Kolkata: The last time Manchester City lost thrice in succession, the Champions League didn’t know Erling Haaland, MS Dhoni was calibrating – successfully, mostly – India’s chase in white ball cricket, Elon Musk was far from having an outsize influence on US presidential elections and because he didn’t own Twitter, it wasn’t called X. The last time City lost by three goals was more recent and that was over four years ago.
Which shows why Rúben Amorim, responsible for the coming together of these unusual events, was someone Manchester United coveted. Two league titles, the first ending a 19-year wait, with the promise of retaining it going into the season – something Sporting CP hadn’t been able to since 1954 – his preferred 3-4-3 system helping a team improve for four straight years, Amorim had quite the reputation as coach. One he significantly enhanced after beating City 4-1 on Tuesday.
Amorim was quick to say that the result meant nothing, that it was a one-off. And you need to look no further than Andre Villas-Boas or even Erik ten Hag to realise that promise doesn’t always match performance. But before his final home match, the 39-year-old had also said he could be called the “new Ferguson” should Sporting win. Five years younger than Alex Ferguson was when the Scot was handed a club listing this perilously, Amorim’s statement will now be embraced even more tightly by supporters of a club not good enough to be part of European elite.
Viktor Gyökeres’s hat-trick came on the night Haaland was the second-best Scandinavian striker. The Swede’s feat sent City to their first hat-trick of defeats since 2018 and with a result they hadn’t had since Leicester won 5-2 in September 2020. In 2018, when City lost to Manchester United and to Liverpool in the Champions League quarter-final, they were all but assured of the Premier League title. In 2020, Jamie Vardy may have got a hat-trick for Leicester in the league but the title was City’s.
Premier League may have a similar ending this time as well, this defeat a minor bump in Europe. Injuries will heal meaning 19-year-old Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, left trailing in Gyökeres’s wake for the equaliser, is unlikely to be the first choice as centre-back, Rico Lewis as right-back and Matheus Nunes as wide left. Ruben Dias, John Stones, Jack Grealish will return as will Kevin de Bruyne. Reviving a walking-wounded City is the sort of challenge, Pep Guardiola has said he likes.
Such is Rodri’s ability to influence a game that the midfield metronome’s unavailability due to injury could impact City’s season but this is not the team Amorim’s Manchester United is likely to face away on December 15.
Still, at Lisbon’s Estádio José Alvalade, City began as City can. Hidemasa Morita was swarmed by three City players, one of them, Phil Foden, nicking the ball and scoring. By the 28th minute it could have been 3-0, by the 30th Haaland could have got a hat-trick. Bernardo Silva shanked his shot after a slick Foden flick and Haaland’s header after a move involving Mateo Kovačić, Lewis and Savinho led to one of their 11 corner-kicks (Sporting had one in the match). A defeat, similar to when City beat Amorim’s Sporting 5-0, loomed.
Two goals early in the second half, the first after 19 seconds, Sporting taking their chances in the way City did not, shifted the momentum. Maximiliano Araujo made it 2-1 after a neat exchange and a smart run and when Josko Gvardiol pushed Francisco Trincao, it was 3-1 from Gyökeres’s penalty. Haaland crashed his penalty, awarded after Ousmane Diamande’s handball, into the horizontal, Gyökeres didn’t after Nunes fouled Geny Catamo and City’s 26-match unbeaten run in the Champions League ended. Swede dreams are made of these. Obrigado, Rúben Amorim, Sporting expressed their thank you through a tifo with the trophies he had won for them, titles that had stitched the gap between the club and Benfica and Porto.
Amorim had done this while shifting some 30 players in his first year. A €100m buy-out clause kept Gyökeres (66 goals and 19 assists in 67 matches including 23 goals in 17 matches this term) at the club which grew even as Abdul Fatawu, Pedro Porro, Mateus Fernandes, Youssef Chermiti and Nunes were sold. Amorim is headed to a club whose list of players needing to be shipped begins with Antony and stretches up to Zirkzee. Go back further and you can add Marouane Fellaini, Angel di Maria, Juan Mata, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Daley Blind. The problem has been endemic since Ferguson left.
“We cannot transport one reality to another,” Amorim has said. United also cannot let opponents have nearly 73% of the ball like City did, Amorim has accepted. “We will start from a low level, and we will improve the team,” he said. It is a task that has overwhelmed many including the Special One. Amorim said his replacement will inherit a strong foundation. Time was when the same could be said of Manchester United.