Man City humbles Man United 3-0 in the Premier League, Liverpool back on top

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester City is back to winning ways. Manchester United is back to square one.

City utterly dominated the 197th Manchester derby on Sunday, winning 3-0 on another humbling day for United coach Ruben Amorim.

It could have been so much worse for the red half of Manchester as City threatened to turn it into a rout at the Etihad Stadium.

Haaland scored twice in the second half and also hit the post to make it seven goals in a week following the five he hit for Norway against Moldova on Tuesday.

Phil Foden opened the scoring for City with a header in the 18th minute and Pep Guardiola’s team never looked back.

The win ended City’s two-game losing run in what has been a unconvincing start to the season. The problems are quickly mounting for Amorim, however, in a campaign that has already seen his team suffer a humiliating exit from the English League Cup against fourth-tier Grimsby.

Afterwards Amorim had a message for United fans.

“I will do everything, always thinking about what is best for the club,” he said. “I really want to win games, so I’m suffering more than them.”

In the day's other Premier League game, Mohamed Salah scored a stoppage-time penalty as Liverpool beat Burnley 1-0 to move back to the top of the standings.

United's latest setback came in front of glum-looking co-owner Jim Ratcliffe, who hired Amorim last year to return the 20-time English champion to the summit of European soccer and backed him heavily in the transfer market in the summer.

Any form of comeback feels a long way off right now.

United has won just once in five games in all competitions this season - a 3-2 victory against Burnley, which required a stoppage-time penalty from Bruno Fernandes.

Amorim has only won eight of 31 Premier League games since he was hired last November and under his watch United endured its lowest finish in the modern era last season when placing 15th.

“It’s not a record that you should have at Manchester United,” he admitted, but Amorim remains adamant his approach is right. “When I want to change my philosophy, I will change. If not, you have to change the man," he said. “I believe my way and I’m going to play my way until I want to change."

The coach added: “I see that we are doing better, but then the results doesn’t show that.”

Despite Amorim's comments, four points from four games is United's worst start to a season since 1992.

Haaland has been in lethal form for club and country this season.

In six games for City and Norway combined, he has scored 11 goals, only failing to find the back of the net in the 2-0 loss to Tottenham last month.

He produced clinical finishes in the 53rd and 68th minutes when running beyond United's defense. He could have had a hat trick, but slid another effort across goal and against the post.

Teammate Phil Foden described it as a “complete performance” and Guardiola called the Norwegian a “special player.”

Liverpool left it late again and moved back to the top of the Premier League.

The defending champion preserved its 100% start to the season thanks to Salah's penalty.

“We don’t give up. We just try to push ourselves and our team to the limit,” Salah told Sky Sports.

After late winners against Bournemouth and Newcastle already this term, Liverpool staged another dramatic finale at Turf Moor.

Arne Slot's team looked set to drop points for the first time this season, but was handed a lifeline when Hannibal Mejbri handled the ball in the box and referee Michael Oliver pointed to the spot.

Salah did the rest by blasting a powerful shot past Burnley goalkeeper Martin Dubravka before running away in celebration.

Salah’s goal came in the fifth minute of stoppage time and he took sole possession of fourth place in all-time Premier League scorers. The Egyptian is now on 188 goals — behind Alan Shearer (260), Harry Kane (213) and Wayne Rooney (208).

Late joy for Liverpool was yet more late pain for Burnley after the newly promoted side lost 3-2 against Manchester United in its last game.

According to Premier League statistician Opta, Liverpool is the first team in the division to score winning goals in the final 10 minutes or later in four successive games.

Time will tell if so many late victories point to a winning mentality or deeper-rooted problems for a team that often needs to get itself out of jail.

Against a Burnley team down to 10 men after Lesley Ugochukwu was sent off in the 84th minute, Liverpool needed an error from Mejbri to rescue the points, with the midfielder handling Jeremie Frimpong's cross.

“We needed a moment of luck, or a moment of magic. We didn’t have the magic, but we had the luck,” Slot told the BBC. “You are hoping and trying to make it more difficult, but they were strong.”

James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Manchster United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe stands in front of the former manager Alex Ferguson during the Premier League soccer match between Manchester City and Manchester United in Manchester, England, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Manchester City's Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring during the Premier League soccer match between Manchester City and Manchester United in Manchester, England, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrate after scoring from a penalty kick during the Premier League soccer match between Burnley and Liverpool in Burnley, England, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Liverpool's manager Arne Slot walks off the pitch after the Premier League soccer match between Burnley and Liverpool in Burnley, England, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Liverpool players celebrate after a goal during the Premier League soccer match between Burnley and Liverpool in Burnley, England, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah scores from a penalty kick during the Premier League soccer match between Burnley and Liverpool in Burnley, England, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrate after scoring from a penalty kick during the Premier League soccer match between Burnley and Liverpool in Burnley, England, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

LONDON (AP) — With one puff of a cigarette, a woman in Canada became a global symbol of defiance against Iran's bloody crackdown on dissent — and the world saw the flame.

A video that has gone viral in recent days shows the woman — who described herself as an Iranian refugee — snapping open a lighter and setting the flame to a photo she holds. It ignites, illuminating the visage of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's highest cleric. Then the woman dips a cigarette into the glow, takes a quick drag — and lets what remains of the image fall to the pavement.

Whether staged or a spontaneous act of defiance — and there’s plenty of debate — the video has become one of the defining images of the protests in Iran against the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy, as U.S. President Donald Trump considers military action in the country again.

The gesture has jumped from the virtual world to the real one, with opponents of the regime lighting cigarettes on photos of the ayatollah from Israel to Germany and Switzerland to the United States.

In the 34 seconds of footage, many across platforms like X, Instagram and Reddit saw one person defy a series of the theocracy’s laws and norms in a riveting act of autonomy. She wears no hijab, three years after the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests against the regime’s required headscarves.

She burns an image of Iran’s supreme leader, a crime in the Islamic republic punishable by death. Her curly hair cascades — yet another transgression in the Iranian government’s eyes. She lights a cigarette from the flame — a gesture considered immodest in Iran.

And in those few seconds, circulated and amplified a million times over, she steps into history.

In 2026, social media is a central battleground for narrative control over conflicts. Protesters in Iran say the unrest is a demonstration against the regime’s strictures and competence. Iran has long cast it as a plot by outsiders like United States and Israel to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

And both sides are racing to tell the story of it that will endure.

Iranian state media announces wave after wave of arrests by authorities, targeting those it calls “terrorists” and also apparently looking for Starlink satellite internet dishes, the only way to get videos and images out to the internet. There was evidence on Thursday that the regime’s bloody crackdown had somewhat smothered the dissent after activists said it had killed at least 2,615 people. That figure dwarfs the death toll from any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the mayhem of the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Social media has bloomed with photos of people lighting cigarettes from photos of Iran’s leader. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em. #Iran,” posted Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana.

In the age of AI, misinformation and disinformation, there’s abundant reason to question emotionally and politically charged images. So when “the cigarette girl” appeared online this month, plenty of users did just that.

It wasn’t immediately clear, for example, whether she was lighting up inside Iran or somewhere with free-speech protections as a sign of solidarity. Some spotted a background that seemed to be in Canada. She confirmed that in interviews. But did her collar line up correctly? Was the flame realistic? Would a real woman let her hair get so close to the fire?

Many wondered: Is the “cigarette girl” an example of “psyops?” That, too, is unclear. That’s a feature of warfare and statecraft as old as human conflict, in which an image or sound is deliberately disseminated by someone with a stake in the outcome. From the allies’ fake radio broadcasts during World War II to the Cold War’s nuclear missile parades, history is rich with examples.

The U.S. Army doesn’t even hide it. The 4th Psychological Operations Group out of Ft. Bragg in North Carolina last year released a recruitment video called, “Ghost in the Machine 2 that’s peppered with references to “PSYWAR.”And the Gaza war featured a ferocious battle of optics: Hamas forced Israeli hostages to publicly smile and pose before being released, and Israel broadcast their jubilant reunions with family and friends.

Whatever the answer, the symbolism of the Iranian woman's act was powerful enough to rocket around the world on social media — and inspire people at real-life protests to copy it.

The woman did not respond to multiple efforts by The Associated Press to confirm her identity. But she has spoken to other outlets, and AP confirmed the authenticity of those interviews.

On X, she calls herself a “radical feminist” and uses the handle Morticia Addams —- after the exuberantly creepy matriarch of “The Addams Family” — sheerly out of her interest in “spooky things,” the woman said in an interview with the nonprofit outlet The Objective.

She doesn’t allow her real name to be published for safety reasons after what she describes as a harrowing journey from being a dissident in Iran — where she says she was arrested and abused — to safety in Turkey. There, she told The Objective, she obtained a student visa for Canada. Now, in her mid-20s, she said she has refugee status in and lives in Toronto.

It was there, on Jan. 7, that she filmed what’s become known as “the cigarette girl” video a day before the Iranian regime imposed a near-total internet blackout.

“I just wanted to tell my friends that my heart, my soul was with them,” she said in an interview on CNN-News18, a network affiliate in India.

In the interviews, the woman said she was arrested for the first time at 17 during the “bloody November” protests of 2019, demonstrations that erupted after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal that Iran had struck with world powers that imposed crushing sanctions.

“I was strongly opposed to the Islamic regime,” she told The Objective. Security forces “arrested me with tasers and batons. I spent a night in a detention center without my family knowing where I was or what had happened to me.” Her family eventually secured her release by offering a pay slip for bail. “I was under surveillance from that moment on.”

In 2022 during the protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, she said she participated in a YouTube program opposing the mandatory hijab and began receiving calls from blocked numbers threatening her. In 2024, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, she shared her story about it — and was arrested in her home in Isfahan.

The woman said she was questioned and “subjected to severe humiliation and physical abuse.” Then without explanation, she was released on a high bail. She fled to Turkey and began her journey to Canada and, eventually, global notoriety.

“All my family members are still in Iran, and I haven’t heard from them in a few days,” she said in the interview, published Tuesday. “I’m truly worried that the Islamic regime might attack them.”

A demonstrator lights a cigarette with a burning poster depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally in support of Iran's anti-government protests, in Holon, Israel Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

CORRECTS MONTH - A protester lights a cigarette off a burning poster of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a demonstration in Berlin, Germany, in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A protester burns an image of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a cigarette during rally in support of the nationwide mass demonstrations in Iran against the government, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026 in Zuerich, Switzerland.(Michael Buholzer /Keystone via AP)