. Savinho brings down John Stones’s long ball with his chest and lashes the ball home, and of course this is the part that matters, Manchester City 3-1 up and safe at last. There is no Fifa Best award for “Greatest Chest Control of the Year”. But there should be.
It was, quite simply, one of the great chest touches. The perfect spot on the breastbone: not too much rib, not too much nipple. Just the right amount of give in the torso to send it forwards, not up or down: the ball not so much cushioned as sprung. Because now the ball is sitting up beautifully, and Simon Mignolet can probably do better at his near post but that’s hardly the first time we’ve said that.
And so City qualify for the next stage of the Champions League. Hold the presses. Could have predicted that five months ago, Nostradamus. But of course the “what” is much less interesting than the “how”, and on an unbearably taut night at the Etihad, City ended their group stage largely as they lived it: in a blur of half-sensations, a night of wild mood swings and inexplicable random fire.
Not until Savinho’s goal, 707 minutes into their Champions League campaign, could City truly relax. Was there really not an easier way of doing this? Perhaps, but then you would also struggle to match the thrill and the catharsis of the moment itself: a goal of pure haptics, a goal that felt fresh and interesting, a new way of getting to a familiar place.
Perhaps this has been true of City themselves over recent weeks, a club working through some strange feelings: jaded and defiant all at once, utterly fixed on their target and yet staggering towards it, lapsing in and out of focus like a camera on the blink. A few months ago City were losing convincingly. Now they’re winning unconvincingly, …
Read More
