World News – GB – Manchester City return to their best in comfortable win over Marseille

Olympique de Marseille 0-3 Manchester City: Guardiola’s team made sure to take maximum points in their first two games in Group C

It’s more like that Manchester City haven’t always looked at each other lately but came back to victory and something close to their best in a dominant and comfortable 3-0 win at Olympic Marseille in the group stage of the Champions League

Pep Guardiola’s side have always looked likely to take maximum points in their first two Group C games once Ferran Torres capitalized on his initial pressure to make the breakthrough, returning Kevin’s cross De Bruyne after a costly mistake by Valentin Rongier

Torres and Phil Foden – both just 20 years old – ran the show as City placed Saturday’s disappointing draw at West Ham and an indifferent domestic start to the season behind them Second-half goals from Ilkay Gundogan and Raheem Sterling at Stade Velodrome mean progress to the round of 16 already looks like a formality

Marseille struggled to put a glove on their guests and although André Villas-Boas was a big admirer of Guardiola, he could only prepare his team to defend in depth and break at high speed Except for a spell at the end of the first half and the start of the second it didn’t work City walked through the Ligue 1 squad with the kind of offensive verve that they sometimes sorely missed at the start of this season

City’s recent struggles to create chances seemed like a thing of the past in the early stages as Guardiola’s players started off with brilliant and unstoppable intensity Marseille couldn’t keep up with the speed of their movement or the fury of their pressing, which gripped Villas-Boas camp deep in their own half.The edge of the hosts’ penalty area was a pressure cooker and he would not be long before one of the Marseillais succumbs to the heat

Rongier was the unfortunate victim The midfielder collapsed slightly upon realizing he had misplaced a pass in the face of his own box It was a few yards too far ahead of teammate Duje Ćaleta-Car but just in the trunk of Kevin De Bruyne, who only had to play a low cross for the first time at the far post for Torres to touch. After scoring against Porto last week, the £ 20 summer signing of 9m already has three goals in seven appearances

Torres could have gotten another one later in the half when even more relentless pressure from the city allowed him to push the ball away from Caleta-Car in the Marseille area Instead, he allowed Oleksandr Zinchenko to follow up with a strike that cut the outside of the far post. City deserved to enter the break with a second, such was their dominance, but still ended the half with just two shots on target

There was still one game to win City remembered this fact early in the second half when Florian Thauvin – a World Cup winner, whom you might otherwise remember after a fruitless spell in front of the goal at Newcastle United – was allowed to let fly from afar Ederson misjudged the shot, allowing him to strike his hand before clearly rebounding and coming out for a corner on the upright

Marseille, to their credit, had weathered the City storm by then Guardiola’s side were still not creating much and had lost their initial intensity This is perhaps understandable given their lead, their likelihood of advancing from Group C, and the unique demands that this most compressed and compact season places on players But the longer they waited for a two-goal cushion, the more confidence Marseille would gain

Any hope that the Villas-Boas side could end a 10-game losing streak at this level, however, expired with Gundogan’s goal The midfielder owed everything to Phil Foden, who dropped his shoulder to deceive Leonardo Balerdi and ran on Aymeric Laporte’s sublime pass Sterling’s header to the far post in front of the goal knocked out the remaining Marseille defenders, allowing Gundogan to finish

The third goal was even better It was straight out of the playbook of those Premier League title-winning campaigns – a delicious slippery pass down the line by Riyad Mahrez, a low laser-like cross to the box six yards from De Bruyne and a simple finish from nearly Sterling If the hope is that this victory marks a return to form for City, they ended the evening with the most convincing evidence

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Manchester City FC, Olympique de Marseille, UEFA Champions League, Pep Guardiola, Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne