After a few months, the Champions League campaign began again. The two giants of Paris Grande and Manchester City became the winners of the first knockout day, defeating Real Madrid and Portugal Sport respectively to take the lead in the two-legged battle.
Manchester City, in particular, beat their opponents at home to Portugal Sport, taking a 5-0 win over the Portuguese. Guardiola's side can be said to have reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League, with no suspense. Bernardo Silva scored twice in this campaign, gave an extremely wonderful performance, and was the biggest contributor to Manchester City's victory.
On the other hand, as a Portuguese compatriot in the B seat, Danilo Pereira's performance in the big Paris squad was also unanimously praised by the outside world. The backcourt player has been criticized a lot before, and even many Paris fans hope that the team can clean him up. However, in recent games, Danilo has been completely reborn, not only in terms of physical confrontation, but also in the defensive position is also very good, the overall performance is completely worthy of a highly tactical backcourt player. While he still has flaws in his ability to move widely and select the ball, Danilo's progress should be recognized anyway.
Along with B-Seat and Danilo, there was also C Ronaldo. Ronaldo finally broke his six-game goal drought with a blast in the Premier League between Manchester United and Brighton. The goal not only temporarily relieved Cristiano Ronaldo of the pressure, but also allowed the Portuguese to regain their confidence. Next week, United will be playing Against Simeone's Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, and Cristiano Ronaldo's goal came at the right time to restore his morale. Originally, Atletico Madrid was the opponent that C Ronaldo was best at attacking, and this game also made the outside world look forward to it.
The outstanding performance of the Portugal internationals on this matchday has undoubtedly added a lot of confidence to many Portuguese fans about the upcoming World Cup play-off journey. The World Cup play-offs in Europe are extremely brutal, and neither match can be lost. Portugal need to defeat Turkey first and then meet Italy, and only by defeating Italy can they get tickets to Qatar.
Italy is currently in the midst of a shortage of major generals, which has forced Mancini to recall Balotelli, who is far from the national team, back into the squad. Looking at the wonderful performances of the Portugal internationals on the high-level stage, perhaps it is Italy that should be anxious.