Upsets

RENNES, France - Paris Saint-Germain suffered their first defeat of the season when they were beaten 2-0 at Rennes on Sunday to drop their first Ligue 1 points of the season.

Rennes won thanks to goals by Gaëtan Laborde and Flavian Tait each side of the interval to end PSG's eight-game winning run in the league.

PSG, only previously beaten in the pre-season Trophée des Champions by Lille, stayed top of the standings with 24 points, six ahead of second-placed Lens who beat Reims 2-0 on Friday. Rennes moved up to seventh on 12 points.

Ronald Koeman, it’s time for your 45-second phone call.  

After an embarrassingly limp (zero shots on target) 3-0 defeat to Bayern Munich at the Camp Nou to begin Champions League play, Barcelona played even worse on Wednesday night during a 3-0 defeat to Benfica in Lisbon (one shot on target!).

The experts gave FC Sheriff Tiraspol a 2 percent chance of winning at the Santiago Bernabéu against Real Madrid on Tuesday. The Moldovan club pulled off the most unlikely upset in Champions League history to win 2-1.

If you were to put $100 on Sheriff defeating Real Madrid, you would have won $2,800. The result is mindboggling, and it came in the most dramatic fashion with an 89th minute screamer from Luxembourg international Sebastien Thill.

You can’t hear the name Radamel Falcao without allowing your mind to drift back to the heady days of 2012, when El Tigre was banging in the goals for Atlético Madrid (70 in 91 appearances) and Colombia (nine goals in 2014 World Cup qualifying) and finishing fifth in Ballon d’Or voting.

Of course what followed was that strange $70.4 million transfer to newly promoted Monaco, a devastating ACL injury and a crushing absence at the 2014 World Cup. 

BRIGHTON, England - Brighton & Hove Albion secured a 2-1 home win over Leicester City on Sunday thanks to a controversial penalty and a Danny Welbeck header that put them third in the Premier League despite Jamie Vardy's 150th goal in his 250th game for the Foxes.

The visitors will feel hard done by after a number of key decisions went against them, including the one to award Brighton the penalty that saw them open the scoring in the 35th minute.

FC Sheriff Tiraspol made headlines for being the first club from Moldova (Transnistria) to make the Champions League group stage. I don’t think anyone realized how much of a gold mine this team is until the club’s historic 2-0 home victory against Shakhtar Donetsk.

With Villarreal and Atalanta lying in wait, Manchester United travelled to Swiss Super League champion Young Boys knowing that three points was vital against the side 30 places beneath them in UEFA’s club coefficient. 

All eyes were on Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s team after the manager again fielded the exciting quartet of Cristiano Ronaldo, Bruno Fernandes, Jadon Sancho and Paul Pogba that’d decimated Newcastle on Saturday.