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Feyenoord held out for a 1-0 win at home against Milan in their Champions League playoff first leg after scoring the only goal of the game in the third minute.
Igor Paixão cut in from the left and saw his speculative low drive sneak past Mike Maignan at the near post. Milan drew a blank in response to leave them with work to do in their home fixture.
“These are the nights you play for. We’ve shown this kind of confidence before,” the home captain, Quinten Timber, said. “There’s also a reason we’re here now. We’ve played several good games in the Champions League.”
Kyle Walker, who made his Champions League debut for Milan, said: “We can turn it around in the second leg. We have to learn from tonight.”
Club Brugge edged out Atalanta 2-1 at the Jan Breydel Stadium, downing the Serie A side with a fiercely contested injury-time penalty. Isak Hien was punished for a coming together with his Sweden teammate Gustaf Nilsson, sparking complaints from the visiting side.
Nilsson dusted himself down to slot home the spot-kick. Brugge, who scraped the final spot in the playoffs by finishing in 24th place, had taken the lead through Ferran Jutglà on the quarter-hour before Mario Pasalic levelled four minutes before the break.
Benfica will take a 1-0 lead back to Lisbon after seeing off 10-man Monaco. After a first-half stalemate, a deft chip from Vangelis Pavlidis put the away team ahead just after the restart. A second yellow card for Al-Musrati further undermined the Ligue 1 side’s efforts and they were unable to get back into the contest.
“We are really disappointed, we had a good first half. We conceded that goal,” said the Monaco forward Breel Embolo. “I’ll be honest, we got killed off a bit, from a potential yellow card [against them] to an exclusion against us.”
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“We were punished for an action where Benfica’s full-back could have been booked and we were the ones getting booked. It’s not a good result, let’s be honest. There’s still the return leg and we’re staying positive.”
