Champions League last 16, second leg – live

In one way or another, most stories are about identity: roughly, who are we and we cool with that?

Well, our teams tonight arrive at this game as potential protagonists, both in something of quandary.

City are in between teams, problem being they’ve been there a while and it’s not exactly clear what sort of one they’d like to become.

A few years ago now, Pep Guardiola experienced a revelation –physicality and good defending are necessary when you no longer have Lionel Messi and the best midfield of all time – winning his first Champions League since those days as a consequence.

But without Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and that version of Rodri, he’s scrabbling for a new way, ingredients for a possession team that’s also a power team not easily come by.

Never has it been harder to predict who Guardiola will pick or how they’ll try to play – and not in a good way.

Madrid, meanwhile, also don’t have a collective identity, but mainly because they don’t want one – so much so that when Xabi Alonso tried to impose one on them, they imposed unemployment on him.

Instead, the personality of the team is the personality of whichever among its ensemble finds main-character energy on any given day – last week it was Fede Valverde, but tonight it might just as easily be no one.

Or, in other words, City winning 3-0 seems possible, likewise Madrid losing 3-0, the difference between their best and worst significant – which is why neither looks likely to win their domestic league.

The greatest teams – and players – are not those with the highest top level but the highest bottom and modal levels, so no one will be lauding either of these as anything special.

But there’s enough about them that’s potentially special such that, through the course of this match and competition, they might just happen upon a hero’s journey that shows them who they are and who they have to be.