Doug McIntyre
Football journalist
Only two rounds of matches stay on this season’s expanded first spherical League of Championswhich equalized on Wednesday 2024 with the conclusion of the sixth matchday.
Here are three fast summaries of Wednesday’s video games.
Last season, Arsenal’s first return to the world’s prime membership competitors after a six-year hiatus, they reached the quarter-finals. The Gunners need to go even deeper in 2025.
Arsenal took care of Monaco with ease in London on Wednesday to complete 2024 in third place, behind solely Barca and Premier League rival Liverpool. Bukayo Saki scored two targets within the 3-0 win.
Barcelona’s day went even higher in one of the spectacular venues on the continent. Barça’s Brazilian striker Raphinha silenced the well-known yellow wall inside Borussia’s 81,000-capacity venue Westphalian Stadium when he gave the guests the lead early within the second half.
But final 12 months’s dropping finalists got here again to equalize after which did so once more earlier than Ferran Torres’ second objective in a span of 10 minutes put Hansi Flick’s aspect again on their toes for good with simply 5 minutes of regular time remaining .
This is Barça’s fifth victory in six Champions League matches to this point. Liverpool, in first place, are the one unbeaten workforce remaining within the event.
Manchester City’s 3-0 Premier League win over Nottingham Forest per week in the past looks like it occurred in one other lifetime. The consequence ended a run of six matches with no win. It was purported to spark the Sky Blues into the busy festive interval.
Instead, after being pressured again twice simply to salvage some extent in opposition to Crystal Palace final weekend, Juventus despatched Pep Guardiola’s aspect off the sphere in Turin on Wednesday because the hosts gave the Citizens their seventh defeat in 10 video games.
Dušan Vlahović’s first-half header gave the hosts the lead. US males’s nationwide workforce star Weston McKennie got here off the bench within the second and sealed the victory, ending a sport that started 50 yards from City’s objective when he fired dwelling a cross supplied by USMNT teammate Tim Weah:
The defeat left Guardiola & Co. with a 2-2-2 file and in twenty second place within the 36-team league desk. Only the very best 16 will advance to the direct elimination part. The subsequent Champions League take a look at of the 2023 European champions shall be held on January 22 in Paris in opposition to PSG. City shut out the “league” part of the event per week later, once they host Belgian Club Brugge.
Gio Reina will get uncommon begin in defeat of Borussia Dortmund
Reyna got here to Wednesday’s high-profile go to from Barcelona having performed simply 63 minutes all season for Borussia, however there the American was nonetheless in Nuri Şahin’s line-up for his first start in 2024-25.
The 22-year-old attacking midfielder did not look misplaced within the 3-2 defeat. Just earlier than Raphinha opened the scoring for Barca, Reyna’s intelligent move triggered a Dortmund counterattack that appeared to present the hosts the lead early within the second half, just for the potential objective to be flagged offside.
Reyna was substituted within the 73rd minute, when the rating was nonetheless 1-1.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer reporter for FOX Sports. He was a employees author at ESPN and Yahoo Sports earlier than becoming a member of FOX Sports in 2021 United States males’s and girls’s nationwide groups on the FIFA World Cup on 5 continents. Follow him @By Doug McIntyre.
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