Mbappe talk will dominate but Man City are phenomenal

Manchester City were sensational against Sporting Lisbon; it will be dismissed but it shouldn’t be.

In youth football on a Sunday morning, struggling teams are allowed to bring on an extra child when the deficit stretches to four goals. It can make the game look faintly ludicrous but it rarely staunches the flow of goals as the excess player largely just gets in their teammates’ way. It’s never quite the advantage that the rule-makers envisaged, particularly when the gap stretches to 12 goals and eight hapless players are literally falling over each other’s feet as five far, far better footballers continue to mark every single goal with a relentlessly enthusiastic ‘Siuu’ celebration.

Sporting could have brought on one, two or even three more accomplished, professional footballers on Tuesday night and Manchester City could not have been stopped from gleefully waltzing through their defence, seemingly playing a different version of the sport to anybody else in Europe. Yes, we could talk about financial dominance. Yes, we could talk about Sporting simultaneously being Portuguese champions and yet the paupers of this fixture. But City are not the only big-spending side in Europe and yet they are the only team currently capable of such painful brilliance. They are astonishing. They are relentless. They are extraordinary.

The contrasts were there on Tuesday night – with the caution of Real Madrid and the initial impotence of PSG in Paris, and with the predictably half-arsed mess of Manchester United in the Premier League – but most will choose to ignore it, dismissing this score-line as yet more evidence of the financial chasms in football without examining a performance that showcased everything that has led City here – to 12