Manchester City travel to Copenhagen to face their more modest Group G rival (at 1:45 pm, on ESPN), with the confidence that records of Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne give them. The Norwegian has already scored 20 goals in 13 games for his side this season, while the Belgian has 9 assists in all competitions.
City can reach the knockout stage of the Champions League for a 10th consecutive season.
Since breaking through the group stage barrier in 2014, the team hasn’t missed a rendezvous with the continent’s sixteen best teams.
In five of Pep Guardiola’s six seasons to date, City have dropped out of the Champions League group stage at the top of their group. Only on their debut, in 2016/17, did the team come behind Barcelona.
The numbers of Haaland
With his two goals against Copenhagen, the Norwegian has five games in three with City in the Champions League.
With his 28 goals (8 with Salzburg and 15 with Dortmund), in just 22 games he has already equaled the historical scorers of the competition such as Hernán Crespo or Mario Mandžukić and surpassed Mario Gómez (27), Claudio Pizarro (24), Frank Lampard (23), Adriano (22) or Gareth Bale (20).
It took Haaland 14 games to overtake Ole Gunnar Solskjær (19 of 77) as Norway’s top scorer in the Champions League. In total, he has scored 20 goals in 13 games for City.
In the meantime, it remains to be seen how many minutes Julián Álvarez will be able to add after playing the last 20 in the 4-0 Premier League win over Southampton. Araña scored in a 5-0 win against Copenhagen at the Etihad Stadium and since joining City he has scored 5 goals.
Source: Clarin
