Direct Chronicle
Like the Thermomix, Manchester City kneaded, cut, chopped, mixed and simmered Sporting de Portugal.
The Alvalade public, decked out for the occasion, had no choice but to eat the frog, sit down and wait for the hour of mourning that followed the 0-4 first half to pass.
A storm of dazzling actions, almost all of them successfully defined, almost all of them presided over by little Bernardo Silva, a gigantic player, bigger than ever visiting the city of his birth and the rival's field twice as a benfiquista from cradle.
SPLSp.
Portugal
0
Adán, Sebastián Coates, Gonçalo Inácio, Matheus Reis, Matheus, Ricardo Esgaio, Pedro Porro (Luís Neto, min. 82), João Palhinha, Sarabia (Bruno Tabata, min. 74), Pedro Goncalves (Manuel Ugarte, min. 50) and Paulinho (Slimani, min. 74)
MNC M. City
5
Ederson Moraes, Rúben Dias, Laporte (Aké, min. 84), Cancelo, John Stones (Zinchenko, min. 61), Bernardo Silva (Liam Delap, min. 84), Rodrigo (Fernandinho, min. 72), De Bruyne, Foden (Gündogan, min. 60), Sterling and Mahrez
Goals
0-1 min.
6: Mahrez.
0-2 min.
16: Bernardo Silva.
0-3 min.
31: Foden.
0-4 min.
43: Bernardo Silva.
0-5 min.
57: Sterling.
Referee
Srdjan Jovanović
Yellow cards Matheus (min. 65), Gündogan (min. 73), Ricardo Esgaio (min. 77) and Manuel Ugarte (min. 82)
Sporting had just won the Portuguese League for the first time in 19 years.
The move to the second round of the Champions meant the consolidation of a new project.
The party, however, barely lasted seven minutes.
It was how long it took for City to score the first goal after a move that defined the identity of Guardiola's team.
The party still had no owner.
The teams were taking action when City made a seemingly trivial play that hid a treasure.
A procedure of unparalleled subtlety and complexity today.
Mahrez threatened to overflow along the right line, played for De Bruyne in the middle and the Belgian opened to his left.
That's where Cancelo, the winger, appeared, who, in sync with Bernardo Silva, threw a ball into space through the winger's lane.
The Lisbon player, who started from the inside position, wavered on the edge of offside and broke into the void.
If his unchecking destabilized the entire defense, his pass to the penalty spot was the subject of Foden's point-blank shot, the
false nine
.
Adam put out his hand and the rejection ended in De Bruyne, who had joined the avalanche until he stepped on the bottom line.
This time, the center found Mahrez and ended in a goal.
Without a natural center forward, City have made the mobility and sense of time of their interiors the most powerful tool to delve into football.
De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva's runs towards the rival area seem expressions of superior intuition.
They are so much more.
They are the culmination of exhaustive synchronization work that has lasted for years and that in Lisbon reached a kind of apotheosis.
Sporting's framework, its three central defenders, its two pivots, its laborious wingers, broke down with a crash at each unchecking of the visiting midfielders.
The local defenders found it impossible to take the marks and the wise Palhinha did not know who to follow as Sterling moved away from his area to go to midfield and Bernardo Silva slipped into the space he left.
exhausted pivots
The 0-2 prolonged Sporting's confusion at the exit of a corner that Bernardo Silva himself spliced into the air, after a defense clearance.
By then, from the Alvalade stands,
Hey Jude
, the unofficial anthem of City fans, was rising.
The expeditionary fans did not get off the cloud.
If Sporting dug into some loophole to balance the score, after some error in the visiting circulation, the impeccable, energetic response of Laporte and Dias, broke down any possibility of rehabilitation.
Exhausted from so much wiggling, Palhinha and Matheus Nunes, Sporting's pivots couldn't reach the tilts when De Bruyne had time to send a very advantageous ball to Mahrez.
Two filigrees by the Algerian enabled Foden, who slipped behind the rigid Coates to make it 0-3.
Half an hour had passed and the tie was beginning to be resolved definitively.
Bernardo Silva was in charge of dispelling doubts when he made it 0-4 after another pass and another unchecking by Sterling, author of the assist.
Sterling himself, after the break, scored the 0-5 in a procedure whose second chapter, the one reserved for Manchester, seems totally unnecessary.
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