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Each team devises a strategy before Erling Haaland charges at them. Familiarity may have blunted English football’s awareness of just how terrifying a prospect he personifies: nearly 90kg of Nordic strength, able to move at explosive speeds yet blessed with precise technique and multiple scoring methods. One major club failed to contain him, and just like Napoli. Even when Haaland fails to score, he is spreading fear.

Giovanni Di Lorenzo is a veteran defender. He is leader for Napoli. He boasts accumulated over 50 caps representing his country. However, when Phil Foden – exhibiting rejuvenation on Sunday and continued it in this match – slipped an incisive delivery through the back four in the first half, the defender, presumably aware of Haaland’s presence and anxious about the inevitable danger he brings when he gets going, drifted out of his zone.

But in doing so he miscalculated the trajectory of the ball, and while it traveled from him, he had Haaland not over his right shoulder where he had feared, instead on his right. In a moment of panic, he lunged, didn’t get the ball, and clattered Haaland’s shin. Dismissal was obvious after the VAR official indicated no deflection on the ball.

Before that, even though Manchester City enjoyed the majority of play, the game seemed tightly contested. The Italian side’s engine room, including Kevin De Bruyne alongside the triumphant group of Stanislav Lobotka, Frank Zambo Anguissa, and McTominay, did not generated opportunities, but there had been a distant threat that at some point they could. Once down to 10 men, the scenario turned into attack against defense, and City had over three-quarters of play.

A manager, the Napoli coach has always said, is akin to a designer; he needs to adapt his approach to suit the situation. For most of his time in management, he preferred a defensive trio, used a high line, and rehearsed set plays – rehearsed actions carried out instinctively even in the heat of battle.

When he arrived at Napoli, yet, he took charge of – after a sequence of errors that saw Rudi Garcia, another manager, and Francesco Calzona all have the job in 2023-24 – the flexible system that had brought the championship under the previous coach. Up to the winter he also had Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, their brightest creative talent, who was unlikely to be repackaged as a defensive wide player or a central attacker.

Therefore, he modified his approach, deploying something somewhere between a 4-3-3 and a alternative formation, featuring one player pushing forward on the left flank and another individual on the right wing, and a attacking duo of one forward and Romelu Lukaku. The former gone to Atlético, while Lukaku has sustained a significant muscle problem, now featuring an elite midfielder and a young striker. The 4-3-3 has transitioned to a single-pivot system, although the engine room giving more stretch on the right flank than the left side, and De Bruyne given a degree of freedom.

Yet Haaland has the ability to ruin the ideal tactical setups. Confronted by a setback, down to 10 men, the tailor needed to change his approach. And Conte is a ruthless tailor; he ignores emotion, so off came the veteran midfielder.

The Belgian may be the imaginative brain of the team, but he carried with him a expendable element. Now in his mid-thirties, he is not suited for the defensive duties needed when facing City a man down. There had been banners honoring him pre-match, and after he came off early on, fans responded with loud applause from the supporters, tinged, no doubt, with a collective exhale. After watching him for many seasons, they are aware the damage he continues to pose.

On the field stood previous Manchester United players on the Napoli side, but two of them, the midfielder and the striker, drew much attention pre-match. However, the other one, the bald, tattooed, mustached Serbian goalkeeper Milinkovic-Savic, however briefly appeared to be the decisive presence.

As a teenager when he moved to Old Trafford from a Serbian side in 2014, but he continued in the same city as a temporary move another campaign and, when he could not secure a playing license, was sold to another club. He arrived at Napoli as a loanee from his parent club recently and was featured solely because of another goalkeeper’s muscle problem. But he produced three outstanding saves in the final 10 minutes, suggesting, briefly, the chance that he would emerge as the surprise savior of a gritty rearguard.

But in the end, he too was forced to yield to Haaland, who ran on to a floated through ball to shape a well-placed header over the imposing Serbia international.

That brings half a dozen strikes for Haaland in several appearances for City in the current campaign during a spell when he