Triumphant City raise Touré's spirits

Yaya Touré savoured an emotional return to the Manchester City FC ranks as he played a part in both his team's goals in a 2-1 comeback win away against FC Porto, just days after suffering heartbreak with the Ivory Coast in the Africa Cup of Nations final. The midfielder lauded "a great result" for City against the UEFA Europa League holders, for whom João Moutinho sounded a defiant note, vowing that their title defence is "not over yet".

Yaya Touré, City midfielder
It was a great result. In Europe, you have to be strong. Today we were fortunate enough to score two goals and it's very important for us and gives us a good advantage for the second leg. I'm very happy about the win today and I want to thank all my [colleagues]; we played away, we defended well, we attacked well and I think we played with great experience.

I told the coach before the Africa Cup of Nations final that I wanted to join up with the team and try to play. Maybe fewer minutes [than I did], but the most important thing was to come and help my team-mates. I was very disappointed after the final, but that's finished and I have to forget it. Now I have different challenges and we have to win the Europa League and the Premier League – it's very important for the club and for me.

Sergio Agüero, City forward
It definitely wasn't an easy game for us because Porto have a very good team, but luckily enough we managed to come away with a vital win. This result means we will be more relaxed for the return match but, having said that, we will still need to be very careful. Maybe tonight the result was better than our display, but we are very happy to leave here with a win which puts us on the right track to go through.

João Moutinho, Porto midfielder
We were more in control in the first half, but all in all I think we played really well. Football is just like that and City managed to convert the few chances they had. We knew that City would try to mount a comeback in the second half and maybe we started defending a bit too much. We should have continued to play like in the first half, but we were facing an excellent team with some amazing players. It's not over yet, that's for sure.

Lucho González, Porto midfielder
We knew we were facing a very tough opponent and it only took one moment of distraction for them to score the equaliser. I think the tie remains open with this result and it's important to say that we did amazingly well in the first half, especially when you think that City are one of the strongest teams in Europe. We have a bitter feeling because we could have managed a positive result and that wasn't the case.