Nothing different, probably.Sure, it’s too early and impossible to guess the final result, but tomorrow’s Champions League tie between Manchester City and Sporting Lisbon can only go in one direction. Towards another City’s landslide victory against a very formidable Portuguese slot, which makes this even more awkward.Albeit Sporting are the champions of Portugal, Pep Guardiola’s slot demolished them 5-0 in the first-leg at the Joao Alvelade Stadium. Ruthless City sweep off both the Lisbon curse and Sporting on the way to the UCL 1/4 finalsThis return leg would be nothing but a dead-rubber since there’s not a per cent of a chance for the visitors to do wonders and reach the UCL 1/4 finals.Bernardo Silva struck twice alongside efforts from Raheem Sterling, Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden to effectively kill off the tie over the course of 90 minutes, and a similar ruthless streak was on show when bitter rivals Manchester United paid a visit on Sunday.De Bruyne-driven City storm over clueless United to prove who’s the boss in townFurthermore, each of City’s last ten home games in Europe’s elite competition has seen the Premier League champions come up trumps – scoring at least two goals on each occasion – and Sporting are really only playing for pride this week.🗣 “There are players that make the team play good when they are not in the statistics.”Pep Guardiola says the problem with football is the obsession with people defining a player based just on statistics pic.twitter.com/UNINuvLz0s— Football Daily (@footballdaily) March 1, 2022 Sporting have never advanced past the last-16 stage of the Champions League, and that is incredibly unlikely to change this week, with the Portuguese side only making it this far once before in 2008-09 and ironically losing the first leg of that tie 5-0 to Bayern Munich. The German giants then went on to complete the job with an even greater margin of victory in the second leg, 7-1.CHAMPIONS LEAGUE – ROUND OF 16Second legTuesday23.00: (1.20) Bayern (8.00) Salzburg (14.0)23.00: (1.60) Liverpool (4.10) Inter (6.25)Wednesday 23.00: (2.65) Real Madrid (3.40) PSG (2.80)23.00: (1.15) Man.City (9.00) Sporting (22.0)
