Champions League: Man Metropolis have Madrid mountain to climb, are PSG higher minus Mbappe?

Champions League: Man Metropolis have Madrid mountain to climb, are PSG higher minus Mbappe?

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Erling Haaland scored towards Actual Madrid for the primary time in his profession.

After which scored one other.

However Manchester Metropolis nonetheless misplaced at dwelling to the Champions League holders.

It can have felt all too acquainted for Pep Guardiola and his group as they threw away a 2-1 lead with 4 minutes of regular time to play on the Etihad, being stung first by one among their former gamers, Brahim Diaz, after which the tireless Jude Bellingham, who steered the ball dwelling from shut vary in added time.

Oh, and earlier within the sport Kylian Mbappe had scored together with his shin.

Carlo Ancelotti’s facet take a 3-2 benefit into the playoff second leg subsequent Wednesday on the Bernabeu, with a spot within the Champions League final 16 at stake.

Elsewhere in Europe’s elite membership competitors, a rocket from Weston McKennie helped Juventus beat PSV, Borussia Dortmund thrashed Sporting CP in Lisbon and Ousmane Dembele continued his ludicrous begin to 2025 with two targets as Paris Saint-Germain beat Brest 3-0.

Elias Burke and Seb Stafford-Bloor analyse the important thing moments from all of the Champions League motion on Tuesday night time…

Typical Metropolis… and typical Madrid?

Within the battle between the Champions League’s perennial comeback kings Actual Madrid, and Metropolis, who’ve made a behavior of getting pegged again this season, it ought to come as no shock it ended the best way it did.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

The Briefing: Man Metropolis 2 Actual Madrid 3 – Bellingham’s late, late winner and one other Metropolis collapse

After an distinctive help for Mbappe’s purpose, Dani Ceballos went from hero to villain 20 minutes later, tripping Phil Foden simply contained in the field within the eightieth minute. Haaland tucked away the ensuing penalty, his forty ninth purpose in 48 Champions League video games.

Thankfully for Ceballos, two errors in fast succession from Ederson allowed Diaz, who has a Premier League medal with Metropolis from their centurion 2017-18 season, to degree the scores at 2-2.

Then, after Vinicius Junior went by way of and lifted a shot/move over Ederson’s head, Bellingham gambled to faucet in a stoppage-time winner from shut vary to place Madrid 3-2 up forward of the second leg in Spain.

For Metropolis, it was one more disastrous late collapse after the Feyenoord and PSG debacles within the league part. Now, they’ve given themselves a mountain to climb in overturning the deficit on the hardest place to win at within the Champions League.

Are PSG truly higher with out Mbappe?

Few would have anticipated PSG to enhance when Mbappe left for Actual Madrid final summer time. However, judging from their snug 3-0 win towards Brest and spectacular kind in 2025, coach Luis Enrique seems to have discovered a concord in Paris that he struggled to create when the France celebrity was main the road.

Because it’s transpired, Ousmane Dembele, 27, as soon as thought-about a expertise so promising that Barcelona paid a payment rising to £135 million, reported by BBC, to signal him as a 20-year-old from Borussia Dortmund in 2017, has greater than crammed his sneakers after an impressed tactical change from the coach.

Since Enrique introduced Dembele into the central striker function from the wings, the place he has fulfilled since rising as a proficient teenager, his goalscoring manufacturing has exploded — and his two targets towards Brest had been one other instance. His first demonstrated his confidence, dribbling into the field earlier than whipping a left-footed effort into the close to submit. His second, a deflected end together with his proper foot after reacting faster to a free ball than the Brest defenders, highlighted his anticipation as a goalscorer. Scoring with each toes shouldn’t be an unfamiliar feat for Dembele, who famously doesn’t know which is his stronger foot.

It was his third brace of the 12 months to go together with two hat-tricks and 15 targets in complete — already greater than his whole tally in 2024. This change has given PSG a contemporary attacking verve and resulted in a extra balanced unit.

Who is aware of, it may be sufficient to push the French champions from a facet that was teetering above the elimination zone for a lot of the league part to contenders for the trophy.

USMNT midfielder McKennie sprinkles some magic for Juventus

McKennie devoted his celebration to Harry Potter but it surely was his wand of a proper boot that supplied the magic as he opened the scoring for Juventus towards PSV.

With the USMNT midfielder lurking on the sting of PSV’s field, the ball broke in his route, bouncing at a great peak to strike. McKennie, who isn’t any stranger to scoring spectacular targets, approached the ball at an angle, permitting him to shift his physique weight to the left to recover from the shot and management his effort whereas putting by way of it.

The end result was an unstoppable mix of management and energy. His shot flew previous Walter Benitez within the PSV internet, inches beneath the crossbar. It’s in all probability a great factor the ball missed him, too, as it could have taken him with it into the again of the web if he was in the best way.

 

McKennie, who is a large Harry Potter fan, celebrated with an imitation of the “Expelliarmus” spell from the movie and e-book franchise. He has a lightning bolt tattooed on his finger in tribute to the speedy Gryffindor seeker, and in 2023 he was pictured alongside Matthew Lewis, who performs Neville Longbottom within the movies, posing with a USMNT shirt alongside Brenden Aaronson.

In December, membership and nationwide team-mate Timothy Weah joined in on the enjoyable, celebrating along with the “Expelliarmus” after McKennie scored towards Metropolis.

Rooney and Mbappe: masters of the shinned volley towards Man Metropolis

Wayne Rooney’s sensible overhead kick in Manchester United’s 2-1 win over Metropolis in 2011 will take some beating as the best shinned purpose ever scored towards Metropolis (and maybe anybody), however Kylian Mbappe certainly claimed the silver medal together with his purpose within the second half for Madrid.

Dani Ceballos, who was enjoying in his first Champions League knockout match for Actual Madrid seven-and-a-half years after signing from Actual Betis, performed a wonderfully weighted lofted move within the hazard space between Metropolis’s goalkeeper and defence, which Mbappe latched onto.

With an astoundingly comparable approach to his second purpose towards Argentina within the 2022 World Cup ultimate, Mbappe leapt and volleyed throughout the ball together with his proper foot whereas falling away to the left.

Whereas his effort in Qatar flew previous Emi Martinez, the connection wasn’t so pure on this occasion, the ball looping off his shin, over Ederson, and into the nook. 

Rooney, watching from pitchside on the Etihad whereas working for Amazon Prime, should certainly have been impressed.

Why did it take 4 minutes to award Haaland’s first purpose?

Premier League followers are actually accustomed to seeing footage of VAR officers in Stockley Park drawing strains to find out whether or not a participant was offside, however issues function in another way within the Champions League — and Manchester Metropolis followers came upon the exhausting manner.

The Etihad Stadium erupted after Haaland put the house facet forward with a left-footed end from shut vary after Josko Gvardiol performed a chested move in his route. Three minutes and 50 seconds later, one other cheer went up across the stadium because the Champions League’s semi-automated offside expertise confirmed the purpose.

Gvardiol was visibly onside when the preliminary cross was performed in the direction of him, however he, and Haaland, had moved past the Madrid defence by the point the Croatian made contact. So long as Haaland was in step with or behind Gvardiol, he’d have been onside, however, as evidenced by the point it took for the expertise to substantiate, it was very tight.

Because the title suggests, the expertise eliminates the potential for human error, with the offside photos taken from cameras in actual time. It debuted within the Champions League in 2022-23 and was used on the 2022 World Cup. In accordance with the Premier League, which has plans to usher in this expertise this season, offside verify delays ought to be lowered by 31 seconds.

On this case, nonetheless, the verify took so lengthy that Alan Shearer intimated the wait might have had some relation to Jack Grealish being changed attributable to a non-impact harm 10 minutes later.

“It definitely doesn’t assist while you’ve obtained elite athletes standing round for nearly 4 minutes,” Shearer mentioned on co-commentary throughout Amazon Prime’s UK protection of the match. “It can not make it easier to, or your physique. It’s not acceptable that gamers are having to attend round for that lengthy.”

Judging by this incident these marginal calls will proceed to take time. At the least we obtained the appropriate choice, eh?

Who precisely is Serhou Guirassy? 

The Champions League has an unlikely top-scorer this season: Borussia Dortmund’s 28-year-old Guinean Serhou Guirassy. His tenth purpose of the competitors may need been his greatest; it was definitely crucial. An authoritative header that looped up and into the far nook, it settled a Dortmund group who, for a lot of the primary half in Portugal, had needed to face up to strain.

That was very important, as a result of Dortmund have endured a torrid season and are naturally fragile. They sit a distant eleventh within the Bundesliga and are actually coached by Niko Kovac, who was appointed to changed the sacked Nuri Sahin two weeks in the past.

This was Kovac’s first win. Extra importantly, it was a end result (and efficiency) that Dortmund will really feel they’ll construct on in coming weeks — and that sense of a primary step taken owes a lot to Guirassy.

He was signed from Stuttgart in the summertime of 2024 after scoring 28 Bundesliga targets from 28 appearances final season. It was the primary actually prolific top-flight season of his profession, however at instances the season he has laboured on the head of a group who don’t create practically sufficient possibilities. He can snatch at alternatives and drift out of video games. So, whereas 9 targets from 18 league appearances is hardly unhealthy, it’s not fairly what it might have been.

However Guirassy is a chic, technical footballer relatively than only a goalscorer. There have been instances within the first half when his languid ability on the ball appeared to reassure team-mates clearly quick on confidence. And, having scored the purpose which modified the whole complexion of the sport — actually, an exemplary header — he created the second with an ideal cross for Pascal Gross, who kneed the ball in on the back-post to provide Dortmund a 2-0 benefit on the night time.

Even earlier than Karim Adeyemi had scored a 3rd from a flowing counter assault to successfully end the tie as a contest, Dortmund had began to play with a confidence and safety that they’ve lacked for a lot of months. Guirassy alone didn’t present that. By full-time, this had change into a commendable group efficiency. However targets so usually change a facet’s temper and that might not have been extra the case for Kovac’s BVB than it was on Tuesday night time.

There have been loads of particular person contributions to that, however they adopted Guirassy’s lead.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

What occurs subsequent?

Champions League playoffs

Tuesday’s outcomes

Brest 0 Paris Saint-Germain 3
Juventus 2 PSV Eindhoven 1
Manchester Metropolis 2 Actual Madrid 3
Sporting CP 0 Borussia Dortmund 3

Wednesday’s fixtures
(8pm BST, 3pm ET except acknowledged)

Membership Bruges v Atalanta (5.45pm BST, 12.45pm ET)
Celtic v Bayern Munich
Feyenoord v Milan
Monaco v Benfica

The second legs shall be performed on February 18/19.

Eight groups will advance to the final 16, to affix Liverpool, Barcelona, Arsenal, Inter, Atletico Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen, Lille and Aston Villa.

The draw for the final 16, quarter-final and semi-final will happen on Friday February 21.

(High picture: Carl Recine/Getty Pictures) 



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