City Beat Porto Without Ever Hitting Top Gear, and That's the Scary Part

City beat Porto 2-0 in the Champions League opener and the whole time I kept thinking the same thing: this was not City playing well. This was City playing okay, running through the gears at half speed, and still walking out with a clean sheet and three points against a Diogo Costa who had one of the best individual performances I've seen from an opposing keeper all year. 9.5 out of 10, easy. The man was a wall. Haaland scored both goals on him and could easily have had four.

Worth sitting with for a second: Porto hadn't lost at home since December 4, 2025. Not a fluke run either, they'd started this season conceding almost nothing at the Dragão. City went in there and ended it, on the road, in the first game of a new Champions League campaign under a new manager. Enzo Maresca's first game in charge of City in this competition, and it's a result that ends someone else's unbeaten run at home. That's not nothing.

Start with Haaland, because everyone's going to. I wouldn't even call it an off night, that's not fair to him. For his standards, which are genuinely GOAT-level at this point, it was a quiet one. He's 26 years old and sitting at 59 goals in 59 Champions League appearances. One goal a game, for his entire career in this competition. Nobody has ever done that. So when I say quiet, I mean he scored twice, picked up Man of the Match probably, and still somehow the story is that he wasn't at his best. That's the standard he's built for himself. It wasn't bad touches either, watching it back it was more a string of finishes that just weren't lethal early plus a couple of genuinely incredible saves from Costa keeping it level longer than it should've been. Two goals, could've had four, on a night people are calling quiet. He's about to go on a run. Calling four goals across his next two games, and one of those two is the Manchester Derby, so that would be a fun week to be right about.

But Haaland finding his goals wasn't even the most interesting thing that happened. Enzo Fernández was a ghost for the first half hour, not involved, not dictating anything. Then somewhere around the hour mark he starts putting deep free kicks into dangerous areas and I sat up. Free kick from around 92 minutes out, roughly 32 yards, then a near post effort that should've been a goal on another day. This isn't a maybe. Enzo has that dead ball delivery now. We have not had that consistently since Kevin De Bruyne. And it's not just the free kicks, it's what it tells you about him as a player: he's not an out-of-possession midfielder, he's an in-possession one, someone who does his best work when his team already has the ball and needs someone to unlock the door. Given how much of the ball City has in most games, that's exactly the profile you want.

For a stretch in the second half the front line basically became three number 10s stacked across the width of the pitch, Enzo underneath, Cherki drifting central, Foden pushed further right than he usually plays. Looked chaotic on paper, worked in practice, because Porto couldn't figure out who to actually mark. Cherki was moving well before he came off, in a stretch of the match that had turned end to end even if the scoreboard stayed calm. He didn't get the final product his movement deserved, but the movement itself matters more long term than one game's finishing.

Foden is the one I feel for. Could've had two, maybe three today. Third straight game where he's created the moment and the ball hasn't gone in. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: once he actually gets one to go in, it's over for whoever's marking him that week. The performances are already there. The luck isn't. That's going to turn.

Defensively, Gvardiol got worked a little more than usual today. Nothing disastrous, but there was a tension to his game, a yellow card in the mix, and he got hooked fairly early into the second half. Worth naming instead of pretending everyone's at their absolute peak every week. On the other side of the back line, you could see exactly why Nunes matters in games like this. He started at right back, and Khusanov came on for him later. Khusanov is excellent defensive cover, physical, solid, does the ugly stuff well. But he's just not the same going forward. In a possession-heavy game like this one, where City are going to have the ball for long stretches and need someone on that side who can actually drive it and add to the attack, Nunes needs to be the one getting those minutes.

Aït-Nouri, when he came on, was played on the left wing rather than left back, and he was excellent there. His ability to drive at defenders, take players on, get to the byline and find a final ball is exactly what that side needed. He should've had a goal himself. Honestly, the man is class, and I think he needs more minutes further up that flank rather than tucked in at fullback. It gives us real depth on that side, another option alongside Semenyo, who played through the middle as more of a center forward today, and Doku, who's normally the one occupying that exact lane. Semenyo, for what it's worth, is quietly one of the best crossers in the world right now, and from what I understand he only recently started being asked to add that to his game. When someone gets told mid-career to add a skill and it's immediately elite, that tells you what kind of talent you're dealing with.

Bouaddi, for an 18 year old, was genuinely excellent. So relaxed on the ball for someone that age, calm in spaces where a lot of midfielders his age would panic. What he needs now is speed, mainly in decision making and in the final third, being more lethal with the pass when the moment's actually there. He drove forward a couple of times and it looked really good when he did it. His deep distribution is already good. What he needs to add is carrying it himself closer to the 18 yard box instead of always looking to release it from deep.

Small note because it needs saying: Donnarumma's feet were genuinely impressive today, calm under pressure in buildup in a way that matters more than people give goalkeepers credit for. And somebody needs to look at how many offsides got called in this game, because it was a lot, more than a normal match should produce.

Here's the actual point of all this. City went into a stadium that hadn't lost since early December, against a keeper playing out of his mind, with their record goalscorer having a quiet night by his own ridiculous standard, with a right back rotation that's still being figured out, and with an attack that's still finding its exact shape under a new manager in a new competition setup. And they won comfortably enough that it never really felt in doubt after halftime. That is not a team playing anywhere near its ceiling. That's a team still getting its legs under it in September and still capable of ending someone else's unbeaten home run on the road. If I'm anyone else in this competition, that's the part that keeps me up at night. Not what City did today. What today says about what's coming once it all clicks at once.