“The inferences that people will draw from this game are not important to me because they could be misleading,” said Ruben Amorim, between dodging a tantrum from Gary Cotterill and making a quip about Sir Alex Ferguson that too many people took too seriously.
What did we learn? That a Manchester City ranked as the very best in Europe – even when missing several key players through injury – can dominate a football match against a Sporting team ranked 34th? And still make an absolute bollocks of it.
That a Manchester City squad that cost the thick end of a billion quid to put together is capable of controlling the ball against one built for a sixth of the cost, but are also increasingly capable of shooting themselves squarely between the toes? And then reloading and doing it again.
Realistically, we also learned that turning a match into a memorial to a departing hero is not conducive to the mourners starting the game with any kind of pace; Sporting were 1-0 down within four minutes and City danced through them with ease during a first half in which Amorim’s now-famous back three was very much a five and often a seven.
For about 37 minutes we also thought we had learned that Viktor Gyokeres is really Not All That, despite being the top scorer in 2024 across Europe. He made an utter mess of a one-on-one chance by lobbing the ball kindly into the hands of a very grateful Ederson, before being dispossessed by a 19-year-old debutant.
But Gyokeres is clearly not a man to make the same mistake twice, and his second chance was driven awkwardly but effectively into the ground and over the head of the now-less-grateful Ederson. By the time he added a confident second from the penalty spot, Maximiliano Araújo had made it 2-1 within seconds of the start of the second half. Now it was 3-1 and City were reeling.
This is how we expected Amorim’s Sporting to play: with pace, with aggression, with intensity. And the inevitable inference will be that Amorim’s half-time team talk was the catalyst for a complete gear change. He invited the Sir Alex comparisons with a smile on his face, but the English media will pick up and run with that concept like Gyokeres charging down on the City goal.
Amorim could not possibly have dreamed that City would self-combust quite so spectacularly, giving away two ludicrous penalties either side of Manchester City missing their own through an out-of-sorts Erling Haaland.
How much of this remarkable result was down to the genius of Amorim and how much to the fallibility of a Rodri-less Manchester City will be lost in the giddiness of Sporting beating Manchester City by a barely believable scoreline. And it’s tricky not to get caught up in the compelling narrative.
It’s difficult to extrapolate any meaningful conclusions about Amorim as a Manchester United manager from this result because he will never be in this position again: As the departing manager of champions against a City side that were a defensive car crash. Emotion careered headlong into naivety and the explosion could be heard across Europe.
What we can comfortably conclude is that Amorim will not be in charge of a dull Manchester United team. He will have days when he will make teams as good as City look like complete muppets. He will give shape and purpose to a set of players who have looked lost for far, far too long. He might well turn Rasmus Hojlund into a proper striker.
F*** it, he’s definitely the new Sir Alex Ferguson.
