Goals from Gundogan, Foden, Haaland and McAtee seal win in Slovakia
Manchester City faced Slovakian side Slovan Bratislava in second match week of the Champions League on Tuesday evening, looking for their first win of the competition this season. Guardiola was taking no risks and fielded a relatively strong side for the encounter, with players including Erling Haaland, Ilkay Gundogan and Phil Foden. Rico Lewis also featured and impressed on the night. Kevin De Bruyne was still absent with injury. Slovan Bratislava’s lineup included former City academy player Vladimir Weiss, who won the FA youth cup with City in 2008.
The match started with an early chance for the home side, with City being caught on the counter following a corner. The ball fell to attacker Marko Tolic following a pass from Weiss and with plenty of space, struck the ball with intent but the shot was wide. This early attack from Bratislava may well have indicated a sense of ambition from the hosts but this was not to be the case for a very large part of the rest of the half.
City dominated the game from the opening minutes and were able to exploit the amount of space exposed to them by the Bratislava players. In the 7th minute, City got their early goal following a deflected strike from captain Ilkay Gundogan to set the tone for the rest of the match. By this point, it was clear that this would be a relatively routine night for City, with Bratislava struggling to make it out of their own half and yet – look merely confident in possession of the ball.
With this, City were able to keep on piling the pressure and add their second goal of the game, with Phil Foden slotting the ball into the bottom corner, scoring his first goal since the final premier league game of the 2023/24 season against West Ham. With the blues 2-0 up in just 15 minutes against a very disorganised Bratislava side, it seemed at this point that the match could well turn out to be a cricket score, but this was not to be the case as the blues would go on to miss an abundance of chances during the rest of the first half. A shot from Haaland was denied by goalkeeper Dominik Takac, who did well given the circumstances.
On another two occasions, City hit the woodwork twice, first from a shot from Doku and a second from Gundogan. It was a wonder that it was only 2-0 by half time, the Bratislava players must’ve felt very lucky that they hadn’t been hit for about 5 or 6 goals by half time alone.
Nevertheless, City remained the dominant team in the game and continued to exploit the space they had. In the 57th minute, Haaland was finally able to score his first champions league goal of the season, rounding the goalkeeper and slotting the ball home from a pass played through by Lewis. City held a comfortable lead and continued to keep Takac on his feet, much in contrast to his positional counterpart Ortega, who only really had to attempt to make any sort of save from the chance in the first minute.
James Mcatee came on in the 60th minute, replacing Haaland. In the 74th minute, Mcatee scored his first champions league goal with a short distance but powerful finish to make it 4-0 on the night.
The blues continued to push on but there work was done and Slovan Bratislava were well and truly beaten, with the referee signalling the end of the match after just two minutes of stoppage time.
Following the mid-week games, City now lie in 8th place in the new champions league “league phase”. Slovan Bratislava on the other hand, are in 35th place of a 36-team league, having been brutally beaten in their first match as well 5-1 by Celtic.