So much for focusing on the simple things. Pep Guardiola’s suggestion that Kevin De Bruyne should stick to the basics was delivered on Monday and, it seemed, ignored in the Champions League on Tuesday. De Bruyne’s evening began with a 30-yard, outside-of-the-boot pass with which he almost took the entire RB Leipzig defence out of the game. It ended with him, with a blend of power and curl, dispatching a shot from 20 yards into the top corner of their goal.
And in between came perhaps his most dramatic contribution of all, a thunderbolt against the bar with his less-favoured left foot, before Erling Haaland headed in the rebound. On a night when the Norwegian delivered the statistics, the Belgian produced the spectacular. He often does. Manchester City’s 7-0 evisceration of Leipzig was notable for two outstanding individual displays; one of a player who scored five goals in a game and one from a footballer who, until his injury-time effort, only had five all season.
