Erling Haaland scored in opposition to Actual Madrid for the primary time in his profession.
After which scored one other.
However Manchester Metropolis nonetheless misplaced at residence to the Champions League holders.
It would have felt all too acquainted for Pep Guardiola and his workforce as they threw away a 2-1 lead with 4 minutes of regular time to play on the Etihad, being stung first by certainly one of their former gamers, Brahim Diaz, after which the tireless Jude Bellingham, who steered the ball residence from shut vary in added time.
Oh, and earlier within the sport Kylian Mbappe had scored together with his shin.
Carlo Ancelotti’s aspect 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 evening…
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
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 stage the scores at 2-2.
Then, after Vinicius Junior went by and lifted a shot/cross 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 yet 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 season. However, judging from their comfy 3-0 win in opposition to 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 of 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 stuffed his footwear after an impressed tactical change from the coach.
Since Enrique introduced Dembele into the central striker position from the wings, the place he has fulfilled since rising as a gifted teen, his goalscoring manufacturing has exploded — and his two targets in opposition to Brest have been one other instance. His first demonstrated his confidence, dribbling into the field earlier than whipping a left-footed effort into the close to put up. 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 ft isn’t an unfamiliar feat for Dembele, who famously doesn’t know which is his stronger foot.
Ousmane Dembéle for the reason that center of December…
Ridiculous kind 😂#UCL pic.twitter.com/pgpgXXY4Nd
It was his third brace of the yr to go together with two hat-tricks and 15 targets in complete — already greater than his total tally in 2024. This change has given PSG a contemporary attacking verve and resulted in a extra balanced unit.
Who is aware of, it is likely to be sufficient to push the French champions from a aspect 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 offered the magic as he opened the scoring for Juventus in opposition to PSV.
With the USMNT midfielder lurking on the sting of PSV’s field, the ball broke in his route, bouncing at peak to strike. McKennie, who is not 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 hanging by it.
The end result was an unstoppable mix of management and energy. His shot flew previous Walter Benitez within the PSV web, inches under the crossbar. It’s in all probability factor the ball missed him, too, as it might have taken him with it into the again of the online if he was in the best way.
Good luck saving that.
Weston McKennie’s shot flies previous Walter Benitez, and offers Juventus the lead in opposition to PSV.#JUVPSV
WESTON MCKENNIE NEARLY TORE THE COVER OFF THE BALL WITH THIS GOLAZO 🚀 pic.twitter.com/zFdXV6hSDE
McKennie, who is a big Harry Potter fan, celebrated with an imitation of the “Expelliarmus” spell from the movie and ebook 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 in opposition to Metropolis.
Rooney and Mbappe: masters of the shinned volley in opposition to 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 in opposition to 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 taking part in 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 cross within the hazard space between Metropolis’s goalkeeper and defence, which Mbappe latched onto.
With an astoundingly related method to his second purpose in opposition to Argentina within the 2022 World Cup last, 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 at the moment are 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 a different way within the Champions League — and Manchester Metropolis followers discovered the arduous method.
The Etihad Stadium erupted after Haaland put the house aspect forward with a left-footed end from shut vary after Josko Gvardiol performed a chested cross 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 keeping 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 response to the Premier League, which has plans to herald this expertise this season, offside verify delays must be decreased by 31 seconds.
On this case, nonetheless, the verify took so lengthy that Alan Shearer intimated the wait could have had some relation to Jack Grealish being changed as a consequence of a non-impact damage 10 minutes later.
“It certainly doesn’t help when you’ve got elite athletes standing around for almost four minutes,” Shearer mentioned on co-commentary throughout Amazon Prime’s UK protection of the match. “It cannot help you, or your body. It’s not acceptable that players are having to wait around for that long.”
Judging by this incident these marginal calls will proceed to take time. At the very least we acquired the correct 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 a very powerful. An authoritative header that looped up and into the far nook, it settled a Dortmund workforce who, for a lot of the primary half in Portugal, had needed to stand 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 at the moment are 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 occasions the season he has laboured on the head of a workforce who don’t create almost sufficient probabilities. He can snatch at alternatives and drift out of video games. So, whereas 9 targets from 18 league appearances is hardly dangerous, it’s not fairly what it might have been.
However Guirassy is a chic, technical footballer moderately than only a goalscorer. There have been occasions within the first half when his languid ability on the ball appeared to reassure team-mates clearly brief 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 present Dortmund a 2-0 benefit on the evening.
With 10 targets this marketing campaign, Serhou Guirassy has now equalled the file for probably the most European Cup/Champions League targets scored in a single season by a Borussia Dortmund participant
He shares that file with Erling Haaland (10 in 2020-21) and Robert Lewandowski (10 in 2012-13) #UCL pic.twitter.com/pShUgla74f
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 turn into a commendable workforce efficiency. However targets so typically change a aspect’s temper and that might not have been extra the case for Kovac’s BVB than it was on Tuesday evening.
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 3Juventus 2 PSV Eindhoven 1Manchester Metropolis 2 Actual Madrid 3Sporting CP 0 Borussia Dortmund 3
Wednesday’s fixtures(8pm BST, 3pm ET until said)
Membership Bruges v Atalanta (5.45pm BST, 12.45pm ET)Celtic v Bayern MunichFeyenoord v MilanMonaco v Benfica
The second legs can 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)
