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Going up
Barcelona
This week produced an all-time classic; less football match than theatre of the absurd. Somehow, Barcelona triumphed 5-4 in Lisbon. Raphinha was the two-goal hero, including a counterattacking winner to break the hearts of Benfica, who had wanted a penalty at the other end. Raphinha’s first – which cut Benfica’s lead to 3-2 – was close to unique. Anatoliy Trubin, the Benfica goalkeeper, somehow smashed his clearance off the Brazilian’s head and into the Benfica net. Robert Lewandowski, meanwhile, scored two penalties, meaning he is joint top with Cristiano Ronaldo for most successful spot-kicks (19) in Champions League history. Barça’s improbable win also spared the blushes of Wojciech Szczesny. The Polish goalkeeper, who came out of retirement on the Costa del Sol to answer Barça’s call, gifted Benfica two goals, first clattering into Alejandro Balde for the first then blundering to concede a penalty that allowed Vangelis Pavlidis to complete his hat-trick in the 30th minute. Szczesny had his moment of redemption with a late save at 4-4 from Ángel Di María before a mad match reached its almost unbelievable conclusion. “A crazy game,” said Hansi Flick, Barcelona’s coach. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a comeback like this.”
Atlético Madrid
Diego Simeone’s Atlético pulled off a victory over Bayer Leverkusen that may well define his 15 years in charge at the club. His team were playing badly, and Pablo Barrios had been sent off for a high tackle on Nordi Mukiele. Then, Piero Hincapié climbed high for a header to grab Leverkusen a half-time lead. Here’s where Atlético did what they so often do under Simeone. They battled back through Julián Alvarez’s goal – the summer signing has saved his best for this competition. Then began the provocation, the temptation for a Leverkusen player to lose his head. And it was Giuliano Simeone, the manager’s son, who got the job done, tempting Hincapié into a second yellow, to level out the numbers. Then came the drive for a winner, and Alvarez got it, sending Simeone on a trademark celebratory run down the touchline. “It’s a game that will be remembered by the people that saw it,” Simeone said, though the manner of victory was terribly familiar.
Celtic
If one of Uefa’s aims in extending the competition was giving clubs from smaller leagues a better chance of progressing, then perhaps Celtic can be the poster child. Brendan Rodgers’s problems in the Champions League date back to his time at Liverpool but at last, in his second spell at Celtic, he is able to trumpet some qualified success. The team that lost 7-1 to Dortmund in October will be in the knockout round, thanks to their 1-0 victory over Young Boys, who are bottom of the Champions League table. Only just though. It took an own goal from Loris Benito – after Adam Idah’s shot – to take Rodgers’s team through to the playoff round, and there was the even later loss of Daizen Maeda to a red card. His compatriot, Kyogo Furuhashi, playing probably his last game for Celtic – the striker is reportedly set for Rennes – signed off with a hat-trick of disallowed goals. “We’ve built through it and played some great football, but showed different ways to win as well,” said a delighted Rodgers. Celtic enter the Champions League knockouts for the first time since 2013.
Slipping down
Manchester City
Perhaps that Sunday stroll at Ipswich was not actually the City machine finding its gears again. Though perhaps an inspired second-half performance from Paris Saint-Germain, the type of comeback PSG have been on the wrong end of too many times, deserves the credit. Still, with one match to go – albeit against Club Brugge next Wednesday – the sight of City at 25th in the table is a sincere shock. There were many of the warning signs that have rung out this season for City as PSG caused havoc in the second half. PSG found that if they pressed aggressively, they could win the ball in dangerous positions. There were aching gaps in City’s defence too. Not many teams have 64% of the ball against a Pep Guardiola team. Too many teams are now finding a way to beat them this season. Guardiola himself looked lost and lonesome in the Paris rain. How long can this continue? For the ninth time this season, his team failed to win a match they led, and Wednesday was the first time in the last 115 occasions that City have lost a game where they led by two or more goals. “To defend the result you have to keep the ball and we did not do that,” said Guardiola. Paris was just the latest loss of control.
Borussia Dortmund
Wednesday’s early-morning announcement of Nuri Sahin’s sacking said it all. The coach with the club at his heart, youth player turned star midfielder, is the latest to fail to turn Europe’s great kindergarten of talent into a winning team. Last season’s shock Champions League finalists are still likely qualifiers for the knockouts, with a match against Shakhtar Donetsk still to come next Wednesday. But this week they lost to Bologna, one of the competition’s strugglers. Defeat only hardened the decline we have seen in the Bundesliga, where Dortmund sit 10th. They had led in Italy on Tuesday, through Serhou Guirassy’s Panenka penalty, but then came a pair of defensive disasters. Thijs Dallinga was allowed to tap home, and the same player’s shot was then deflected into Samuel Iling-Junior’s path for the Londoner’s first-ever Champions League goal. Sahin, one of Jürgen Klopp’s golden generation, had dropped leading men Julian Brandt and Emre Can in an attempt to shake things up, but it was to no avail. “You will not get an off-the-cuff decision from me in Italy based on emotion,” said Dortmund sporting director Lars Ricken. He sacked Sahin the following morning.
Bayern Munich
A raucous night in Rotterdam – there are few noisier stadiums than De Kuip – was also an embarrassment for Vincent Kompany’s Bayern, as they lost 3-0 to a rampaging Feyenoord. Some of the Bayern defending resembled that of the Burnley team Kompany got relegated last season. His front-foot approach is working in the Bundesliga, as Leverkusen slip from the near-perfection of last season, and Leipzig labour too. In the Champions League, however, Bayern are 15th and will almost certainly require a playoff because of their poor away form; Rotterdam was their third defeat on the road. Real Madrid and PSG may await in that extra pair of matches and neither are opponents to play a high line against. It wasn’t just the defending though. Bayern rained down 30 shots on goal, but only four were on target from an attack including Harry Kane. “It’s not about one individual, defending starts from the attackers before the ball even gets to the backline,” said Kompany.
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A good week for …
Vangelis Pavlidis (Benfica)
Even after two nights where matters and permutations shifted every few seconds it feels apt to return to Tuesday and hail the forgotten hero of the night. Pavlidis, Benfica’s centre-forward, scored a 30-minute hat-trick, the first a thumping left-foot effort from Álvaro Carreras’s cross, the second saw him seize on Szczesny’s rush of blood to calmly run the ball into an open net, and the third was a well-hit penalty. Substituted off in the 80th minute, he could only watch as what had been a glorious night turned into disaster for his team.
Luuk de Jong (PSV)
Just when PSV needed their legendary striker, who had yet to score in the Champions League this season going into this week’s game, he delivered. In their 3-2 defeat of Red Star, he first nodded in a corner from Joey Veerman in the 17th minute and then repeated the trick in the 23rd later. PSV coach Peter Bosz has been criticised for playing the veteran when Ricardo Pepi was in good form before Christmas. But De Jong led a rearguard effort after fellow goalscorer Ryan Flamingo was dismissed. “We played with guts,” said De Jong. There had been an outbreak of sickness in the camp. “Normally I address them as ‘guys’, but today they were men,” said Bosz. The 19th-placed PSV have Liverpool next but retain a decent playoff chance.
Santiago Giménez (Feyenoord)
The group stage’s extension into January makes it a display for talent who could move in the transfer window. Swedish striker Viktor Gyökeres scored in Sporting’s defeat at Leipzig, Pavlidis showed off his line-leading capabilities and Internazionale’s Lautaro Martínez rattled in a beauty against Sparta Prague. And Giménez continues to look like a big-money purchase in the near-future as he rattled in two goals for Feyenoord. He has been closely linked with Milan, though his quality of goalscoring and performances may take him out of their price range.
