Manchester City ‘connect' with Erling Haaland as cast help leading man find his ‘rhythm'

New York Times

5 hours ago

At half-time, as Rayan Cherki enjoyed 15 minutes of nonchalant showboating, an altogether more ferocious warm-up was taking place just across the pitch.
Before the referee had even dropped the whistle from his mouth, Erling Haaland galloped onto the pitch with a coach clearly tasked with readying him to replace Omar Marmoush at the break.
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First it was about getting touches in, laying the ball off and spinning. Then something more akin to a rugby practice unfolded as the 6ft 4in Norwegian used his much smaller coach as a human riot shield he had to barge and hold off.
This was not limbering up, this was getting ready to make a statement.
That's what he, netting his 300th career goal, did.
That's what Manchester City, who rediscovered their mojo having mislaid it for the best part of a year, did.
This 5-2 battering of Juventus was a level of performance that ranked as their best in a 'long, long time,' according to Pep Guardiola.
They were a class above from the very off and had Guardiola had a bingo card of wishes for this game, he would have called 'house' some time before the final whistle.
Jeremy Doku had one of his most efficient games yet, full-backs Rayan Ait-Nouri and Marheus Nunes both got an assist, Rodri came through his first start in nine months unscathed, Tijjani Reijnders looks like he alone could provide the team with the legs they lost last season, while Savinho scored a superb long-ranger strike after a barren debut season in front of goal.
But what would any of that mean if the man they are building the next decade around, the man who is the club's star attraction here at the Club World Cup, not been at the centre of it?
Having only scored one openplay goal in his last ten games and flirted on the periphery of matches, the equation of how to integrate Haaland with a new cast of fluid attackers still had to be solved.
The second 45 minutes looked like a reprogrammed team with Haaland and City back in sync.
When Doku opened the scoring in the ninth minute, Guardiola, with his hands as tactical puppets, was seen having a detailed talk with his striker on the bench. It was as if he wanted his main man to study how the different pieces of the puzzle were clicking together from the sidelines, so he could unleash him in the second half.
It took only seven minutes of the second half for Haaland to convert those observations into a goal.
It came from an exquisite team move, the sort that looked like it was from a catalogue of five years ago when David Silva and co created the most fluent version of the City juggernaut.
Savinho received the ball at right back and drove inside as Nunes burst 50 yards into the space he had vacated. Reijnders dropped into the space to receive the ball, turned and slid a perfect through ball down the inside of Juventus' left back for Nunes to square across to Haaland.
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All he had to do was stay in line with the far post for ten seconds and tap it in, but then again some strikers would not have anticipated the move flowing as quickly as it did.
He made a meal of the finish but it ended in the back of the net and for the remaining 40 minutes he was far more involved in the build-up and helped press Juventus into submission.
For City's fourth goal, Haaland continued a theme that had proven successful in the first half with Marmoush finding ways to isolate himself one v one when the ball was at Ederson's feet as City's rotations posed Juventus more questions than they could handle.
Haaland plucked a 60 yard diagonal from out of the sky as it fell over his shoulder, dribbled inside and reversed a pass through for Savinho and Phil Foden to finish.
For the fifth, it was his snapshot that saw the ball rebound to Savinho and he was only just denied another assist in the 92nd minute. Having made a great run to split the centre backs, Foden's pass was cut out but Haaland reacted instantly, won the ball back and fed Savinho whose shot was saved.
Haaland's game, galactic in its goalscoring but usually rigidly defined to between the goal posts, increased its bandwidth in Orlando.
City can often function as if they are purely catering to Haaland's specific needs.
This performance, more dynamic with the striker offering himself as a bounce pass for midfielders to get up in support, gave City another avenue to attack through the centre, or on the break after he helped win the ball. For context, his 17 touches in that second half were more than eight other games in all competitions last season, including full appearances against Liverpool (in 2-0 loss) and Arsenal (5-1 loss) this season.
'I only ask Erling to make the first action,' said Guardiola. 'No intensity beyond. He has to be a machine in the press but we have to support him. Sometimes he goes and we don't go but today we went there, no matter what.
'All I can say is congratulations. He has scored 300 goals at 24 years old. Pfft! Listen, this manager (me) was an incredible football player but he scored 11 goals in 11 years!'.
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The second half display utterly knocked the belief out of Juventus.
It was the sort of dominance we have become accustomed to seeing under Guardiola but the question was whether they could find it again after a season of toil.
'The most important thing today is the fact that we can do it again,' said Guardiola, who highlighted a step up in the rhythm of the training sessions under his new coaching staff.
'I had the feeling the players felt that we can compete in the way we did the last decade and create incredible things.
'We want to face every game with this rhythm and feel that, if we don't do that, we are going to lose. We have to refine ourselves again. That's the most important thing in this period here.
'Of course we want to win the World Cup, but connect ourselves again like we were.'
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