Man City 'turn fairytale into reality' as UEFA watches on nervously

There wasn't a huge amount of enthusiasm from the first week of UEFA's shiny new competition.

Rodri, fresh from winning the best player at the European Championship, used a press conference before Manchester City's opening game with Inter to suggest that players were close to striking over the increasingly unreasonable demands on their bodies. Not long after that, he suffered a cruciate ligament injury that has already ended his campaign.

City's match, a re-run of the 2023 final, was an even contest but lacking in the jeopardy that the new revamped competition is meant to bring. Other high profile matches such as Atalanta vs Arsenal were similar, while elsewhere Bayern thrashed Dinamo Zagreb 9-2 in one of the biggest mismatches.

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So it continued this week. City slapped Slovan Bratislava for four in what could easily have been double, Dortmund beat Celtic 7-1, Inter won by four and Barcelona won by five.

UEFA have promised more jeopardy from the new format, yet the final round in January feels like a long way away with little sign that the drama will deliver. Will the first eight spots be decided by how much the biggest clubs can batter everybody else by?

Quite possibly, but spending a few days in Bratislava was to see the competition through the eyes of a club a world away from a superclub. Slovan are in the group stage for the first time in their history, and are the first Slovakian team there for 14 years.

In their press conference before the game, the achievement was talked about not just in terms of their country but also