Brobbey’s Hat-Trick Not Enough as Haaland Finally Cracks Sunderland

MANCHESTER — Brian Brobbey scored a hat-trick at the Etihad on Sunday, but Manchester City still defeated his team 5–3.

The result made Brobbey only the sixth player in Premier League history to score three goals in a losing effort. The previous player to do so was Blackburn Rovers’ Roque Santa Cruz in 2007, leaving a 19-year gap between the two performances.

Brobbey’s goals will enter the record books, but the afternoon ultimately belonged to Manchester City: an exceptional individual display preserved inside a defeat.

Erling Haaland’s goal in the 81st minute ended the argument. He latched on to Josko Gvardiol’s pull-back from the left channel and slid in at the far post with the clinical absence of ceremony that defines him in these moments. The strike also completed something nobody had managed to prevent: the Norwegian forward has now scored against all 25 opponents he has faced in the Premier League.

It took him four and a half seasons. Sunderland were the last holdout.

Enzo Fernández had opened the scoring in the ninth minute, but City’s lead lasted three minutes. Brobbey equalized from close range before Rayan Cherki restored the advantage. The young Frenchman’s third goal in five league starts extended City’s lead to 2-1 before Brobbey leveled once more. Antoine Semenyo struck to make it 3-2 on the stroke of halftime, then added his second to make it 4-2 shortly after the restart, and the game appeared resolved. Then Brobbey completed his hat-trick on the hour and the Etihad found itself in unknown territory: nine minutes from the end, clinging to a 4-3 lead against a newly promoted side.

Haaland’s goal was the answer. It was also the moment a record quietly closed.

For Enzo Maresca, Sunday extended a remarkable opening sequence: five wins from five, three points clear of defending champions Arsenal going into the international break. According to CBS Sports, he becomes just the sixth manager in Premier League history to win his first five league games in charge of a club, a list that includes Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola. Asked about the significance, Maresca declined to inflate it. He told reporters it was much better to have three points more, but that it was quite early in the season.

The qualification mattered. City gave up three goals to a side that most forecasters placed outside the top ten. The defensive solidity that defined the club under Guardiola has not yet been restored under Maresca’s watch, and the summer departure of Rodri to Barcelona pulled out the structural support that allowed City to absorb that kind of pressure in previous campaigns. Five wins covers a number of problems. It does not solve them.

The City squad Maresca inherited has talent at both ends but questions through the middle. Elliot Anderson, signed in the summer for a British record fee, offers one answer in central midfield. Fernández offered another on Sunday. Neither has yet demonstrated that City can concede three goals and still feel comfortable, because Sunday’s win never felt comfortable in the way City’s results under Guardiola tended to feel, with the game sealed and the questions irrelevant by the hour mark.

What Sunderland showed, and what Brobbey embodied, was that the record of five clean wins does not tell the full story of five games. City scored five. They required five because they kept allowing opponents back in.

Brobbey’s hat-trick, taken in isolation, would rank as one of the Premier League season’s notable individual performances. He arrived at the Etihad leading Sunderland’s attack in only their second top-flight campaign in a decade, scored three times against the league leaders, and lost. As Sky Sports noted, he becomes only the sixth player to claim a Premier League hat-trick in a losing cause. Brobbey already has four league goals in five appearances this season, more than any Sunderland player has contributed at this stage in the club’s modern top-flight history.

As exits from Sunday’s sports pages go, it is at least a memorable one.

The gap between City and Arsenal stands at three points with an international break ahead. Maresca and his squad will not play again in the league until early October, when the record will face examination from something other than a newly promoted side. Whether the defensive shakiness that Brobbey exposed on Sunday presents itself as a persistent problem or a single afternoon’s lapse remains the question Maresca cannot yet answer.

He has two weeks to think about it.