PORTO: Erling Haaland scored twice as Manchester City opened their Champions League campaign with a 2-0 win over Porto earlier this morning.
Haaland had three attempts denied by Porto goalkeeper Diogo Costa in the first half, but the Norwegian striker was finally unstoppable early in the second half when his header hit the bottom corner.
Porto continued to apply pressure and forced the English giants to defend throughout the second half, but a lack of finishing quality meant they failed to punish Manchester City, who made a few simple mistakes.
Haaland then showed the difference in class between the two teams when he calmly finished off a chance in injury time to score his 167th goal for City, becoming the club’s third-highest goalscorer of all time.
“We know the pressure is on to deliver on the biggest stage, and that’s what we did today.
“These are games you have to win and we started the season well.
“In the Champions League, you have to win games because otherwise the pressure comes immediately and then you don’t know what will happen,” Haaland told Amazon Prime.
Backed by a record spending of 460 million pounds on new players, Maresca has made a positive start to his job in the big challenge of replacing Pep Guardiola in the City hot seat.
However, Haaland remains City’s mainstay and shows no signs of fatigue after his brilliant success with Norway at the World Cup, having scored five goals in the first four games of the new season.
Maresca also included Ayyoub Bouaddi in the starting line-up for the first time since the player joined City from Lille for a fee of 100 million euros.
Interestingly, the Moroccan-born teenage midfielder only became the third most expensive midfielder signed by City in the transfer window after Enzo Fernandez and Elliott Anderson each exceeded the value of 100 million pounds.