Champions League

It's fair to say Barcelona's announcement of the signing of Luuk de Jong was met with skepticism and surprise. The fact that he was brought in specifically in line with the wishes of Ronald Koeman, with whom the Barça faithful's patience is wearing thin, can not have helped his cause. It also didn't help that he was brought in to ease the sting of Lionel Messi's departure, something which was never going to be easy.

Zenit St. Petersburg sits in third place in Champions League Group H after Wednesday's 4-0 stomping of Swedish side Malmö, level on points with Chelsea. Zenit opened group play with a 1-0 defeat to the Blues, its first loss of the season, on Sep. 14. 

Sergei Semak's team coasted to victory in its second UCL outing of the season, already up 2-0 when Malmö's Anel Ahmedhodžić was sent off for a handball after 53 minutes.

The Federico Chiesa goal vs Chelsea came only 11 seconds into the second half. The sole goal in Juventus’ 1-0 group stage victory against Chelsea was missed by anyone who didn’t quite get back to their screens in time.

Chiesa Goal Vs Chelsea

FEDERICO CHIESA. 11 SECONDS INTO THE SECOND HALF. pic.twitter.com/W3KkSWJE37

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!).

There are some things that will never get old, no matter how often they happen or how much you hate the team doing it. Two of those things are volleys off set pieces and Cristiano Ronaldo taking his shirt off to celebrate a goal. Both happened on Wednesday at Old Trafford.

There can be no denying it's been a disappointing start to the season for AS Monaco. After getting dumped out of Champions League qualifying by Shakhtar Donetsk, the principality club sits eighth in Ligue 1 after eight games. 

MADRID — When Moldovan minnows Sheriff Tiraspol qualified for the elite Champions League, becoming the first side from that country to do so, pundits were scratching their heads and asking 'who?'.

Then, when they were drawn in a group with Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk, it was thought by pundits to be a case of how many goals they would lose by.

If you've been watching Champions League and Europa League football consistently over the past decade, there's a certain Swiss club called Young Boys that's undoubtedly captured your attention. They were in the UCL group stage in 2018, advanced to the UEL Round of 16 in 2021 and are now back in the 2021-22 UCL group stage, but why is the club called Young Boys? 

If you’re like most of the football world on Tuesday, you were focused on the battle between the world’s two richest sides, PSG and Manchester City. As sad as Bernardo Silva was after his miss in that match, there was no one sadder on Tuesday than Diogo Costa, the Porto goalkeeper who was caught disastrously out of position by Roberto Firmino.

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.