Six minutes from the time, it appeared as though this first reunion between Borussia Dortmund and Erling Haaland might answer the question the whole of European football is currently asking. Maybe he can be stopped. Maybe he is human after all. Maybe all it takes to prevent him from scoring is a deep, intimate knowledge of his strengths and weaknesses developed over the course of two years seeing him train and play every day. Turns out, that’s not enough.
Eventually, this extraordinary run of scoring will stop. At some point, his goal record will come ever so slightly back down to earth. For now though, it is enough to say that Haaland’s 13th goal in eight games completed yet another Manchester City comeback to strengthen their position in Group G and bring passage to the Champions League knockout stages one step closer.
The finish itself was remarkable - his left foot stretched out like a kung-fu kick to connect with Joao Cancelo’s cross from deep - and knock the ball past Dortmund goalkeeper Alexander Meyer from an acute angle. Until that point, the chances of him punishing his former club had appeared unlikely. He had barely had a clear sight of goal all night. Yet if he proved anything during those formative seasons in the Bundesliga, it is that he only needs one.
Dortmund suffered at the hands of a monster of their own creation. It was not entirely deserved. Jude Bellingham’s header had looked likely to earn Edin Terzic’s side a famous win that their organised defending warranted but with just 10 minutes remaining, their resolve was broken by a thunderbolt from - of all people - John Stones. City rallied. Haaland scored. This night would follow the script, after all.
Many sides come to the Etihad and set out to reduce the first half to a total non-event but few are successful. Dortmund were. On the eve of this game, Edin Terzic avoided offering specific answers to questions on how to combat Haaland and instead focused on how his players would stop City as a team. They succeeded by following the game plan he had already laid out: compact, disciplined defending that narrowed the spaces Guardiola’s side usually exploit and careful use of possession.
Terzic predicted that Dortmund would have as little as 20 per cent of the ball. They ended the half with almost double that by carefully retaining and recycling inside their own half, successfully avoiding and even beating City’s press. This meant there was precious little going the other way but still, at the break, the only shot on target was Dortmund’s: a clipped effort from Salih Ozcan, from a move started by Bellingham, that was easily held by Ederson.
His counterpart in the Dortmund goal went untested, despite the air of expectation every time the ball was in a certain player’s vicinity. Haaland went close to connecting with a Riyad Mahrez cross after a quarter-of-an-hour but was beaten to the header by Niklas Sule, the only player on the pitch to be as tall and as broad as the Norwegian. Other than that, Cancelo blazed over from range and Jack Grealish had two shots blocked in quick succession.
Guardiola insisted that this was a rested team rather than a weakened one, having made four changes from last week’s win over Sevilla, but the fact it contained several players short of either form or confidence was beginning to tell. Marco Reus should have put Dortmund ahead at the start of the second half when he tore through the right-hand side of City’s defence far too easily and shaped to shoot into the far corner, instead firing across the face of goal and wide.
Yet just as Guardiola prepared a triple substitution to snap City out of their slumber, Dortmund struck. Gio Reyna’s corner from the right was flicked on by Ozcan and made it all the way to the right-hand edge of the penalty area, where Reus was waiting to send it back from whence it came. Bellingham was one step ahead of his former team-mates Haaland and Manuel Akanji, squeezing between the pair of them to connect with a header that Ederson failed to anticipate.
As Bellingham celebrated in front of the travelling support, that triple substitution was hastened. Julian Alvarez, Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden were thrown on all at once which - even in this era of five substitutions - felt like a sign of Guardiola’s growing frustration. Having spent the majority of the first half sitting in the dugout, he was now almost permanently perched on the edge of his technical area, often straying beyond its boundaries to explain how a particular passing sequence should have been played.
All to no avail. None of City’s usual patterns and combinations were having an effect. At which point, you sometimes just have to hit it. That was exactly what Stones did, at least, collecting a square pass from an otherwise quiet Kevin De Bruyne and firing at will. Alexander Meyer did not so much attempt to save it as have some sort of muscle spasm, wildly flailing his arms around as it passed him on its way in.
That air of expectation from earlier in the night was suddenly restored. Four minutes later, as Haaland stuck a long leg out to meet Cancelo’s far post cross, it was realised.
