Ruthless Manchester City toy with Sporting to ruin home side’s big night

José Alvalade, the man who established Sporting Clube de Portugal in the early 1900s, originally intended to study medicine, only to drop out of his Harvard degree because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. After spending two years as president of the club, he stormed out in a dispute with his fellow directors, tragically dying of Spanish flu at the age of 33. And perhaps the nicest thing you could say about Sporting’s performance against Manchester City on Tuesday night was that it was a more than fitting tribute to his legacy.

Squeamish, rancorous and over far too soon: Sporting’s big night out, their first Champions League knockout game since 2009, imploded in a bouquet of boos and a haze of basic incoherence. City didn’t just put the tie to bed: they embalmed it, sealed it in a lead coffin, wreathed it in chains and dropped it somewhere off the north Atlantic coast. Long before half-time the home crowd was already being treated to chants of “you’ve had your day out, now fuck off home” from the little pocket of enraptured City fans in the bottom corner.

They didn’t, of course. They stayed and watched until the grisly end, even rising to salute their demolished team as the minutes ticked away. Who knows, after all, when this stadium will be able to witness a game of this magnitude again? The manager, Rúben Amorim, has done a fine job of resurrecting this fallen giant of Portuguese football and his reward will probably be an elite club job this summer or next. Their dashing midfielder Pedro Gonçalves will get his move sooner or later. This, in a way, is the fate that awaits any club from a smaller league who dares to overachieve: growth, success, acclaim, dismemberment.

Just ask Ederson, Bernardo Silva, Rúben Dias or