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.
The Seville skies opened up to a torrent of rain just before halftime, sending players to the locker room to regroup after an historic first half. The Sevilla-RB Salzburg match set a record for most penalties in a Champions League match — in the first half alone.
Sevilla and RB Salzburg played to a bizarre 1-1 draw on Tuesday in Seville to open Champions League play. The final score will take a back seat to the flood of penalty kicks awarded in the first half, when the referee pointed to the spot four times in the opening 42 minutes.
Lionel Messi and Neymar have been included in Paris St Germain's Champions League squad for their trip to Club Brugge on Wednesday after the pair missed the weekend's Ligue 1 action following their return from international duty.
@LParedss Leo Messi @NeymarJr pic.twitter.com/coIbc5K1Cc
The UEFA Champions League group stage begins on Tuesday and many Americans will be googling “how to watch Champions League 2021.” There are three answers to that question: Paramount+, watch in Spanish or break the law and stream it illegally.
TV: None
Streaming: Paramount+
Ever since CBS acquired the broadcasting rights to the Champions League in 2020, the world’s largest annual tournament is almost entirely streamed for American fans.
For the first time, the UEFA Women’s Champions League will feature a 16-team group stage instead of jumping straight into a large knockout phase. And for the first time, the Real Madrid Women have qualified for the Women’s Champions League.
When the UEFA Champions League group draw occurs every year in August, the two biggest focuses are inevitably which group is my favorite team in and which group will be the most entertaining to follow/watch.
For a small portion of us, the most interesting section of the draw is uncovering the most obscure team that somehow made the group stage.
Usually this team comes from some tiny country in Eastern Europe, riding some sort of heavy investment toward a wave of success only for the debt to invariably catch up soon after.
For the first time in history, Americans will play in all three of UEFA’s European tournaments. This season is also the first time there have been three tournaments, but minor details. There are tons of Americans playing in Europe, but only 22 have made it to the group stages across the three competitions.
Here are the numbers for Americans playing in European tournaments.
First, let’s look at the 11 in the Champions League.
ISTANBUL - Lionel Messi's new club Paris Saint-Germain will play Manchester City, managed by the Argentine's former Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola, after being drawn together in Champion's League Group A on Thursday.
Messi joined Qatar-owned PSG, who will also face Bundesliga side RB Leipzig and Belgium's Club Brugge, from Barcelona this month after the Spanish side were unable to afford a new contract.
What a meeting we had in the Champions League playoffs on Wednesday. Portuguese giant Benfica, a two-time winner of the contest, against the Dutch behemoth PSV, winner in 1988.
How would PSV navigate a trip to the formidable Estádio da Luz in Lisbon? Would Mario Götze orchestrate a vital away goal? Or would Nicolás Otamendi inspire the all-important clean sheet?! My brain whirled and reeled with all sorts of prognostications.
It was a big day for Americans in Europe on Tuesday as Brenden Aaronson’s RB Salzburg took on Brøndby in the first leg of their Champions League playoff, while over in Germany Gio Reyna’s Borussia Dortmund welcomed Bayern Munich to the Westfalenstadion for the DFL-Supercup.
Brøndby had taken a surprise 1-0 halftime lead at Red Bull Arena, prompting 33-year-old manager Matthias Jaissle (who used to be an assistant at Brøndby) to turn to Aaronson for the second 45.
That change brought good things for Salzburg.