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

Underneath his unzipped hooded top, the taxi driver who got out of his cab in the rank at Lisbon airport wore a sky-blue Manchester City shirt with Etihad Airways emblazoned on the front.

It was Tuesday lunchtime. The game was only a few hours away. I asked him if he was a City supporter. ‘I support whoever is Sporting’s opponent,’ he said. So he was a Benfica fan? ‘Benfica crazy fan,’ he said.

He mentioned the name of Ruben Amorim and I asked him if he was pleased he was leaving Sporting. ‘Finally, he’s going,’ the taxi driver said, putting his hands together to make the sign of an answered prayer. ‘If Gyokeres can leave, too, that would be even better.’

And so it is that, as he stood on the touchline at the start of this Champions League clash with City, his final home game in front of the fans who worship him, Amorim has become a symbol of hope for so many.

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

But most of all, for Manchester United fans desperate for him to start work as their seventh ‘permanent’ boss in 11 years on Monday and deliver them from their post-Sir Alex Ferguson purgatory as it eases into its second decade.

The astonishing game that played out here will only fire that hope. Amorim had called City

the best team in the world and Pep Guardiola the best coach in the world but he dismantled both of them.

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

Sporting’s vibrant performance, surging back from a goal down, provides more evidence of why United’s embattled hierarchy chose him to be the successor to Erik ten Hag. This was a managerial tour de force, a victory for a team and a philosophy fashioned by the hottest coaching property in the game.

Amorim better enjoy it while he can. Sporting’s players may be less celebrated than United’s but there is no way the rag-tag band of under-performing individuals bequeathed him by Ten Hag could ever have inflicted this kind of defeat on City — swept aside in a way that took the breath away because we are so unused to seeing it. It was a victory for the intent of a manager who dared to take them on. 

City arrived in the Portuguese capital after rare back-to-back defeats by Spurs, in the Carabao Cup, and Bournemouth in the league. They were in the grip of an injury crisis, too — one of the reasons that Guardiola gave a first start in a senior game to central defender Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, who turned 19 on Monday.

Sporting presented quite the contrast. They could hardly have come into the match in finer form. Amorim has created a side that has won its first 10 league games of the season, scoring 35 goals and conceding only three.

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

For all the talk of bitterness towards Amorim among the Sporting support, there was none on show. The opposite, actually. Before kick-off, the home fans unfurled a huge banner bearing a likeness of the 39-year-old, standing with the trophies he has won for the club. Obrigado was spelled out in giant letters. ‘Thank you.’

Sentimentality has its limits, though. City proved that soon enough. Only four minutes had gone when Sporting gave the ball away cheaply deep in their own half, Foden took a couple of paces forward and unleashed a swerving shot that deceived Franco Israel and nestled in the net.

Sporting should have equalised four minutes later. Rico Lewis lost the ball near the halfway line and Gyokeres ran through with only Ederson to beat. He had time. Maybe he had too much time. He tried to dink the ball over the Brazil keeper but succeeded only in chipping it tamely into his hands.

The chance could not disguise the fact that City often looked as if they were in a different class to their opponents in the first half. Haaland had chances to extend their lead. He lashed one right-foot shot wildly wide, saw a back-post header from a Foden corner kicked off the line and then brought a fine save from Israel with a volley from a Foden cross.

Then, seven minutes before the break, out of nothing, Gyokeres redeemed himself. He ran on to a through-ball, held off Simpson-Pusey and drove his shot into the ground so that it bounced over the dive of Ederson. Sporting were level.

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

They took the lead 20 seconds after the restart. A ball was threaded through to Maximiliano Araujo and he advanced on the retreating City defence and smashed a venomous left-foot drive past Ederson.

City had barely had time to regroup when Francisco Trincao outpaced Josko Gvardiol down the Sporting right and Gvardiol shoved him over inside the area. Gyokeres, who had grown and grown into the game to the point City were struggling to cope with him, slammed his penalty into the back of the net.

City were stunned. But they gradually regained a measure of control and midway through the half, after a VAR review, they thought they saw a way back into the match when Ousmane Diomande was judged to have blocked a shot from Bernardo Silva in the box with his arm.

Diomande was distraught. Haaland stepped up to take the penalty. He hit it high and hard but it was too high. It smashed against the top of bar and spiralled away to safety. The roar of exultation from the crowd rent the air.

Ten minutes from time, Sporting completed the rout. Matheus Nunes gave the ball away and then pushed over Geny Catamo with a clumsy challenge in the box. Gyokeres dispatched another clinical penalty.

When the final whistle went, the crowd were in raptures. Maybe this will be a high point for them now that Amorim is leaving. Maybe they will carry on where he left off. The Sporting fans trailed away into the night, to the Campo Grande metro station and to their cars parked in the neat suburb of Alvalade.

And the last of the planes taking off from the airport roared overhead, taking their passengers away, carrying them to new adventures, reminders of a coach who left the fans with one last night of magic before he flies away.