There is an argument that European football will suit Ayyoub Bouaddi better than the Premier League while he settles into life at Manchester City, but that does not explain how an 18-year-old can look so assured at this high level.Bouaddi, signed from Lille for £86million ($116.5m) this summer, made his first City start against Porto at the Dragao Stadium on Tuesday night and he looked like he had been doing it for years.“He did a really good game! In training, he’s been amazing,” Erling Haaland told Prime Video Sport after the match. “I told the chairman (Khaldoon Al Mubarak), we’ve got a gem there.”Haaland moved to third on City’s all-time scorers’ list, equalled Sergio Aguero’s 36 goals in the Champions League, and is back on a goal-a-game ratio in Europe with 59 strikes in 59 games.He continues to make the difference for City, scoring both goals to settle an increasingly tense clash in Porto, but Bouaddi, in his own way, was equally influential. It was a mature performance, one that allowed City to play, to control difficult situations, and create those chances for Haaland.One impressive element of his performance, or maybe just his presence, was that his team-mates clearly seem to trust him already. Rayan Cherki in particular had no qualms with playing to his young team-mate, even with two men around him, seemingly safe in the knowledge that he would find a way to make it work.“They can see that he is a very good player,” Enzo Maresca said in his press conference. That was after he had given his verdict on Bouaddi’s performance when talking to Prime Video Sports. “Oh my God! He was never in panic, he was very good; the performance from him was unbelievable.”City are getting to grips with life without both Rodri and Bernardo Silva, two midfielders who know all about controlling matches and taking responsibility on the biggest stages, and it has already become evident that Elliot Anderson, who also arrived in the summer, is capable of picking up where they left off.He came off the bench in the second half on Tuesday to help City get the game back under control, and once again looked highly impressive both with and without the ball. Anderson looks sure to become the fulcrum of the City team, and it looks like Bouaddi will be able to contribute plenty either alongside the Englishman, or even in his place.Bouaddi has the formidable task of helping replacing Rodri and Bernado Silva (Miguel Riopa/AFP via Getty Images)On a couple of occasions, the teenager took the ball facing his own goal and, seemingly forced to go backwards, simply turned and wriggled the other way to move into acres of space, getting City up the pitch.At other times, it was more simple but no less useful: offering to take the ball from Gianluigi Donnarumma on the edge of the box, his back to the game and with a man bearing down on him, he popped it off to a free man to help evade the Porto press, the kind of thing that Ilkay Gundogan used to do.Gundogan became so special for City because of his ability to influence the game in all areas of the pitch, adding goals and more decisive attacking contributions a couple of years into his time in Manchester, in unison with all of the tempo-setting stuff nearer his own goal.City recognise that Bouaddi needs to improve in the final third, which will presumably come with time. Haaland’s praise was tempered slightly as a result.“I think he should’ve played me through in the second half. I was all alone, I was a bit angry, so I’ll tell him right now — but he played a good game, except that pass,” he said with a smile.Haaland was, literally, hopping mad after Bouaddi broke through the middle and elected to clip a pass out wide to the left, with the Norwegian waiting to his right. With the ball heading in the opposite direction, Haaland jumped up and down and waved his arms in fury, carrying on for a few seconds as the play developed.But that does not take away from the performance — besides, there was a neat ball into the box in the first half that led to a fine double save by Porto goalkeeper Diogo Costa.City’s scouting process identified Bouaddi’s talent on the ball, mobility, maturity and mentality as significant strengths, more than enough to convince them to barter with Lille all summer to bring him to Manchester now, and to throw him into matches like the one on Tuesday, a game that became more and more fractious.Is Enzo Fernandez actually worth £125million?JJ Bull“You can see he speaks French, English, Spanish perfectly,” Maresca explained after the match. “He is different in terms of empathy, in terms of how mature he is, and this is why the club has made the effort to bring him here with us.”Maresca also gave an insight into why he trusted Bouaddi to start as City kicked off their European campaign, after bringing him off the bench for his Premier League debut against Coventry City on Saturday.“He’s very good, first of all,” the Italian explained. “Against Coventry, he lost two balls and after that, he was inside our box, calm, and this shows how good he is because any player, after you miss two passes, you panic. But he is just 18 and he is a fantastic player. I think tonight he was very good.“You expect probably Erling, Ruben (Dias), Mateo (Kovacic) can manage these kinds of games better; you don’t expect it from a guy who’s 18. And he was top. He never panicked. I didn’t see him, in any moment, panic. This is the reason why he is here with us.”It is probably still too soon to expect Bouaddi to play at such a high level week after week, and City have both Anderson and Enzo Fernandez for that, but Haaland is surely right — he is a gem.