Stuttgart turn a Champions League away day into a Swabian spa retreat

Slovan Bratislava’s welcome to the Champions League big boys' table has felt remarkably like being invited to a lavish banquet only to discover you are the main course. VfB Stuttgart were in no mood to play polite dinner guests, strolling into Slovakia, executing a clinical demolition job, and leaving with a serene 3-0 victory that felt as effortless as it was inevitable.

The hosts managed to keep it at 0-1 by the interval, but that single-goal deficit at half-time was a polite fiction. It was never a question of if Stuttgart would pull away, merely how quickly Slovan’s resistance would evaporate under the relentless rhythm of Sebastian Hoeness’s well-oiled machine.

In the middle of the park, Angelo Stiller orchestrated proceedings with the casual elegance of a grandmaster playing speed chess against toddlers. Dictating the tempo, suffocating transitions, and distributing with pinpoint accuracy, Stiller picked up a thoroughly deserved 8.27/