Righty ho, I’ll be off then. Here’s the match report again. Bye!
Pep Guardiola has a chat. He says news on Fernandinho is bad: “He has a muscular problem in the place where he was injured. We need everyone, it will be a big loss, but it’s happened. With this calendar it’s happened.” Also:
They defend so deep. Physically they are so strong. Well organised. The last 10, 15 minutes of the first half and especially the second half we played really well, we didn’t concede anything and we created chances. A good start for us. We know in this competition the games at home you need to win. Second half we controlled it, and we won the game.
Jamie Jackson has filed his match report from the Etihad Stadium:
When required Manchester City moved into high-gear, pulling away from Porto as the second half wore on. For that Pep Guardiola deserves credit for a double substitution that introduced Phil Foden and Ferran Torres, the pair combining within minutes for the latter’s decisive third goal. It meant City began their campaign in fine fashion and in a Group C also featuring Olympiakos and Marseille will surely be hard to stop.
Much more here:
Elsewhere in Group C Ahmed Hassan scored a stoppage-time header to give Olympiacos a 1-0 home win over Marseille, and as a result the table looks like this:
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Man City | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2 | Olympiacos | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| 3 | Marseille | 1 | -1 | 0 |
| 4 | FC Porto | 1 | -2 | 0 |
Gundogan is however a little bit worried about injuries and whatnot:
If I’m being honest we are struggling a little bit, because now Fernandinho went off in the last minute, we have players that are in different conditions, I am not at 100% yet because I was out with Covid for a couple of weeks. We are all at different moments and I think that’s the challenge this season. But we have enough players who have the quality to play. I think in phases it’s not going to be difficult for Pep to choose the XI.
Ilkay Gundogan is wearing a grin:
Obviously at the end we’re happy that we won it. We struggled at different periods of the game. In periods we played quite well and in periods we can improve, and in the end the most important thing is we have the three points.
On his goal:
I have to admit I don’t practice [free-kicks] a lot but there are certain distances where I feel comfortable with a free-kick and that was the perfeft distance for me. I had a discussion with Raheem and then I was quite confident to take it.
It was not City’s finest performance, but they cashed a three-point cheque and that’s very much all that matters. The Ferran Torres goal added a bit of gloss to proceedings, and in the last 10 minutes they could have got a couple more as Porto threw caution and an sense of defensive solidity to the wind.
Final score: Manchester City 3-1 Porto
90+5 mins: Peeeeeeep! Manchester City put three points in the Champions League bank!
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90+4 mins: Stones replaces Fernandinho, who came on, got booked, got injured and got substituted in the space of seven minutes.
90+2 mins: Fernandinho goes down, with what appears to be a muscular injury sustained in reaching for the ball.
90+2 mins: Bernardo Silva pulls back for Ferran Torres, who tries to control the ball before shooting and controls it a bit too well, so the ball stays where he was as he keeps running into the area.
90+1 mins: There will be three bonus minutes at the end of this half.
90 mins: Another yellow card, for Fernandinho’s foul on Evanilson.
86 mins: That Rodri shot came after the ball broke to him in midfield. The referee raised his whistle to his lips having spotted a foul on Foden, but before he could blow Rodri lashed in a shot from 35 yards or so, which Marchesin tipped onto the woodwork.
85 mins: Sterling goes down under Pepe’s challenge, and the Porto captain leans in to scream his disapproval, and then knees Sterling in the chest for good measure. It’s pretty poor form, particularly given that Pepe himself was responsible for the game’s most unlikely dive.
84 mins: Porto have brought on lots of substitutes and lost shape, focus and organisation, and it looks very unlikely to pay off for them.
83 mins: Rodri hits the post from downtown! It’s all going on now!
82 mins: What a chance for Mahrez! Nanu loses the ball to Sterling in his own half, and he runs towards the area, draws both Pepe and Mbemba and plays in Mahrez, but the keeper saves his shot!
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81 mins: Sterling takes the ball off Pepe and accelerates into the area, but his pull-back isn’t perfect for Mahrez, who dummies, or for Foden, who can’t control.
80 mins: One last change for Porto, as Evanilson comes on for Sarr.
78 mins: City do a pretty poor job of playing the ball out of defence, leading to Marega getting a free shot from 25 yards, which sails over the bar. “A former Newcastle player coming good after leaving the club?” writes Robert Lin of Mbemba. “Not much surprise at all really. Remember Jon Dahl Tomasson?”
77 mins: Porto bring on Nanu and Shoya Nakajima and take off Jesus Corona and Sanusi.
75 mins: Fabio Vieira is down and doing some concerted wailing and rolling, after Foden nicked the ball off his toes and nicked a bit of ankle as well. He does look in some discomfort, to be fair.
GOAL! Manchester City 3-1 Porto (Ferran Torres, 73 mins)
Lovely goal! Foden plays a nice pass infield from the left, between two defenders for Torres, who cuts inside Pepe and hits an excellent shot into the far corner!
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71 mins: Porto have defended excellently, which is why City have only managed to convert their 66% possession into three shots on target, two of which came from a penalty and a free-kick. Chencel Mbemba has been outstanding, which might surprise a few Newcastle supporters.
68 mins: City make their first changes, bringing Ferran Torres and Phil Foden on and taking off Gundogan and Aguero.
67 mins: Garcia slips as he tries to tackle Marega, and is booked for it. He still got the ball, and barely touched the Porto player, but this referee really likes booking people and hasn’t booked anyone for a while.
GOAL! Manchester City 2-1 Porto (Gundogan, 65 mins)
And Gundogan curls it into the net! There’s so much goal-acreage to aim for here, given Marchesin’s positioning. He only needs to get it over the wall and down again with a modicum of pace, and though the ball is nowhere near the post, it’s also nowhere near the keeper!
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64 mins: Garcia gives the ball away with a really rubbish pass straight to Vieira, but the Porto player’s instant long ball hits a City player and rebounds to Gundogan, and Vieira then fouls him. City have an excellent shooting chance here.
61 mins: Manafa plays a lovely one-two with Fabio Vieira and runs into space on the right. He looks up, assesses his options, and then hit a useless cross which is easily cleared.
59 mins: Walker screams down the right before sending in a low cross that bounces through to Aguero, but it’s behind the Argentinian who has to turn and control, and he sends the ball spinning up into his arm. There’s a whiff of goal in the air, though.
58 mins: City win a free kick, which Gundogan curls into the area very nicely. Rodri wins the header, but the ball floats wide.
57 mins: Sterling is playing a lot more central in the second half, but isn’t seeing a lot of the ball. Bernardo Silva sends in a cross, but it’s just too high for him.
55 mins: The night’s first substitution sees the Porto goalscorer, Luis Diaz, withdrawn and Wilson Manafa come on.
53 mins: Walker goes to ground in an attempt to cut out a pass to Luis Diaz but gets nothing on it, and the winger runs into the penalty area and then tries to take on a few defenders, and loses the ball to Rodri.
49 mins: There’s a second shot on target (probably)! Bernardo Silva’s cross is headed to the edge of the area, where Gundogan runs onto it and curls a half-volley towards the far post only for Marchesin to dive to his left and push it away!
48 mins: Kyle Walker very nearly runs into trouble in his own penalty area, sprinting across it with the ball and coming a foot or two away from losing it to Fabio Vieira.
46 mins: Peeeeep! The second half has begun. City have only had one shot on target so far, and needed a penalty to get that. Surely they will find a cutting edge at some point?
The players are back out, and both sides are unchanged for now.
“Kyle Walker is going to get himself sent off,” soothsays Jesse. “This game will not end with 22 men.” This may well be true. I fear our Latvian referee has made life a bit difficult for himself with his excessive card-waving in half one.
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Half time: Manchester City 1-1 Porto
45+3 mins: That’s all for now! It’s been a bit chaotic, but is intriguingly poised at the break. Pepe has a whinge to the officials on his way to the tunnel, though it’s very hard to see what he’s got to complain about.
45+1 mins: There will be about three minutes of stoppage time.
44 mins: Pepe executes a ridiculous dive, after feeling the limp palm of Joao Cancelo brush his back. He wants a penalty, but doesn’t get one.
43 mins: Goalline clearance! Marega is played in to the right of goal, and his shot hits Ederson and at least one other player, and is heading towards goal when Walker gets in the way.
41 mins: Sanusi and Walker jump for the ball. No issue with either challenge, but Sanusi goes down and rolls around a bit. It’s almost as if Porto think the referee is a yellow-card vending machine, and have decided they can get someone sent off here.
40 mins: City get the ball to Mahrez, who feints this way and that, works it onto his left foot, and then shoots straight into Sarr’s ankles.
39 mins: A good spell for City, who earn several good crossing opportunities without quite delivering a good cross. It ends with the referee giving another foul, against Rodri this time. City are starting to get a bit upset by some of these decisions.
36 mins: And another booking, this time Cancelo nobbles Marega in the head with a leading elbow as he leaps for a header.
34 mins: Another booking, this time for Bernardo Silva, who runs past Luis Diaz as he executed an unexpected spin and is run into. Really, not in any way a yellow card offence.
33 mins: Ederson dives to his left to collect Sanusi’s low cross. Meanwhile on the edge of the area Aguero runs into Rodri, and both go down for a while.
31 mins: City pass the ball around their defence for ages. Rodri occasionally gets the ball, before passing it back again.
28 mins: Kyle Walker gets booked for a foul on Marega. The referee waved play on, allowing Porto to put a decent attack together which ended when a chipped pass to Corona ran out of play.
26 mins: There is a pleasingly chaotic feel to this game. Even the computer-generated crowd seems excited about it.
22 mins: Chance for Porto! A goal kick is played short, passed back to Ederson, and he then hits a terrible pass intended for Rodri that runs instead to Uribe, who with the goalkeeper out of position and all sorts of options blasts way over the bar from 22 yards!
GOAL! Man City 1-1 Porto (Aguero, 20 mins)
Marchesin goes the right way and gets something on it, but the ball hits the bottom of his arm and bounces past him and up into the roof of the net!
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20 mins: It is a penalty! Sergio Aguero places the ball on the spot...
19 mins: The VAR is having a good old look at this. Potentially complicating things is the fact that Gundogan’s boot skidded over Marchesin’s shin as he tried to work a shooting chance. It looked accidental, but this could go either way.
Penalty to Manchester City!
17 mins: Chaos in the Porto penalty area! The ball bobbles to Gundogan, who brings it under control and shoots against the post! The ball rebounds to Sterling, and Pepe runs over and barges straight into him!
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GOAL! Man City 0-1 Porto (Luis Diaz, 14 mins)
The second shot of the game is also from the right boot of Luis Diaz, and it’s an absolute cracker! He runs from the halfway line, down the left, infield, further infield, pass Rodri’s half-hearted challenge, past Cancelo’s quarter-hearted challenge, and now from the right of goal and a couple of yards inside the penalty area rifles a low shot back across goal and in at the far post!
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13 mins: The first shot of the game comes from the right boot of Luis Diaz, but it’s a bit hurried and also a bit rubbish.
10 mins: Now Rodri plays the ball over the defence towards Mahrez, but Sarr this time gets in the way, and then throws himself to the floor and wins a free kick.
9 mins: Nearly a thing! Cancelo passes towards Sterling, who is bursting into the penalty area, but Mbemba does well to get in the way and stop the Englishman reaching the ball.
5 mins: Marega gets the ball on the left for Porto. Walker in front of him plants himself to block any cross. Marega decides to just hit the ball off the Englishman and win a corner, but misses. Goal kick.
3 mins: City are hogging the ball in the early exchanges, but are yet to achieve anything significant with it.
1 min: Peeeeeep! Action!
The players are no longer in the tunnel. They are now on the pitch.
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The players are in the tunnel. Raheem Sterling, City’s captain tonight, is clutching the souvenir pennant.
“The commentator on the broadcast I’m watching just mentioned that Porto have played in England 20 times for European competition ... and have never won, not even once,” notes James Wayne. Well, nearly: this is their 20th game in England, and they have lost 16 of the previous 19, drawing the other three. At home against English sides they have won eight of 19, dawn six and lost five.
Pep Guardiola has a pre-match chat. Not much of any great import, if truth be told, but of his team changes he says that “Nathan [Ake] had a niggle in the groin, was not fully fit” and that Ilkay “Gundogan, we decided for him”.
Ruben Dias has phenomenally good English. Earlier today I spoke to (well, was on a Zoom call with) another foreign-born centre-back who has been in England for more than three years and could barely string a sentence together. Clearly it’s not disastrous to have only basic English, and nobody scores goals with their linguistic ability, but call me impressed. “Obviously I know them well and I will try my best to make the team aware of what we are up against,” he says of Porto. “They are a good team, a really physical team, so we will just have to be on our top game.”
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So Manchester City have more Portuguese-born players in their starting XI than Porto, winning that particular battle 3-2 (Pepe was born in Brazil, you see).
The teams!
The team sheets are in, and the all-important names are these:
Man City: Ederson, Walker, Dias, Garcia, Joao Cancelo, Bernardo Silva, Rodri, Gundogan, Mahrez, Aguero, Sterling. Subs: Stones, Zinchenko, Steffen, Torres, Fernandinho, Carson, Foden, Nmecha, Doyle, Harwood-Bellis, Palmer, Bernabe.
Porto: Marchesin, Mbemba, Pepe, Sarr, Corona, Sergio Oliveira, Uribe, Sanusi, Vieira, Diaz, Marega. Subs: Grujic, Diogo Leite, N’Diaye, Taremi, Nakajima, Manafa, Baro, Felipe Anderson, Martinez, Evanilson, Nanu, Costa.
Referee: Andris Treimanis (Latvia).
Hello world!
Another year, another tilt at the great unwinnable for Manchester City and Pep Guardiola. The group draw looks to have been pretty gentle for them, with Marseille (sixth in Ligue 1 after seven games), Olympiacos (second in the Greek Super League, albeit with a game in hand) and Porto (a distant second in Portugal’s Primeira Liga, having lost 2-3 at home to Maritimo earlier this month before drawing 2-2 at Sporting) their Group C rivals, but then group stages haven’t been much of an issue for them anyway, certainly under Pep Guardiola.
Their issue has been quarter-finals, and we’ve got a long time to wait until anyone needs to worry about those. The good news? “I have the feeling we are close,” Guardiola said, when asked about his team’s Champions League potential. The bad news? “Every season when I analyse when we go out, I have the feeling we are close.” Oh.
Guardiola’s press conference yesterday made it sound like the entire competition has become a bit of a millstone for City, a breeding ground for inferiority and dismay. “I felt so responsible for how the club felt, all the players, I was not able to drive them and I still right now feel so responsible,” he said of last season’s elimination at the hands of Lyon.
“But watching the games we have to accept the reality that we were not good enough. We did not play bad, we played some real good moments but we sometimes made mistakes and in this competition you cannot do it. We did not perform at the level you have to perform to get through. We have to accept it with humility. When we accept this, it’s the best way to improve and to accept the new challenge. We will start from zero again knowing we have to improve.”
So, here they are, starting from zero again knowing they have to improve. Let’s see how they do, shall we?
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