Leicester suffer a 5-0 smashing at the hands of Porto to wrap up the Champions League Group Stages

Leicester City wrapped up the Champions’ League Group Stage with an absolutely pathetic display away to Porto. Although this match was a dead-rubber for the Foxes, it was a joke of a performance, and that’s putting it lightly. Before we get into this dreadful game, we’d like to offer our apologies to FC Copenhagen and anyone who paid to watch that game, you didn’t deserve that.

The Foxes made ten changes to the team that started at the weekend, so we weren’t expecting miracles from a squad that consisted of mainly fringe players, but this was completely abysmal.

Porto took the lead on 6 minutes through Andre Silva, as Leicester gave up their usual set-piece goal. Jeff Schlupp’s marking on the play was laughable at best, as he seemed more interested in tussling with Silva than actually contesting for the corner ball. The striker easily slotted the ball into the back of the net, and from there it became a question of how many Porto were going to score as the Foxes seemed completely content with a 1-0 defeat.

The team looked incredibly passive, sitting as deep as possible while the home side ran circles around them. It was no surprise when Porto added their second through Corona on a splendid volley. Take nothing away from the goal, but that marking was laughable. No one was in arms reach of the winger as he doubled the scoring. Considering there wasn’t a flood of bodies in the Leicester City penalty area, the amount of space Corona had to position himself was disgraceful.

It got more embarrassing, as Porto’s fluid passing continued to demolish the Leicester backline. The left hand side looked particularly vulnerable as Ben Chilwell was completely out of his depth, while Jeff Schlupp’s performance rivaled something straight out of Sunday League. Porto’s third goal summed up Leicester’s performance down the left hand side, as Corona played in Periera, who’d burst down Porto’s right flank, unseen by any defender, leaving him plenty of time to pick out a pass to the near post for Brahimi to run onto and flick in with a cheeky backheel.

Down 3-0 at halftime, the Foxes should’ve just packed up and flown home. In all honesty, I feel more effort would’ve been required to formally forfeit the match than what was on display in the first half. But onward the visitors went, hoping to better their grand total of 70 completely passes in the first half, a 58% completion rate. Schlupp and Ahmed Musa were exiled to the bench in favor of Marc Albrighton and Leo Ulloa respectively.

From there the Foxes momentarily looked like they might belong on the same pitch as Porto, but things were back to normal when Danny Drinkwater gave away a penalty in the 64^th minute after the defense had been carved open yet again, tugging back Silva as he looked to fire an angled shot in the six yard box. Silva stepped up and calmly converted the penalty to make it 4-0.

5-0 came through yet another defensive breakdown as Jota was played in, not being tracked whatsoever, and left to coolly finish.

Overall it was nothing short of a disgrace as Porto looked capable of scoring from every attack. The Foxes couldn’t string two passes together for the majority of the match, finishing with a grand total of zero shots on target and nothing but concern to take from the match. The fringe players can’t be bothered and we’re a mess from top-to-bottom, a heavy defeat to Man City this weekend looking increasingly likely with that convincing display.