At times during the opening hour of this game it might have seemed to a casual observer that Phil Foden had walked on to the pitch with a handler in tow; perhaps some tolerant elderly relative, there to stand close but not really that close, to chase dutifully, prepared to let him show off his twinkly footwork, like some weary Sunday morning dad scrolling his phone in the park.
In the event this turned out to be Victor Lindelöf, Manchester United’s stand-in left-back, who did his best to track and chase and non-specifically hinder Manchester City’s outstanding attacker in what was, ultimately, a neck-crickingly one-sided 3-1 victory. This was a thankless security detail. Even with United’s deep-set midfield filling the spaces, Lindelöf simply didn’t have the physical capacity to stop this full-bore, mid-season version of Foden, who is just a different style of human, his feet moving too quickly, the tendons set to a different level of twang.
