How to beat Sporting in Lisbon: What Manchester City must do in Champions League tie

Manchester City are the favourites to win the Champions League. Again. Consult whatever you like: expert opinion, the bookmakers or sophisticated predictive modelling by some sort of supercomputer. You get one answer. No other team has a better chance of going all the way to Saint Petersburg and winning it. No team in the last-16 can be as confident of reaching the quarter-finals either.

We have been here before though. “In the last two seasons too and we didn't win,” as Pep Guardiola pointed out on the eve of this season’s knockout stages. “We must be handsome, we must be so sexy, for people to believe we're the favourite every single season,” he joked, “but I know the reality.”

And as Guardiola is all too aware, that reality could come to bite City in Lisbon – as the first leg of a last-16 tie is expected to be more difficult in practice than on paper. This may be the first time that Sporting Clube de Portugal have been part of the Champions League knockout stages since 2009 but they have earned their place.

Under the stewardship of a bright young manager in Ruben Amorim, Sporting ended a 19-year wait for a Portuguese title last season and progressed from arguably the most competitive of the groups, edging past an Erling Haaland-powered Borussia Dortmund on goal difference to finish as runners-up behind Ajax.

And what’s more, this first leg will be played at the Estadio José Alvalade where, domestically, Sporting have lost just once in the last two seasons during Amorim’s time in charge. That defeat came only a few weeks ago, at the end of January. It was not their historic rivals Benfica or the league leaders Porto who left victorious either, but slightly more modest opponents, Braga.

“The way Sporting play is