For all the Manchester City player’s sustained Premier League brilliance he has not had a crowning wider world momentYou failed. No matter. Fail again, fail better. All very well. But when you’re as good as Kevin De Bruyne – which is, to be clear, very good indeed – and as the bloom of those peak years continues to roll by, you probably want to start nailing a few of those moments too.“We need to learn, it’s not good enough,” De Bruyne told the TV cameras nine months ago, wreathed in Beckettian despair in the bowels of Estádio José Alvalade. Defeat by Lyon had capped Manchester City’s Champions League run at the quarter-finals for the third successive year, and for the...
His last Champions League final was in 2011, but Manchester City have it in them if the manager finds the right combinationsAs a basic rule, the best TV sitcoms tend to centre on a character stuck in their surroundings; and trapped, by extension, in their unfulfilled desires.The office manager who wants to be a comedian but doesn’t realise he’s not funny. The ennui-ridden cafe owner who falls in love with a priest and can’t escape her family. Plus, of course, the genius-level football coach in the high fashion yak-weave hoodie who can’t stop trying to win the Champions League, but keeps electing an ultimately self-destructive inverted-diamond false wingback system in the key knockout game against Dinamo Plovdiv. Related: Liverpool's slump:...
Picking a lineup is useful less for who makes the cut than for what the process says about the current state of the gameThe Fifa world rankings rarely fail to raise an eyebrow. Óscar Washington Tabárez is one of the world’s great coaches but are Uruguay, who scraped a 2-1 win over Chile on Thursday, really the sixth-best side in the world right now? Nobody who saw England’s notional first-choice centre-back pairing of Harry Maguire and Joe Gomez in separate action for their clubs last Sunday would feel comfortable with their ranking of fourth. Germany 14th: when do we start talking seriously about Jogi Löw? And Belgium, whom England face on Sunday, top? Even after 12 straight wins before Thursday’s...
The Manchester City midfielder was unplayable against Leicester and his smart positioning allowed others to thriveFor Manchester City there is hope, and its name is Kevin. It may take something miraculous for them to close the 11-point gap to the leaders, who have a game in hand, but there is something miraculous about Kevin De Bruyne’s form at the moment. His performance against Leicester on Saturday was extraordinary, somehow both furious and measured, a blur of activity that was also precisely targeted.Four shots, two of them on target. Seven key passes. Two successful dribbles. Two successful crosses. Five tackles made. The numbers give some indication of the scale of his performance but only some. De Bruyne is playing with such...
Manchester City midfielder’s myriad skills look set to provide Sterling with all he needs to score 30 goals this seasonPep Guardiola has challenged Raheem Sterling to score 30 goals this season and with four in his first two games the England forward is well ahead of schedule.Sterling opened the scoring in the 2-2 draw with Tottenham with a header, hardly his forte, though so inviting was the cross from Kevin De Bruyne he could almost have beaten Hugo Lloris with his eyes shut. It is probably reasonable to conclude that if the Manchester City captain stays fit this season and continues this level of assistance, Sterling will smash his personal goals target even if dropping points in their first home...