Leipzig (AFP)
Manchester City settled for a 1-1 draw with its German host Leipzig, in the first leg of the final price of the European Champions League, while the Italian Inter achieved a fatal victory over Porto, Portugal, 1-0, with the goal of its Belgian striker, Romelu Lukaku.
In the first match, City opened the scoring with its Algerian winger, Riyad Mahrez, “27”, and just for Leipzig, his Croatian defender, Josko Gvardiol, headed it “70”.
Manchester City, searching for its first major European title, played the match in the absence of its influential Belgian playmaker Kevin De Bruyne and Spanish defender Aymeric Laporte due to illness.
On the other hand, the French international striker and top scorer for Liege, Christopher Nkunku, started on the bench of the reserve players, after recovering recently from a knee injury that kept him away from the ranks of his country in the recent World Cup in Qatar, noting that he participated as a reserve for the first time during his team’s match in the German League against Wolfsburg on Saturday. Last and contributed an assist.
The Spanish winger, Dani Olmo, is also absent, and he led the offensive line in their absence, Timo Werner and the Portuguese Andre Silva.
City took advantage of a wrong pass on the outskirts of the area, and it reached Mahrez, who fired a powerful ball with his left into the net, opening the scoring «27», which is the twelfth goal in various competitions this season for Mahrez, who celebrated his thirty-second birthday.
In the second half, Leipzig gave up his caution, and he had two opportunities for substitute Benjamin Henrichs, one header and the other from a creeping shot, without succeeding in scoring “51 and 53”. For Gvardiol «70».
Leipzig coach Marco Rose said: They were two different halves, we were not present in the first, we just ran after the ball and were bad, when we had it, the second was completely different, we were better with the ball, we recovered it and played as we planned.
As for Henrichs, he said after the match: We were lucky to fall behind by a single goal in the first half, but in the second half we could have come out with a better result, and we were braver in the second half.
And at the San Siro stadium, substitute Lukaku gave Inter a fatal victory over Porto by scoring the only goal in the 86th minute, and Lukaku gave Inter a moral boost to reach the quarter-finals in the continental competition for the first time since 2011 before their meeting in Lisbon three weeks later.
Inter benefited from Porto completing the match with ten players since the 78th minute, after Ottavio was sent off to score the only goal.
This confrontation was between coaches Simone Inzaghi and Sergio Conceicao, former colleagues in Italian Lazio, with whom they won the League and Cup in 2000, the Cup in 2004 in addition to the European Super Cup 1999.
This was the fifth confrontation between the two teams, and ironically, the previous four were all in 2005: Inter qualified at the expense of Porto to the 2004-2005 quarter-finals, “a victory and a draw in the final price,” and they met again in the group stage of the following season, “a victory for each team.”
Bosnian Edin Dzeko started at Lukaku’s expense in the attack alongside Argentine Lautaro Martinez, while Iranian Mahdi Tarmi, who scored five goals in the group stage, led Porto’s attack line.
Lukaku scored the only goal when he first followed a header, following a cross from Barella that bounced off the post to return to him and follow it into the net.
Porto is armed in the return match by eliminating six Italian clubs in the last two decades from European competitions.
#Lukaku #killer #Meeting #Friends