Before kick-off there was slightly wild crackle in the air round the open stands of the King Power Stadium. “FEARLESS FOREVER” read the banner at the Kop end, either side of a huge pair of scarily bloodshot Skittles-and-vodka fox’s eyes. Leicester have promised to take an adrenal fast-forward approach to this European adventure. But for all the first-night excitement it was a moment of cold, cool execution from Riyad Mahrez that forced a 1-0 defeat of Porto their way, the high point of a fine and indeed significant performance from the Premier League’s player of the year.
For Mahrez, a Champions League run feels like a pointed test. This was, in its own way, the biggest game of his career to date: a meeting with some genuine regulars of the club football elite under pressure of expectation now, and with a continent there to be wooed.
Over the summer it was probably easier to note the days when Mahrez was not linked with a move to some Champions League uber-power. The assumption is that this is his level, that Mahrez belongs here now, that his own point of departure from Leicester will follow their own sinking back into the ranks.
Porto at home was a pretty decent test of this line of reasoning, daunting opponents for a player of Mahrez’s style and gifts, bent on producing a classic Portuguese team-smothering. Porto are a cyclical team, with a tendency to slash and burn and build again. Right now they’re in a period of retrenchment but they are still tough and canny opponents.
Mahrez has been a bit off at times this season, good in patches, but otherwise in and out. Before tonight he’d had seven shots on target and made one tackle all season in all competitions. It’s nearly October. He has, though, tended to rise rather than shrink from the occasion in the last year.
This wasn’t a real bravura, non-stop performance on an edgy and absorbing night but it was marked by moments of familiar craft and skill. Mahrez began as usual on the right of the midfield in a team who are essentially the same as the title-winning one, with one or two parts upgraded, others patched up.
His first act was to find himself jostled off the ball by a tag-team of Alex Telles and Oliver Torres. Otherwise he mooched around in those opening minutes, staying wide, lounge-lizardish in his huge luminous green boots. At times with Mahrez you half expect to look down and notice he’s playing with a Martini glass in one hand. For a while Leicester played instead through Islam Slimani. The new man is a tempting target but he won’t ferret and hustle and service the artiste on the right wing, as Shinji Okazaki did last year.
With quarter of an hour gone Leicester’s main man finally got the ball at his feet in space, beat two men and was fouled. They say Mahrez has only got one trick. But then, a trick that always works is one too many for most defenders. Plus Mahrez’s trick is the only one you really need, the basis of all tricks, the ability to change direction quicker than anyone else on the pitch, a power-to-weight miracle of balance and spring and skinny fast-twitch fibres. He used it to make the first goal here with 25 minutes gone.
First there was a lovely gossamer touch, taking a nice cross-field pass from Marc Albrighton with a back-spun trap. Then came the jink inside, making a pocket of space to cross. Even as the ball arced past him the shoulders of Porto’s right-back began to slump, the familiar you’ve-been-Mahrezed pose, another on the list of full-backs danced one way then passed the other.
The cross was perfect for Slimani, in just enough space to head home from inside the six-yard box. The Dragon Slayer, whose last act before signing for Leicester was to score against Porto for Sporting Lisbon, will take the headlines but Mahrez’s skill and vision made the goal.
After which Mahrez had one of those spells where he is suddenly unignorable. Often lightweight creative players are told to bulk up. This would be a terrible idea for Mahrez, whose litheness distinguishes him, a footballer made from the finest aluminium tubing, able to dummy and feint and spring laterally in a way that is almost impossible to track.
There was a surge through the centre that almost got him on the end of Jamie Vardy’s cross. He won a header above the vast, hulking Danilo, floating like a moth buzzing around a lamp-post and drawing a roar from the home crowd. Five minutes before half time he took the ball from Danny Drinkwater and took a first touch with the outside of his left foot that left Alex Telles whirling off blindly towards the corner flag in silent-film slapstick fashion.
Mahrez was kicked a bit more at the start of the second half, tribute in itself. Porto pressed well and might have equalised on another night. Mahrez left the field to an ovation two minutes before the end, a man with this competition quite clearly in his sights.
