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Ruthless Manchester City toy with Sporting to ruin home side’s big night | Jonathan Liew
The Portuguese champions were outclassed in their first Champions League knockout match since 2009
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 one 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 did not 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.
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