UEFA Champions League
UEFA Champions’ League Group Stage Begins
As the group stage of the UEFA Champions League opens this Tuesday, there are records in the offing. Manchester United’s manager, Jose Mourinho will not just be delighted that the club is returning to top flight European football after a year of ‘sabbatical’ leave, he is aiming to be the first person to manage three different clubs to European glory should Manchester United emerge champions next year’s May.
In similar circumstances, defending champions, Real Madrid will be aiming to be the first club to achieve a three straight win since the feat of Germany’s Bayern Munich in the 1970s.
GROUP A (BENFICA, MANCHESTER UNITED, BASEL, CSKA MOSCOW)
In Group A where Manchester United squares up with the trio Portugal’s Benfica, Switzerland’s Basel and Russia’s CSKA Moscow, the English Premership side is expected to start as the group favourite having obtained 10 points out of possible 12 in the new English premiership season.
Manchester United will open its account facing Basel at Old Trafford at 7.45 pm. Basel is reportedly weakened by persistent sales of top players since eliminating United in the 2011 groups.
The club which has been without a win in eight European games, drawing three and losing five had in the 2011/12 season faced Manchester United in the group stage. Basel won and drew the other match.
Manchester United which is making its 21st group stage appearance will be without Phil Jones and Eric Bailly who are serving a match ban.
But Mourinho seems not missing the duo as he told Simon Hart, the UEFA reporter attached to the team that Victor Lindelöf will start alongside Chris Smalling,
“Even if Jones and Bailly were not suspended, probably I would still play Lindelöf and Samlling.
“For me, they are the same level. I think it’s easier for [Lindelöf] to play Champions League – it is more comparable to the style of football in the Portuguese league. There is no need to adapt to the Champions League but he needs a little bit of time to adapt to the Premier League.
“He’s an intelligent kid, very bright, very calm; he knows that step by step he is going to be there.”
Added to that is the possibility of playing without Marouane Fellaini who reportedly picked a calf injury whole on international assignment for Belgium last week.
“Fellaini didn’t train yesterday (Sunday) and let’s see if he can today (Monday)”, Mourinho told the UEFA reporter.
“It’s a very important day for me, much more important than you can imagine. I feel weaker without Fellaini in my squad. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the pitch or on the bench, if his condition improves, he will be selected because I need him”, remarked Mourinho.
In the other Group A match, Benfica is a consistent performer in the Europa League will host CSKA Moscow which finished last in its group in each of the last four seasons – including one that contained United in 2015. –
GROUP B (BAYERN MUNICH, PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN, ANDERLECHT, CELTIC)
Neymar made it his big goal to win the Champions League with Paris Saint-Germain after securing his world-record transfer from Barcelona for 222 million euros ($262 million) in July.
Advancing to the knockout stage should be a formality for his new team, which also includes teenage striker Kylian Mbappe in a new-look and exciting forward line.
Neymar’s first European campaign with PSG will take him to five-time champion Bayern, whose coach Carlo Ancelotti used to manage the French club. Celtic is never an easy team to visit, but the Scottish champions are likely to be fighting it out with Anderlecht for third place.
GROUP C (CHELSEA, ATLETICO MADRID, ROMA, QARABAG)
Qarabag is the first Azerbaijani team to reach this stage and its reward is one of the most competitive groups.
Atletico Madrid has reached the final twice in the past three years, losing both times to Real Madrid, while Chelsea – the 2012 European champion – is the current English champion and has recovered after an uncomfortable start to the Premier League.
Chelsea and Atletico could be in negotiations over the next few months regarding the sale of Diego Costa, the Chelsea striker who has been estranged in his native Brazil for much of the summer and wants to join former club Atletico.
GROUP D (JUVENTUS, BARCELONA, OLYMPIAKOS, SPORTING)
It will be a major surprise if Juventus and Barcelona, European champions a combined seven times, fail to qualify from the group.
They met in the 2015 final, with Barca’s prolific front three of Neymar, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez inspiring a 3-1 win in Berlin. Neymar, of course, is no longer around for Barca, with new signing Ousmane Dembele replacing him.
Juventus lost last season’s final to Real Madrid and hasn’t won the Champions League since 1996. Olympiakos and Sporting are regular qualifiers but rarely advance, with Sporting weakened by the recent sale of midfielder Adrien Silva to Leicester.
GROUP E (SPARTAK MOSCOW, SEVILLA, LIVERPOOL, MARIBOR)
Five-time European champion Liverpool came through the playoffs and gets a chance to avenge its loss to Sevilla in the 2016 Europa League final, which denied the English team a place in last season’s Champions League.
Spartak, which won the Russian Premier League, is in the group stage for the first time since 2012-13, while Slovenian team Maribor is the big outsider in its third attempt to reach the knockout stage. This will likely be considered the weakest of the eight groups.
GROUP F (SHAKHTAR DONETSK, MANCHESTER CITY, NAPOLI, FEYENOORD)
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City avoided tougher options by being drawn into top-seeded Shakhtar’s group.
The Ukrainian champion is always fighting against the disadvantage of not playing a real home game in three years due to the conflict involving pro-Russian separatists around its home city.
Still, Napoli was one of the more difficult opponents for City from the third-seeded teams and eased past Nice in the playoffs round. Feyenoord returns to the group stage after a 15-year absence and is likely to face a steep learning curve.
GROUP G (MONACO, PORTO, BESIKTAS, LEIPZIG)
Monaco, last season’s surprise semifinalist, is the top seed but has been hurt by the departure of key players like Kylian Mbappe, Bernardo Silva and Benjamin Mendy this summer.
The French team comes up against Porto in a rematch of the 2004 final won by the Portuguese team.
Leipzig didn’t even exist then – the club was created in 2009 – and is a newcomer at this level. But the Bundesliga runner-up was the team from the fourth seeds that most of the continent’s heavyweights wanted to avoid. Monaco won its group as a fourth-seeded team last season.
GROUP H (REAL MADRID, BORUSSIA DORTMUND, TOTTENHAM, APOEL)
Real Madrid has won the Champions League three times in the past four years, and is looking to become the first team since Bayern Munich (1974-76) to be European champion in three straight years.
Madrid’s path to the knockout stage may have been smoothed by its fierce rival Barcelona, which weakened Borussia Dortmund by signing Ousmane Dembele.
Tottenham will be hoping for better results at its temporary home of Wembley Stadium, where the English team lost two of its three group games last season and hasn’t won either of its Premier League games there this season. APOEL famously reached the quarterfinals in 2012 against the odds.
UEFA Champions League
Osimhen and Aubameyang: Africa’s First Men of the Match in 2025/26 Champions League
The Champions League has barely started and already African fans have something to be proud of.
Two of the continent’s biggest names, Victor Osimhen from Nigeria and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Gabon, have become the first African players this season to be named Man of the Match.
For Osimhen, it was a night to remember in Istanbul. Galatasaray were up against Liverpool, a team with a European pedigree and needed someone to step up. Osimhen did just that.
His goal gave Galatasaray a 1-0 win but it was more than just the goal. His energy and how he kept Liverpool’s defenders on their toes all night made him the best player on the pitch.
So his winning of the UEFA Man of the Match award. Galatasaray fans had proof they have a striker who can change games at the highest level.
Meanwhile, on the same night in Marseille, Aubameyang was showing why he has been Africa’s most reliable goal scorer for over a decade.
At 36, some wondered if he still had it on nights like this. His answer was a thunderous “YES.”
Marseille tore Ajax apart in a 4–0 demolition that saw Aubameyang seal his stature as the orchestrator and heartbeat of the French club’s attack.
His movement, his composure and his leadership stood out. So much so that he too was rightfully awarded the Man of the Match.
The fact that these two happened on the same night made it even more special for African football fans.
Osimhen represents the new generation: quick, hungry and with still a few years ahead to make history.
Aubameyang is the veteran still out there to prove – even though he really has nothing to prove anymore – that experience and class don’t fade easily.
Together, they gave African football fans a double reason to smile.
For Nigeria and Gabon, these awards are more than individual trophies. They are ultimately a reminder of how much African players contribute to the Champions League season in, season out.
And the tournament is still in its early stages. So there’s every chance more players from the continent will follow in their footsteps before the Budapest finale in 2026. Only good omens for the 2025 AFCON that starts in a few months.
-Morocco World News
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In his glory days, Jose Mourinho celebrated dramatic goals from his teams by sprinting down the touchline, sometimes sliding on his knees for extra euphoric effect.
On Tuesday, back at his former club Chelsea as the new coach of Benfica, Mourinho’s most eye-catching intervention was down the touchline again, but this time his run was to urge his team’s fans to stop hurling objects onto the pitch.
Benfica under Mourinho, in his fourth game in charge, were defeated 1-0 by an under-strength Chelsea side in the Champions League after a fist-half Richard Rios own goal.
The self-declared “Special One” was lauded by the home fans with a few choruses of “Jose Mou-rin-ho” in recognition of his successes – three Premier League titles and four other trophies – which no other Chelsea manager has come close to matching.
Mourinho, 62, acknowledged the chants with a gentle wave, got a cheer when he ventured onto the pitch to clear a spare ball and quickly vanished down the tunnel at the final whistle after shaking the hand of Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca.
It was all a far cry from the fervour of 20 years ago when Mourinho – having led Porto to an unlikely Champions League triumph – turned Chelsea into English champions for the first time in 50 years in 2005 and won the title again a year later.
After a collapse of form, Mourinho departed in 2007 but he won the Champions League again, this time with Inter Milan in 2010, knocking out the Londoners on the way to the final.
He went on to manage Real Madrid before returning to Chelsea where he claimed a third English title and then had spells at Manchester United, London side Tottenham Hotspur – an unforgivable move for many Chelsea fans at the time – and Roma.
As the big offers dried up, Mourinho went on to coach Fenerbahce in Turkey where he lasted little more than a year before his return to Portuguese football with Benfica.
Asked after Tuesday’s defeat by Chelsea if he still had the drive of the early days of his career, Mourinho insisted he felt more motivated.
“If I am in a job it’s because I like to put myself on the line every day,” he told reporters. “I am desperate to win the next match.”
Mourinho said he thought Benfica had deserved more from the game. “We started well, we controlled well. I don’t know if I can say big chances but we had chances for sure.”
Chelsea’s Maresca said he was relieved to secure a win – albeit a scrappy one – after two consecutive defeats in the Premier League and a 3-1 loss at Bayern Munich in the his side’s Champions League opener.
“Sometimes you need to learn to win in another way,” he said of Chelsea’s improved defensive performance. “At least we learned how to win a game with a red card.”
Striker Joao Pedro was dismissed for a second yellow card after coming on as a substitute, the third time in four matches that Chelsea have finished with 10 men
-Reuters
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Hosts Eintracht Frankfurt scored four times in 29 minutes to bounce back from a goal down and hammer Galatasaray 5-1 in their Champions League opener on Thursday.
The Turkish sides are without their talismanic striker, Victor Osimhen who was injured while on international duty with Nigeria.
The Turks had hit Frankfurt on the break with Yunus Akgun completing the move from a Leroy Sane assist in the eighth minute. Germany international Sane, who joined from Bayern Munich this season, became the only player in Champions League history to play for four or more clubs and score or assist on his debut for each of them.
Frankfurt, competing for only the second time in the Champions League main round, struggled to break through Galatasaray’s defence until a defensive error from Akgun in the 37th. Ritsu Doan pounced, charged into the box and Davinson Sanchez deflected the Japanese winger’s shot in for an own goal.
The hosts took the lead in first-half stoppage time when 19-year-old Turkey international Can Uzun scored a superb goal on his Champions League debut after fine control and a quick turn in the box. The hosts netted again before halftime with Jonathan Burkardt’s well-timed glancing header putting them 3-1 up.
With the visitors forced to take more risks after the break, Frankfurt found space and Burkardt completed his dream Champions League debut with another header in the 66th for his second goal of the evening. Ansgar Knauff completed the rout in the 75th.
Frankfurt next travel to Atletico Madrid on September 30 when Galatasaray host Liverpool.
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