Sporting 4-1 Manchester City

Well, I think this might have been unexpected or maybe not. Actually Manchester City is going through a bad run, and this is their third consecutive loss. on the other hand City has through the last years, gotten rid, quite easily, of its Portuguese rivals. As a side note I am not a Manchester City fan and actually Sporting is my favorite Portuguese team. And Sporting has not been good in European competitions for a long time. So before the game I was quite content if the game ended up in a draw.

And it started out as I thought it would, a completely dominating City, all attack and getting real chance very early in the game. Foden scored the first goal and according to what I was seeing it would be a City rout. The Sporting goalkeeper saved a lot and City missed a lot, until what must happen happened. When a team misses so many chances they have to pay for it, and a quick Sporting counterattack let them score the draw.

The second half started and the irony of football came into play, twenty seconds after Sporting moved the ball in midfield and after six passes Sporting scored their second goal. Two minutes later a penalty gave them their third goal. After this of course City controlled the ball, but Sporting were the most dangerous. Then Silva forced a penalty, clear hand ball and of all people, Haaland missed his shot hitting the crossbar. Afterwards another Sporting counter attack and another penalty scored 4-1. Let's be clear both Sporting penalties were penalties made by two very naive moves by the City defense.

After this Sporting played a much calmer game and City tried but they just did not have it in them today. I guess Guardiola must have to do a lot of thinking because something is amiss at City. There were a few other surprises today, Madrid losing at home to AC Milan and Celtic beating Leipzig. Now this was at home for Celtic so why is it a surprise at least to me? First of all Celtic is my favorite Scottish team so i follow them a lot and I have grown used to seeing them bottling up at home in European games so i expected the same today. after all Leipzig is quite a good team, but no, they won 3-1 and from what I have seen it could have been more.

Well, this makes predicting who will go on to the next round much more difficult, it seems anything can happen.