CITY ON CLOUD NINE AS GROUP LEADERS DOWN NAPOLI
Unbeaten run intact thanks to fast start
MANCHESTER City got what they wanted from this game, a victory. That’s nine points out of nine in Group F, meaning they have done many of the hard yards of qualification before the clocks have even gone back.
This was a good Napoli team they beat here, too. Top of Serie A, they had scored almost as many goals as City prior to this meeting. The scores were 37 to 34.
But the fact that margin had increased only from three to four at the end of this game relayed the fact that Pep Guardiola and his gilded team did not, for once, have everything their own way.
It was, on reflection, a very strange game of football. For the first 25 minutes, City were majestic. Two goals up after only 13 minutes, they threatened to sweep Napoli away on what is becoming a familiar tide of sky blue energy.
Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus scored early and they were familiar goals, created with such deftness and expertise that the actual scoring was the easy bit. There could have been more, too. David Silva missed a good chance while Kevin De Bruyne hit the bar and Sterling was denied a second by the width of the goal line.
But as time wore on, Napoli regrouped and found some confidence. And as the Italians discovered this, City lost all of theirs.
Dries Mertens saw a penalty saved by Ederson late in the first half, but Amadou Diawara did not follow suit when presented with one with 17 minutes left. After that, City were hanging on and had Napoli breached them for a second time, nobody could have said they didn’t deserve it.
So this turned out to be a night when we saw a spell of the new City, breathless and inspiring, but then got an unexpected dose of old City too.
Afterwards, defender Kyle Walker admitted the City players thanked Ederson for his crucial display.
‘Ederson kept us in it and we need to say thank you to him,’ said Walker. ‘We always knew Napoli were going to come at us in the second half after we went 2-0 up.’
Only nine minutes had gone when City took the lead. Up against Serie A’s best defence, there had been a feeling that this could be a tougher task than City have faced of late. But when Fernandinho fed Leroy Sane with a crossfield ball from right to left and the German, in turn, played David Silva to the byeline, Napoli were in trouble.
With light blue shirts arriving in the box, Silva had a choice of team-mates to look for and when Kyle Walker couldn’t convert, the ball rebounded to Sterling, who scored from 12 yards.
It was a perfect start for City and, for the next 20 minutes or so, Napoli were overwhelmed. Their coach Maurizio Sarri had said beforehand that he would prefer to ‘die a sudden death’ at City’s hands and, for a while, it looked as though he would get his wish.
Napoli were stunned again as the lead was doubled in the 13th minute. This time, the Italians were guilty of helping their opponents.
Central defender Raul Albiol headed a cross straight to De Bruyne and then slipped as the ball was returned low to the near post. Jesus was waiting and scored easily.
David Silva couldn’t convert a Fernandinho cross in the 23rd minute and then, shortly after De Bruyne struck the bar, Kalidou Koulibaly was required to clear off the line after Pepe Reina had partially saved Sterling’s effort.
Napoli eventually got what they increasingly deserved. City lost the ball in centre field, Faouzi Ghoulam brought a clumsy foul from Fernandinho with a direct run. Diawara scored the penalty.
But City held on to keep their perfect record.
‘We faced one of the best sides I faced in my career, probably the best,’ said Guardiola. ‘It is one of the wins I am most proud of in my career.’ MAN CITY (4-3-3):