Category: UEFA Competitions

Alejandro Garnacho scored off the bench as Chelsea escaped from Azerbaijan with a point after being given a scare

1 min: No Caicedo or Enzo in midfield for Chelsea, and that’s going to be a test of Romeo Lavia and Andrey Santos. The young visitors get booed on every touch. Boos are very much in fashion in football, as Trent Alexander-Arnold will tell you.

Here we go in Baku, the teams are out, the jewel of the Land of Fire take on west London’s finest. The weather looks much the same as London today, though the pitch looks decidedly soggy.

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• Incident with manager after Chelsea loss ‘nothing big’

• He felt ‘I need to score’ after storming Copenhagen run

Micky van de Ven has downplayed the furore over his standoff with Thomas Frank after Tottenham’s Premier League defeat by Chelsea on Saturday, insisting it was misinterpreted and blown out of proportion. The centre-half preferred to focus on how the team had bounced back to thrash FC Copenhagen in the Champions League on Tuesday – a game in which he scored a thrilling individual goal.

Van de Ven was all smiles after the Copenhagen victory, his surge and finish from one box to the other drawing comparisons to Son Heung-min’s Puskas Award-winning effort for Spurs against Burnley in 2019. It was a vivid contrast to the post-Chelsea scenes when Spurs were booed off by their home crowd, having also been jeered by them during the game.

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• Díaz shown straight red for scissor challenge in 2-1 win

• Juventus held by Sporting, Atlético see off Union SG

Bayern Munich made it 16 wins from 16 games this season to underline their credentials as early Champions League favourites, beating the holders, Paris Saint-Germain, 2-1 away as Luis Díaz scored two goals and was shown a red card.

The Colombia winger struck twice before being sent off for a violent tackle on Achraf Hakimi on the stroke of half-time.

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Micky van den Ven scored an amazing solo goal for Spurs, while Luis Diaz hit two and was sent off for Bayern in Paris

Thomas Frank has called for better support from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium crowd after revealing that Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence had apologised to him for their reaction to the 1-0 home defeat against Chelsea on Saturday.

Van de Ven and Spence were incensed when the full-time whistle sounded and the Spurs fans booed, as they had done at half-time with their team trailing to João Pedro’s 34th‑minute goal. The defenders stormed past Frank towards the tunnel, ignoring their manager’s attempts to get them to acknowledge the supporters in the South Stand – a bad look at the end of another bad Premier League day at the stadium.

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Alexis Mac Allister’s second-half header secured Liverpool a deserved victory, as Trent Alexander-Arnold copped some expected flak on his return

1 min: Liverpool are playing towards the Kop in this first half. They prefer it the other way round; Xabi Alonso has clearly given his captain Federico Valverde the heads-up on that.

Liverpool get the ball rolling. The Anfield faithful chant the name of Andy Robertson in the pointed style. His old full-back friend looking on from the benches.

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• Defender may face hostile reception from Anfield crowd

• Slot says he has ‘great memories’ of Real Madrid full-back

Xabi Alonso has told Trent Alexander-Arnold to enjoy his “nice” return to Liverpool as the Real Madrid defender prepares to face his boyhood club for the first time since his acrimonious summer departure.

Alexander-Arnold is likely to receive a hostile reception at Anfield after he angered Liverpool fans by leaving at the end of his contract last season. The England international would have exited on a free transfer but for Real paying an £8.5m fee to cancel his Liverpool contract early and include him in their squad for the Club World Cup.

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• Liverpool manager says playmaker will justify £116m fee

• Xabi Alonso backs ‘really special player’ to come good

Arne Slot has defended Florian Wirtz before Real Madrid’s visit in the Champions League and insisted the £116m signing has produced “exactly what we expected” at this stage of his Liverpool career.

The playmaker was on the bench for the win against Aston Villa on Saturday and also omitted from Slot’s starting lineup against Manchester United, Chelsea and Everton having struggled to make an impact in the Premier League. Wirtz has started all three of Liverpool’s Champions League games, however, and could well return for the visit of Xabi Alonso’s side on Tuesday.

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• Defenders fail to acknowledge fans after Chelsea defeat

• Frank: ‘During the game, we need a little bit of help’

Thomas Frank has called for better support from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium crowd after revealing that Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence had apologised to him for their reaction to the 1-0 home defeat against Chelsea on Saturday.

Van de Ven and Spence were incensed when the full-time whistle sounded and the Spurs fans booed, as they had done at half-time with their team trailing to João Pedro’s 34th‑minute goal. The defenders stormed past Frank towards the tunnel, ignoring their manager’s attempts to get them to acknowledge the supporters in the South Stand – a bad look at the end of another bad Premier League day at the stadium.

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This week’s action saw an astonishing 71 goals over two nights, with the Premier League responsible for many of them

• Barcelona’s youth system. Ahead of Sunday’s edition of El Clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid, the two clubs won their midweek matches. Real Madrid’s opponents were Juventus, in the type of heavyweight clash the Champions League’s rejig into a 36-team group stage was supposed to throw up on a regular basis. Wednesday’s meeting fell short of classic encounters like 2003’s meeting of Madrid’s Luís Figo and Zinedine Zidane with Juve’s Pavel Nedvěd and Alessandro Del Piero. In 2025, Juventus are not the force of yore, though they made Madrid sweat. The sole goal came from Jude Bellingham, England’s great enigma.

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Liverpool put an end to their losing run in swaggering style

20 secs: … and so Knauff immediately races down the right and wins a corner off Van Dijk!

To the strains of a ballad set to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, the hosts get the ball rolling. Eintracht have left out their leading scorers, Jonathan Burkardt and Can Uzun, for Dino Toppmöller’s aforementioned pacy duo of Jean-Matteo Bahoya and Ansgar Knauff. Let’s see how that pans out, then.

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• López hat-trick and Rashford double sink Olympiakos

• Bayer Leverkusen 2-7 PSG; PSV 6-2 Napoli

A Fermin López hat-trick and two goals from Marcus Rashford powered Barcelona to a commanding 6-1 Champions League victory over Olympiakos, while Ousmane Dembélé scored on his return to the Paris Saint-Germain side as they won 7-2 away to Bayer Leverkusen in a battle of two 10-man teams.

The match got off to a flying start when the 22-year-old López opened the scoring from a rebound in the seventh minute and he doubled his tally in the 39th, finishing off a lightning-quick counterattack.

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When José Mourinho arrived on Tyneside and immediately showered Eddie Howe and his players with lavish praise, Newcastle fans feared the worst. Yet in lauding the terrifying pace of Howe’s wingers, not to mention his team’s aggression and organisation, Benfica’s manager was perhaps not being disingenuous after all. By the end his insistence that Newcastle’s modest Premier League position is false certainly rang true.

At the final whistle no one doubted Mourinho’s sincerity as he strode up to Anthony Gordon and informed the England left-winger that he had been “absolutely brilliant”.

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