Bernardo Silva crushes Sporting hopes inside 90 seconds of Man City Champions League fixture

Sporting cannot have had anything but the faintest hope that they would qualify for the Champions League quarter-finals, yet they must have thought they could maybe catch Manchester City out on the night. Pep Guardiola's team have shown before they can very easily lose when they are so sure of victory that they begin concentrating on other matches and competitions.

That glimmer of opportunity that Sporting arrived with was crushed by Bernardo Silva within the opening 90 seconds though. As goalkeeper Antonio Adan looked to roll the ball to one of two defenders stationed in his area to get the team moving, he was instead paralysed as every time he went to throw it Bernardo looked ready to pounce like a rottweiler and intercept.

All the professionalism that Guardiola had called for was right there in those opening seconds, extinguishing any hope Sporting had of even a minor win.

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CJ Egan-Riley was the one City youngster picked to start in the team, filling in at right-back given the unavailability of both Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo. The 19-year-old did not look out of place in the side, showing his tactical intelligence and technical quality to move up and inside when City had the ball and move up and outside on the right flank whenever Gabriel Jesus went in.

The biggest compliment for him were that his more senior teammates seemed quite happy to give him the ball whenever he was open. It may have been a fairly meaningless game in terms of the result, but they were valuable minutes for the teenager.

A sellout crowd were largely starved of entertainment in a drab night at the Etihad to follow the highs of a derby day thumping, yet the