Karim Adeyemi starred as Borussia Dortmund ran riot against Celtic, while Barcelona and Manchester City claimed their first wins in the restructured UEFA Champions League on Tuesday.
Adeyemi scored a first-half hat trick as Dortmund routed Celtic 7-1 at home. It was the second big win from a German team in the competition after Bayern Munich’s 9-2 bashing of Dinamo Zagreb in the first matchday.
Robert Lewandowski got Barcelona off the mark as the Spanish giant eased to a 5-0 home win over Swiss team Young Boys, while his former teammate Ilkay Gundogan got City off to a 4-0 win at Slovan Bratislava. Erling Haaland scored his 42nd goal in his 41st Champions League game.
Photo: AP
City was held 0-0 by Inter in their opening game, while Barca responded to its 2-1 loss at Monaco, the team’s first defeat under new manager Hansi Flick.
Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal outclassed his former team Paris Saint-Germain in a 2-0 win with Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka scoring in the first half for the Gunners. PSG manager Luis Enrique’s gamble on leaving Ousmane Dembele out did not pay off.
Arteta enjoyed a successful 18-month loan spell at PSG while he was still a teenager at Barcelona.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Although Dortmund appear to have adapted to the new competition format very well — last season’s beaten finalist have 10 goals from two games after starting with a 3-0 win over Club Brugge — their fans made their opposition to the reforms clear with a huge tifo slamming UEFA.
This season UEFA changed the structure of Europe’s premier competition to add four more teams. The group stage was scrapped for a league system with each of the now 36 participating teams playing eight opponents once in a first phase of the competition.
UEFA claimed the changes would ensure more evenly matched games, but Tuesday’s results — the big wins for Barca, City and Dortmund — appear to belie that claim.
Photo: AFP
There was another big win on Tuesday with Inter defeating Red Star Belgrade 4-0.
Iran forward Mehdi Taremi struck a penalty past Red Star’s Israeli goalkeeper Omri Glazer and set up two more goals for Inter hours after his country launched a barrage of missiles at Israel.
Also, Bayer 04 Leverkusen defeated AC Milan 1-0 in Germany thanks a well-worked move finished by Victor Boniface.
Daniel Braganca scored late to earn Sporting Lisbon a 1-1 draw at PSV Eindhoven.
Brest had never played in the Champions League before this season.
However, the French team routed Salzburg 4-0 away for its second win in as many games in Europe’s premier competition.
Senegalese forward Abdallah Sima netted twice to take his tally to three goals in two games after he scored in Brest’s tournament-opening 2-1 win over Austrian champion Sturm Graz.
Kaan Kairinen’s brilliant free-kick was enough for Prague to draw 1-1 at VfB Stuttgart in Tuesday’s other early game.
Stuttgart fans displayed a huge choreography saying “Back in Europe” behind one of the goals. It was the team’s first Champions League match at home since a 1-1 draw with Barcelona in February 2010.
Shaquille O’Neal is staying with TNT Sports on a new contract worth more than US$15 million per year, Front Office Sports reported on Friday. The news means the cast of Inside the NBA is staying together even as TNT is set to license out the show to ESPN starting next season. TNT was the odd network out in the NBA’s recent TV rights negotiations, as NBC and Amazon joined previous rightsholder ESPN in inking deals for basketball games. That left TNT without a need for pregame and postgame NBA shows. In a trade with ESPN, TNT is licensing Inside the NBA to the
Juventus on Sunday stopped Inter from replacing SSC Napoli at the top of Serie A by beating their fierce rivals 1-0 and moving into the UEFA Champions League positions. Francisco Conceicao made sure that Napoli would stay two points ahead of reigning champions Inter by classily tucking home the winning goal 16 minutes before the end of an entertaining contest in Turin. Portugal attacker Conceicao netted his fourth goal of the season in all competitions after brilliant work from Randal Kolo Muani to give Juve a third straight league win. Juve are in fourth place on 46 points, ahead on goal-difference from SS
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