Sporting Lisbon 4-1 Man City: In-form Viktor Gyokeres nets stunning hat-trick as Man United-bound Ruben Amorim triumphs in his farewell match… with Erling Haaland missing from the penalty spot

Underneath his unzipped hooded top, the taxi driver who stepped out of his taxi at the ringside at Lisbon airport wore a sky blue Manchester City shirt with Etihad Airways on the front.

It was Tuesday afternoon. The match was only a few hours away. I asked him if he was a City supporter. “I support anyone who is Sporting’s opponent,” he said. So he was a Benfica fan? “Benfica crazy fan,” he said.

He mentioned the name Ruben Amorim and I asked him if he was happy to leave Sporting. “He’s going at last,” said the taxi driver, clasping his hands together in the sign of an answered prayer. “If Gyokeres can leave too, that would be even better.”

And so it is that Amorim, standing on the sidelines at the start of this Champions League match against City, his last home game in front of the fans who adore him, has become a symbol of hope for many.

For the supporters of Benfica and Porto and Braga, who have grown tired of the sporting hegemony that Amorim has established in Portugal and cannot wait to get rid of him. For them, his departure will mean the end of the tyranny of a hated rival.

But most of all for the Manchester United fans who are desperate for him to take over on Monday as their seventh ‘permanent’ boss in 11 years and deliver them from their post-Sir Alex Ferguson purgatory as it enters its second decade.

The astonishing game being played here will only ignite that hope. Amorim had called City the best team in the world and Pep Guardiola the best coach in the world, but he dismantled them both.

City have rarely suffered such humiliation in the Pep Guardiola era, but in a rampant second half Amorim and Sporting destroyed them, beating them 4-1 and condemning City to their first run of three consecutive defeats in all competitions since 2018.

Sporting’s lively performance, coming back from a goal down, provides further evidence as to why United’s embattled hierarchy chose him as Erik ten Hag’s successor. This was a managerial tour de force, a victory for a team and a philosophy shaped by the best coaching talent in the sport.

Amorim better enjoy it while he can. Sporting’s players may be less celebrated than United’s, but there’s no way the band of underperforming individuals bequeathed to him by Ten Hag could ever inflict this kind of defeat on City – wiped out in a way that’s breathtaking because we’re so not used to seeing it. It was a victory for the purpose of a manager who dared to take the fight.

City arrived in the Portuguese capital after rare consecutive defeats to Spurs, in the Carabao Cup, and Bournemouth in the league. They were also in the grip of an injury crisis – one of the reasons Guardiola handed a first start in a senior game to centre-back Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, who turned 19 on Monday.

Sporting provided quite a contrast. They could hardly have taken part in the match in better form. Amorim has created a side that has won its first ten league games of the season, scoring 35 goals and conceding just three.

They were also unbeaten in their first three Champions League games, and in Viktor Gyokeres they had a striker who had scored 63 goals in 66 games since moving to Sporting in 2023. This season alone he had scored 20 goals in 16 appearances, Erling Haaland. -like numbers.

For all the talk of bitterness towards Amorim among the Sporting supporters, there was none to be seen. The opposite actually. Before kick-off, the home fans unfurled a huge banner depicting the 39-year-old standing with the trophies he has won for the club. Obrigado was spelled in large letters. ‘Thank you.’

However, sentimentality has its limits. City proved that soon enough. Only four minutes had passed when Sporting gave the ball away cheaply deep in their own half. Foden took a few steps forward and unleashed a swerve shot that deceived Franco Israel and nestled into the net.

Sporting should have equalized four minutes later. Rico Lewis lost the ball halfway down the line and Gyokeres ran on with only Ederson to beat. He had time. Maybe he had too much time on his hands. He tried to drop the ball over the Brazilian goalkeeper, but only managed to get it tamely into his hands.

The odds couldn’t disguise the fact that City often looked like they were in a different league to their opponents in the first half. Haaland had opportunities to extend the lead. He hit a right-foot shot wildly wide, saw a back-post header from a Foden corner cleared off the line and then pulled off a fine save from Israel with a volley from a Foden cross.

Then, seven minutes before half-time, Gyokeres redeemed himself from nowhere. He ran on to a through ball, stopped Simpson-Pusey and rammed his shot into the ground so that it bounced over Ederson’s dive. The level was sporty.

After what happened immediately after the break, Amorim will certainly arrive in Manchester with a reputation for delivering exciting team talks at half-time. Four minutes into the second period, Sporting led 3-1.

Twenty seconds after the restart they took the lead. A ball was passed through to Maximiliano Araujo and he advanced towards the retreating City defense and hit a vicious left-footed drive past Ederson.

City had barely had time to regroup when Francisco Trincao Josko passed Gvardiol through Sporting’s right and Gvardiol pushed him home. Gyokeres, who had grown so into the match that City were struggling to deal with him, hit his penalty into the back of the net.

The city was stunned. But they gradually regained a degree of control and midway through the half, following a VAR review, they thought they could see a way back into the match when Ousmane Diomande was judged to have blocked Bernardo Silva’s shot in the penalty area with his arm .

Diomande was desperate. Haaland stepped up to take the penalty. He hit it high and hard, but it was too high. It collided with the top of the rod and flew away in a spiral to safety. The exuberant roar of the crowd lit up the air.

Ten minutes before the end, Sporting completed the defeat. Matheus Nunes gave the ball away and then pushed Geny Catamo over with a clumsy challenge in the penalty area. Gyokeres sent another clinical penalty.

When the final whistle blew, the crowd was thrilled. Maybe this will be a highlight for them now that Amorim is leaving. Maybe they’ll pick up where he left off. The Sporting fans walked into the night, to the Campo Grande metro station and to their cars parked in the tidy suburb of Alvalade.

And the last planes to take off from the airport raced overhead, taking their passengers on new adventures, a reminder of a carriage that left fans with one last evening of magic before flying away.