John Higgins delivers his own De Bruyne magic as Madchester finish rewrites snooker's New Order with epic Mark Selby win

John Higgins delivered a tour de force at the Tour Championship to claim a remarkable 10-8 victory over Mark Selby on Sunday night in Manchester. In an epic joust between two four-time world champions, Higgins led 5-1, then trailed 8-5, but rallied to reel off five straight frames for glory. On the cusp of turning 50, it means the evergreen Scot will be third seed for the 49th World Championship.

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On the same day Kevin De Bruyne announced plans to end his 10-year stay in Manchester, a fellow evergreen sporting artist was busy extending his residence in the city.

Amid a rousing 10-7 win over Barry Hawkins in the semi-finals of the elite Tour Championship on Friday, John Higgins produced a level of creative magic with a little white ball that saw De Bruyne enchant English football with a bigger one.

"John looked in top form, and I thought he played great there to be fair," said world No. 11 Hawkins, who looked slightly startled after dismantling Masters champion Shaun Murphy [10-1] and world No. 1 Judd Trump [10-5] during his run to the last four.

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"All credit to John. He played fantastic. John is an all-time great.

"He is almost unstoppable when he plays like that."

Of course, the athletic demands of the beautiful game are slightly different from the mentally excoriating solitary environs of snooker, the brutal game, but the same rules apply at the summit of any sporting field: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The creative magic, vision and work ethic which made Belgian midfielder De Bruyne an icon of the Premier League - revelling in six national titles and the UEFA Champions League trophy - for a decade wearing a Manchester City shirt has been shared by Higgins in a waistcoat.

An unassuming, working-class bloke who was dubbed the 'Wizard of Wishaw' shortly after turning professional in 1992, which stretches back to the first year of the Premier League, Higgins continues to concoct a timeless type of sporting sorcery.

These potting potions saw him run in four century breaks against Xiao Guodong (10-3) in the quarter-finals of the 12-man competition on Thursday, and three against a helpless Hawkins on Friday, but his own Super Sunday best was some kind of wonderful he probably feared was in the rearview mirror.

While De Bruyne was playing out a 0-0 draw with United in his final derby match at Old Trafford, Manchester Central was piped into a fascinating battle of wills that will be recalled as one of the greatest snooker finals of the modern era.

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Two giants of the old green baize, who first locked cues at the 2005 World Championship, continue to come alive and indeed prosper under the severest demands of the moment.

At times, Selby had looked unplayable in Manchester with thumping victories over Neil Robertson (10-1) and Ding Junhui (10-2), both major tournament winners this season, but Higgins in full flow continues to provide a daunting challenge for any of his contemporaries.

The Scotsman had ended an agonising four-year wait for a major ranking trophy with a 10-6 win over Joe O'Connor in the World Open final in Yushan last month, but astonishingly found room for improvement against an uncompromising opponent who had tortured his soul in recent times.

Selby had led the career head-to-heads 16-8 and had won eight of their past 10 meetings, including an 18-15 win in the 2017 World Championship final from 10-4 down and a 10-5 victory in the British Open final in Cheltenham in September.

There was a feeling he had Higgins' number and his status as the strong pre-match favourite with the bookmakers was justified when he watched Higgins produce two 102 breaks on his way to a 5-1 lead, took it all in his stride before appearing to level his opponent by binging on a seven-frame run built on a serious bout of heavyweight hitting.

After weighing in with 135 in the second frame, Selby embarked upon intimidating runs of 112, 136, 68, 55, 77 and 119 to largely restrict Higgins to a viewing role.

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With all the momentum on Selby's side, most players would have been done for.

But then most players are not Higgins, who has built a fearsome reputation as a figure who tends to respond to danger by heading straight into the burning building.

Selby would be restricted to only 18 points in the final five frames as Higgins regained his trademark bounce with breaks of 110, 67, 80 and 132, completing a 10-8 triumph that had to be seen to be believed.

"John was incredible from 8-5. I missed a pink to the middle at 8-7, apart from that I didn't do a lot wrong, but my head was spinning," said a magnanimous Selby, who joined Higgins in compiling 11 centuries in a compulsive week of superior quality by the two men.

"Every mistake I made, John punished me. He stood up like the warrior he is."

When Higgins, Ronnie O'Sullivan or Mark Williams find their true form, the sport's enduring 'Class of '92' are in a class of their own.

The stats are incredible with the ongoing trio winning 100 ranking titles of the 441 contested in the sport's modern history.

The return to glory, 30 years and 165 days after Higgins lifted his first ranking trophy at the old Grand Prix in 1994 in Derby, he defeated Dave Harold 9-6 in the final, will not surprise many of his fellow pros.

"I’ve never hidden the fact that John Higgins is my snooker hero," commented the former Indian Open winner Matthew Selt after Higgins restricted Selby to only seven points in a 6-0 whitewash on his way to lifting the 2021 Players Championship.

"To see him still play like that, gives me great pleasure to watch. He’s a phenomenal player.

"People go on about age, but does it really matter? They’re proving it’s just a number and are getting on with it.

"You are either really, really good or you are good. They are the greats and they will always be the greats until they put their cues down.

"I just think the way Higgins conducts himself is different class.

"If they were all in a room together, he’s the only one you wouldn’t know what he won because he is just that down to earth."

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In the musical home of Madchester, the city which spawned Joy Division, The Smiths, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and Oasis among others, Higgins was about to rewrite snooker's New Order.

It would have been no less mad had Morrissey and Marr reformed to perform There Is a Light That Never Goes Out as Higgins mopped up before a sell-out crowd sold on the significance of the occasion.

On the cusp of turning 50 next month, Higgins will enter the 49th World Championship as the third seed, armed with a 33rd title victory in his 33rd year among the elite and remains a clear and present danger for a fifth Crucible title spanning four decades.

It is difficult to recall that the Scot briefly dropped out of the top 16 for a week for the first time since April 1995 last September, such is the awe-inspiring levels of brilliance and bottle, both in scoring and in his all-round game, that he has unearthed in recent weeks.

For levels of personal satisfaction, it probably tops his 10-9 win over O'Sullivan in the 2006 Masters final at the old Wembley Conference Centre when he produced a 64 clearance from 60-0 behind to memorably carry off the trophy on the final black.

In terms of a glorious comeback story in snooker, it reminds one of the six-time world champion Steve Davis, Higgins' childhood idol, recovering from 8-4 behind against O'Sullivan at the Masters in 1997 to complete an unlikely 10-8 win, but it is easy to forget Davis was only 39 at the time.

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This was a win for the ages, and Higgins has arguably never been in better form at the age of 49.

"It was my best-ever win," he told reporters after being joined by his family in Manchester.

"You were playing an unbelievable champion who didn't look like he was going to miss. He was tying me up in knots.

"It is just what Mark Selby does. There were little bits during the match that began to run in my favour, and you need that against someone as good as Mark.

"I was trying to stay positive, but it is incredibly difficult because you are hitting your head against a brick wall.

"I feel that if I can do that against someone as good as Mark Selby that gives me an incredible amount of belief that I can still mix it with the best players."

Higgins played his first match at the Crucible in 1995, losing 10-3 to fellow Scot Alan McManus, before winning the sport's biggest competition in 1998, 2007, 2009 and 2011.

"The World Championship is a different animal," said Higgins after earning £160,000, including £10,000 for his 144 highest break prize against Hawkins.

"Listen, relax, enjoy the next couple of weeks and then go to Sheffield and give it my all. "

Martin Keown, the former Arsenal and England defender, told TNT Sports he thinks Manchester City should erect a statue in tribute to "football royalty" De Bruyne.

Perhaps the town of Wishaw in Lanarkshire, home of iconic footballers Tommy Gemmell and Joe Baker, will look at doing something similar for John Higgins.

After all, there are not too many places in the world that has a wizard as its greatest sporting son.