Savinho’s chest of the century caps Manchester City’s night of wild mood swings | Jonathan Liew
Savinho’s chest of the century caps Manchester City’s night of wild mood swings | Jonathan Liew
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It may have been a tricky Champions League campaign for Pep Guardiola’s side so far, but they live to fight another day. The best moment of this game came 13 minutes from time, and will almost certainly be forgotten to history. Savinho brings down John Stones’s long ball with his chest and lashes the ball home, and of course this is the part that matters: Manchester City 3-1 up and safe at last. There is no Fifa Best award for “Greatest Chest Control of the Year”. But there should be.
![[Pep Guardiola has one of many outbursts during the game]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c833207e6750285952b4747284f33768e79d95c8/0_73_2317_1390/master/2317.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
It was, quite simply, one of the great chest touches. The perfect spot on the breastbone: not too much rib, not too much nipple. Just the right amount of give in the torso to send it forwards, not up or down: the ball not so much cushioned as sprung. Because now the ball is sitting up beautifully, and Simon Mignolet can probably do better at his near post but that’s hardly the first time we’ve said that.
And so City qualify for the next stage of the Champions League. Hold the presses. Could have predicted that five months ago, Nostradamus. But of course the “what” is much less interesting than the “how” and, on an unbearably taut night at the Etihad Stadium, City ended their group stage largely as they lived it: in a blur of half-sensations, a night of wild mood swings and inexplicable random fire.
Not until Savinho’s goal, 707 minutes into their Champions League campaign, could City truly relax. Was there really not an easier way of doing this? Perhaps, but then you would also struggle to match the thrill and the catharsis of the moment itself: a goal of pure haptics, a goal that felt fresh and interesting, a new way of getting to a familiar place.
