jonny Evans, who absolutely shanked the ball over the crossbar.

It was difficult to get too excited about any of this. Evans didn’t sink to his knees in despair at having blazed this decisive spot kick into the crowd. There are no recorded incidents of anyone ever having ‘despaired’ over anything that has ever happened during a Charity or Community Shield final. Not even Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan, fifty years ago this very year. 78,000 turned out to watch, but not a single one of them will have had their season made or broken by this match. 

The Community Shield exists in a weird vacuum; half pre-season friendly, half cup final, the one domestic match of the season that a majority would shrug their shoulders over were it to be moved to be played in Baltimore, Baghdad or Brisbane. Tens of thousands of people turned out because tens of thousands of people will turn out for the opening of an envelope if you dress it up in the colours of these two teams. Whether the occasion served as much more than being a money-spinner for the FA and a chance for the managers to check out their summer tweaks is somewhat debatable.