Pep Guardiola had declared, ‘I grew up loving the Holland culture, how they play. I was a lucky guy’ on the eve of this encounter. And with high netting to keep out missiles and rabid local expectations, this had looked a serious examination of Manchester City’s quest to finally make it in Europe.Guardiola’s players were the ones who exhibited the Total Football, however, in a performance which revealed precisely what a £215milion summer has delivered to Manchester City.The club have never opened a Champions League campaign more empathically and not once performed as brutally well away from home in their troubled, six-year quest for Champions League success.The team selection and tactics of the Dutch champions’ manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst — who selected several rookies — were frankly disastrous and a source of astonishment here last night.But for movement, speed and attacking options, this still felt like a City change of gear. The level of physicality seemed new.That two of the goals came from John Stones certainly demonstrated the numbers being thrown into attack.But it was the midfield axis provided by Kevin De Bruyne which gave the creative spark. His speed of thought and pass, piercing the Dutch defensive lines to initiate wave after wave of attack, made him an untouchable presence.The hosts were suffocated in possession by Guardiola’s player press.The City manager declared of De Bruyne: ‘He’s one of the best players I’ve seen in my life in terms of making absolutely everything.’Much of the added propulsion in this new City side has come from Kyle Walker and Benjamin Mendy, the full backs who were effectively acting as wingers here and adding an entirely new dimension. Between them they wrought havoc, stealing possession and, once City had seized the ball, operating at fast pace to feed Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus.Van Bronckhurst’s pre-match platitudes about how City could win this tournament hid a desire to bloody the noses of the mighty.That feeling is never far from the surface in this port city where they loathe the sophisticated, cultured rivals from Ajax of Amsterdam. The anthem blasting out here in the stadium beforehand translates as ‘hand in hand comrades’.But from the game’s first breath Guardiola looked to suffocate the spirit of rebellion with his high defensive lines.‘Good pressing,’ he said of his attacking strategy. ‘We played with three strikers and they could not play. I can imagine this stadium if we’d let them play. We make a lot of passes for 20 to 25 minutes and the crowd was low.’There was an element of fortune about the goal which sent City ahead after 97 seconds — Stones’ half-connected header after David Silva’s short corner rolling between Tonny Vilhena’s legs and over the line.But nothing after that lacked conviction in a City side who had arrived with a lamentable record on the road in Europe: one win in 10 and one clean sheet in 17 games.Jesus had come close to doubling City’s lead — Eric Botteghin headi
