And with that, I’m done. Here once again is our match report. Bye!
As well as tonight’s other Champions League reports …
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Here’s Pep!
We saw the results today, how difficult is the Champions League, it’s a special competition. We make an incredible, serious game, we defended really well and created chances. But big congratulations, to start with three points away is so important. Now it’s in our hands, if we win our games at home we’ll be in the last 16.
I know when we win the manager always makes the right decisions, and when we lose always the wrong decisions. If people think I’m going to doubt these players, what they have done especially in the last two seasons, we lost one game in the last eight months in the Premier League, if people think I’m going to doubt who they are, how they compete in every single game, in all the competitions ... It’s a joy to be their manager.
And a little bit on Fernandinho, the centre-back:
We don’t have many choices. I think he’s the only one I have. Other players can play in that position but I think Fernandinho is a clever player, so intelligent and an incredible guy. He did well. He has a lot of experience and personality, and the people follow him in the locker room.
Not totally Group C-relevant, but Sid Lowe was at the Wanda Metropolitano to watch a cracker between Atletico Madrid and Juventus:
Elsewhere in Group C it finished Dinamo Zagreb 4-0 Atalanta. Atalanta had more possession, as many corners and drew 13-13 on shots, but were nevertheless thrashed on actual goals.
I still think Shakhtar should have had a penalty, even though literally nobody but me has mentioned the incident since it happened. Had the home side scored to make it 1-1 or 2-1, everything might have been different. Once City went three up, though, the game was over and everybody knew it, as the players demonstrated over a lacklustre final quarter-hour.
Jamie Jackson was in Donetsk for this one:
In the context of a defensive crisis caused by injuries to centre-backs Aymeric Laporte and John Stones, this was a particularly fine display from Manchester City. Pep Guardiola’s team might have claimed victory in this opening Group C game by double the score and there was little beyond the usual alarms expected at this level to concern a patched-up rearguard.
Much more here:
Ilkay Gundogan and Fernandinho have chats with BT Sport. The top line is that Fernandinho has been training as a centre-back since the start of the season, with City’s lack of depth in that position obvious. Here are some highlights from Gundogan:
We played quite well I think. Obviously when you score the first goal away it always helps you, but we never relaxed, we kept the ball quite well and created a lot of chances. We could have scored a few more goals. But I think the third goal killed the game, and luckily for us we were able to play it down, the last 15 or 20 minutes. I think it was necessary to respond [after Norwich], all of us individually and also as a team. They created also good chances, but we were solid at the back.
And here’s Fernandinho:
Of course it was a quiet night, but I think the team made a very good game. We played as a team and I think we deserved the result, because we created a lot of chances. I’ve been training in this position since the beginning of the season and of course Pep knows everything about our squad, our team, and when he needs everybody should be ready. Today was my time, my opportunity.
And no less eloquent, here are some match stats:
The numerical tale of a dominant opening to our @ChampionsLeague campaign.
— Manchester City (@ManCity) September 18, 2019
🔶 0-3 🔵 #ManCity #UCL pic.twitter.com/8MK8qFSTbX
Final score: Shakhtar Donetsk 0-3 Manchester City
90+3 mins: It’s all over! City’s Champions League campaign starts in style!
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90+1 mins: Into stoppage time. There’ll be a couple of minutes of it. Mendy gets down the left, and his driven cross is turned behind.
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87 mins: The match is about as limp as a three-week-old balloon at present. City may yet score a fourth, but only because Shakhtar have stopped trying to stop them scoring even more emphatically than they’ve stopped trying to score.
84 mins: Mendy slots in at left-back, while Zinchenko moves to defensive midfield.
83 mins: City make their final change, and Benjamin Mendy comes on to make his first first-team appearance since the spring, replacing Rodri.
81 mins: Kyle Walker leaves the field, and João Cancelo enters it.
80 mins: Shakhtar look a decent side, full of technical players, but their performance has had nothing like the kind of intensity they would need to truly worry City.
77 mins: City bring Bernardo Silva on for De Bruyne.
GOAL! Shakhtar 0-3 Man City (Jesus, 76 mins)
The third goal finally arrives, as City convert a three-on-one break! De Bruyne collects a clearance, with Mahrez to his right, Jesus to his left and Matviyenko straight ahead, basically irrelevant. He goes left, and Jesus carries the ball to the edge of the area before sidefooting past Pyatov!
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75 mins: Shakhtar bring Marcos Antônio on, replacing Alan Patrick.
71 mins: Dinamo Zagreb now lead Atalanta by four goals. City should still be ahead of them in the table, but they haven’t been clinical enough to turn this evening into the massive goal-difference booster it might have been.
69 mins: Shakhtar threaten, but under no pressure Bolbat overhits his pass to Taison, and the ball rolls out of play.
68 mins: Another one for the stats: De Bruyne cuts onto his left foot and shoots a couple of yards wide of the far post.
67 mins: City have had 16 shots to Shakhtar’s five, but only four of those have been on target.
65 mins: It is now three minutes since City nearly scored.
62 mins: City come close again. De Bruyne crosses; the keeper comes out to challenge Otamendi but neither gets anything on it and the ball goes through to Sterling, who is narrowly offside.
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61 mins: The traffic at the moment is entirely of the one way variety.
58 mins: Gundogan and Sterling combine to miss an unmissable chance! De Bruyne passes to Sterling, and the last defender flies out to intercept, misses and leaves the two City players to run through on goal. Gundogan takes control, but his first touch is overstrong and Pyatov gets out in time to fling a leg in the way of his attempted square pass.
56 mins: It is inconceivable that City will fail to score another goal here.
53 mins: Chance for City! And another! Gundogan intercepts a pass, runs to the edge of the area and then shoots at the keeper with Sterling unmarked to his left! The ball rebounds to Kryvtsov, who shows Gundogan what he should have done by passing straight to Sterling, whose first touch leaves him with an unpromising angle, from which he hits the post!
52 mins: Jesus has a shot, but it’s easily saved, and he was anyway offside.
50 mins: What’s Ederson up to here? Shakhtar toss the ball down the inside left channel towards Moraes, and the City keeper sprints out of his area for absolutely no good reason. The forward gets there first, and with Ederson desperately backtracking has the straightforward task of lifting the ball into the empty net. He fluffs it.
48 mins: City push and probe. They pass the ball to the left, they pass it to the right, they pass it back and they pass it forward again. Finally Sterling decides they’ve done enough passing, dribbles into the area and is dispossessed.
46 mins: Peeeeeeep! They’re off! Again!
The players trot out for the second half, the home fans loudly whistling the away side. Yevhen Konoplyanka comes on at the interval, in place of Manor Solomon.
Anyone who has played Pro Evolution Football in the last few years will find this match, commentated as it is, at least in the UK, by Jim Beglin and Peter Drury, really quite confusing.
Matt Bianco’s finest hour (warning: contains some cursing):
@Simon_Burnton and now I’ve got Matt Bianco’s classic saturday morning appearance in my headhttps://t.co/qFIoNVdDnY
— Rory T (@RoryThorp) September 18, 2019
So far so comfortable for City, then. Shakhtar have threatened a couple of times, but the visitors are by a margin the better team. Talking of comfortable superiority, in tonight’s other Group C game Dinamo Zagreb lead Atalanta 3-0. They have only had three shots on target.
@Simon_Burnton and now I’ve got Matt Bianco’s classic saturday morning appearance in my headhttps://t.co/qFIoNVdDnY
— Rory T (@RoryThorp) September 18, 2019
Half time: Shakhtar Donetsk 0-2 Manchester City
45+2 mins: City repeatedly threaten a third in the final seconds of the half, but De Bruyne’s shot is blocked, Alan Patrick’s clearance is hit straight into a blue shirt, then Sterling curls an effort wide.
45+1 mins: Into stoppage time, of which only one minute is expected. Jesus is played through, but Pyatov comes out to get in the way, and he’s also offside.
44 mins: Another chance for Shakhtar! Taison picks him out with a wonderful curling pass, but with Ederson advancing he doesn’t have time to control, and by the time he realises that the opportunity for a first-time shot has gone as well!
42 mins: Nearly a third! Zinchenko nicks the ball at left-back and passes to Jesus, who finds De Bruyne, who bursts towards the area before curling a shot past Pyatov and into the side netting! That break was brilliantly swift and all-round great, just lacking the coup de grace.
41 mins: Absolutely nobody has mentioned that Fernandinho challenge. There was no appeal from Moraes. It was as penaltyey a penalty as you’ll ever see.
GOAL! Shakhtar 0-2 Man City (Gundogan, 38 mins)
And three minutes later, City double their lead! This time Mahrez sets up Gundogan, and he beats Pyatov at the near post.
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35 mins: An instant after Moraes shot the ball there, he was absolutely destroyed by Fernandinho, who flew in with a sliding challenge so late it was practically posthumous. I have absolutely no idea how that wasn’t a penalty.
35 mins: What a chance for Shakhtar! Tyson’s pass finds Moraes, who with nobody but Ederson to beat shoots right into the keeper!
33 mins: Shakhtar are doing OK here. They’re still playing the ball out of defence, despite their commitment to doing so having led to the goal, and they’re moving it nicely to the vicinity of City’s penalty area. They’re yet to get into it, mind, and City continue to threaten.
29 mins: Rodri is booked, for bringing Ismaily down from behind.
28 mins: Replays show the ball very nearly going out for a corner/goal kick twice in the build-up to the goal. Indeed, perhaps it crossed the line. In an unexpected twist, Sterling gives away a free-kick by fouling Bolbat.
GOAL! Shakhtar 0-1 Man City (Mahrez, 24 mins)
City take the lead! They win the ball back on the right, just outside Shakhtar’s area, and it’s swiftly worked into the middle. Gundogan’s shot hits a post and rebounds to Mahrez, who taps in!
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22 mins: Chance! Gundogan passes to Jesus, inside the area, who cuts onto his right foot, cuts a little further, and then shoots wide, off a defender.
20 mins: Sterling excellently closes down a defender, forcing him into a loose pass that Rodri intercepts. He releases Sterling down the left, whose cross seems to be heading for De Bruyne’s forehead for a tap-in until Matt Bianco gets a slight touch on it.
17 mins: Gundogan dispossesses Bolbat on the City left, leaving the defender on the ground and rolling around in swiftly-overcome-once-the-referee-ignores-him agony, but the City player’s pull-back to Sterling is overhit, and by the time Sterling controls it he has been closed down.
15 mins: Walker spanks a useless shot from way too far out well wide.
12 mins: Shakhtar threaten for the first time, but after causing a bit of panic in the City defence Marlos curls a long-range shot wide.
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10 mins: Mahrez curls a left-foot cross from the right straight out of play. Jim Beglin, on co-commentary duties for BT Sport, remarks that Mahrez often gets “a bit of swazz on it, and there was a bit too much on it then”. Swazz?
9 mins: Are there any other children of the 1980s out there who find themselves unable to hear the name of the Shakhtar defender Matvyenko without thinking of this lot?
7 mins: Bolbat concedes another free kick, in a very similar position to the first, but City can’t make anything of this one.
5 mins: A fine start from City, who have dominated these opening exchanges. Shakhtar have the ball as I type, though they haven’t been able to get it out of their own half.
1 min: Chance! The free-kick is lifted into the area, and Rodri runs clear of the defence but somehow loses track of the ball, which hits him on the side of the head.
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1 min: Peeeeep! They’re off! And Bolbat concedes a free-kick and gets a ticking off from the referee inside nine seconds.
Shakhtar are going to kick off, any moment now.
And out they come! As the crowd hold up orange and black plastic sheety things in a vaguely impressive display.
The players are in the tunnel, where Oleksandr Zinchenko and Fernandinho are both getting lots of nudges and handshakes from former team-mates.
Pep Guardioa has a pre-match chat about City’s defensive headaches:
It is what it is. Football, you don’t live normally with ideal situations. What happened happened. We are sad for the players that are out but we have to push forward with the players that we have. We believe Dinho is ready, he can play there and I’m pretty sure he will do well.
This is the third successive season of Manchester City v Shakhtar Donetsk Champions League group-stage fixtures. In 2017 Shakhtar won 2-1 at home and lost 2-0 away, but last year was less auspicious: City won 3-0 away, and 6-0 at home.
If you’re wondering what fans eat on their way to games in Ukraine, wonder no more: sausages. Lots of sausages.
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Here are the teams again in text form, for those unable to see embedded tweets:
Shakhtar Donetsk: Pyatov, Bolbat, Kryvtsov, Matvyenko, Ismaily, Alan Patrick, Stepanenko, Marlos, Taison, Solomon, Moraes. Subs: Shevchenko, Butko, Marcos Antonio, Dentinho, Konoplyanka, Kovalenko, Bondar.
Man City: Ederson, Walker, Fernandinho, Otamendi, Zinchenko, Gundogan, Rodri, De Bruyne, Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus, Sterling. Subs: Bravo, Aguero, Bernardo Silva, Silva, Mendy, Joao Cancelo, Garcia.
Referee: Artur Soraes Dias (Portugal).
Here’s an interesting thing: all players are shown an instructional video before every Champions League game, a bit like the one you get on an aeroplane before it takes off. And this is what it looks like:
Are you ready for your #UCL debut? You’ll need to watch this first...
— UEFA (@UEFA) September 18, 2019
This is the pre-match briefing video, given to all players and team officials in UEFA competitions.
We hope you enjoy a pleasant match! pic.twitter.com/JhbcUkkw9C
The teams!
The team sheets are in, and as expected Fernandinho is in Manchester City’s starting XI:
🚨 TEAM NEWS 🚨 Taison in the starting XI!
— FC SHAKHTAR ENGLISH (@FCShakhtar_eng) September 18, 2019
⚒ Our player list for the @ChampionsLeague campaign opener #ShakhtarManCity. #UCL
Follow the game online: https://t.co/Ics9FZdfMM. pic.twitter.com/fp9mupp2Ox
How we line-up in Kharkiv! 🙌
— Manchester City (@ManCity) September 18, 2019
XI | Ederson, Walker, Otamendi, Fernandinho (C), Zinchenko, Gundogan, Rodrigo, De Bruyne, Mahrez, Sterling, Jesus
Subs | Bravo, Aguero, Bernardo, Silva, Mendy, Cancelo, E Garcia
🔵 #ManCity #UCL pic.twitter.com/0Psh7eR9ML
Hello world!
Next step for Pep Guardiola and his dwindling band of self-destructing defenders is Donetsk. With John Stones joining Aymeric Laporte on the treatment table, Nicolas Otamendi is the last fit senior centre-half in the squad, a particularly unhealthy state of affairs. Fernandinho, who joined City from Shakhtar six years ago having moved to the Ukraine fully 14 years back as a sprightly 20-year-old, is expected to partner the Argentinian for the next six weeks, though given the size and quality of City’s academy there’s a chance that Guardiola will pick from his pool of players at the other end of their careers instead, with the 18-year-old Spaniard Eric Garcia at the front of the queue.
What City would probably want to avoid in the circumstances is a team that has plundered 13 goals in their last three games, but that is their challenge this evening, against a side that leads the Ukrainian Premier League by seven points after seven games (last season they won the league by just 11 points after 32 matches, so they’re on course to triple that victory margin). Júnior Moraes has scored seven in his last six appearances, games in which time Marlos has snaffled five. Both are Brazilian-born, but now Ukrainian citizens. Of course this is a competition in which you can lose (the occasional game) and still win (the big pot), so nobody needs to get too stressed, but this could turn out to be quite fun. Here’s Nick Ames on Shakhtar’s samba-scented squad:
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