Ademola Lookman scored one goal and was heavily involved in the other two to drive Atalanta to a 3-0 win over Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League on Wednesday as the Italians outclassed their Ukrainian opponents in Gelsenkirchen.

Atalanta have four points from two games, having held Arsenal to a 0-0 draw in their opening match, and Shakhtar remained on one point, after they played out a scoreless draw in the first game against Italian side Bologna.

Atalanta went ahead in the 21st minute when Lookman curled a cross into the area which found Berat Djimsiti in front of goal and he controlled the ball before poking it past the keeper.

Atalanta doubled the lead a minute before the break when Sead Kolasinac squared a pass to Lookman in the middle of the area and the Nigerian struck a first-time shot through the legs of his marker Marlon Gomes into the bottom corner of the net.

The game was all but over as a contest three minutes into the second half after Lookman played the ball out wide to Davide Zappacosta and his cross into the six-yard box was headed home by Raoul Bellanova.

At 3-0, Lookman, who also hit the crossbar in the first half, was taken off with over half an hour to play, his work done for the night and the tie ended with the same scoreline as the last time the sides met in the Champions League in 2019.

-Reuters

Bayer Leverkusen’s Victor Boniface netted a second half goal to earn a 1-0 home win over AC Milan in the Champions League on Tuesday, giving the German side a perfect start to their campaign while the Italians are still without a point.

Bundesliga champions Leverkusen are on six points after they beat Feyenoord 4-0 in their opening game, while Milan lost 3-1 at home to Liverpool in their first match of the competition.

The only goal at the BayArena came six minutes after the break when Boniface fired home a rebound after Milan keeper Mike Maignan had parried a shot from Jeremie Frimpong.

It was no more than the home side deserved after an opening half in which they had the majority of possession and chances but could not find a way past Maignan, while Milan struggled to get a foothold in the game.

The goal spurred the visitors into action and they threatened to find an equaliser as they pinned Leverkusen back for long periods of the second half, but they fell to their second defeat in their first two games of the competition.

Leverkusen had two early chances in the opening minutes with Maignan saving from Boniface and then keeping out Piero Hincapie’s header from the resulting corner.

The hosts surged forward at every opportunity, and thought they had found a way through when Boniface had the ball in the net but Frimpong was offside when he collected a pass on the wing to send in the cross.

Maignan kept Milan in the game, saving from Alex Grimaldo and Florian Wirtz, with Frimpong guilty of wasting chances on the rebound on both occasions, but Boniface made no mistake when his opportunity came.

Grimaldo’s backheeled pass set up Frimpong for the shot which Maignan again managed to get a hand to but Boniface had the simplest of chances from close range and Leverkusen were ahead.

Milan manager Paulo Fonseca said before kickoff that he did not want to risk Alvaro Morata from the start but with his side searching for an equaliser the Spanish striker was sent on for Tammy Abraham in the 62nd minute.

Morata had the chance to make his entrance count when Theo Hernandez’s shot from distance took a deflection and bounced back off the crossbar. Morata met the rebound but his header went wide of the far post.

Milan had another late chance to snatch an equaliser but Leverkusen’s Lukas Hradecky saved a shot on the turn from Ruben Loftus-Cheek and the home side held out to take all three points.

-Reuters

Borussia Dortmund’s Karim Adeyemi scored a first-half hat-trick as last season’s losing finalists hammered Celtic 7-1 in the Champions League on Tuesday with five goals in the opening 42 minutes.

The humbling scoreline sent Dortmund top of the 36-team Champions League standings, with two wins from two matches and a goal difference of nine, while Celtic plunged from third to 19th.

“A sore one, for sure. We were punished with every mistake we made. Before we knew it, we were 5-1 down. A sobering night,” Celtic captain Callum McGregor told TNT Sports.

The 80,000 crowd started the celebrations early at the Westfalenstadion, with captain Emre Can scoring from the spot in the seventh minute after Celtic goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel up-ended Jamie Gittens and was booked.

Celtic momentarily hushed the deafening Yellow Wall two minutes later when Daizen Maeda bundled in a cross from Arne Engels but Adeyemi restored the lead with a shot deflected in off Auston Trusty in the 11th.

The Germany winger made it 3-1 in the 29th when he lashed the ball into the top corner past the diving Schmeichel, then won a 39th minute penalty for Serhou Guirassy to tuck away before completing his hat-trick three minutes later.

Adeyemi was substituted with an injury shortly after the break, the 22-year-old applauding fans as he left.

Guirassy grabbed his second of the night in the 66th and second-half substitute Felix Nmecha completed the rout in the 79th, with Celtic having Schmeichel to thank for keeping the sobering scoreline to seven.

“It was a great night. Almost the perfect night for us. Everything went right. It’s great to get such a big win,” said Can. “We’ve made a really good start, but there’s still a long way to go.”

CELTIC SHREDDED

The halftime shredding rewound Celtic’s goal difference to zero after their 5-1 thrashing of debutants Slovan Bratislava in their opening match last month, and it only got worse.

Guirassi’s second came after a poor clearance by Alistair Johnson as Celtic, who arrived with some confidence of getting a good result, paid the price for slack passing and scant possession.

Adeyemi was the first Dortmund player to score a first-half hat-trick in Europe since 2002 and his achievement left the 4,000 travelling Celtic fans shell-shocked as the speedy hosts ripped their side apart.

“We scored seven goals, so it was a really good night. We can reach the final again if we keep playing like this,” he said afterwards.

Both teams had started unchanged from weekend domestic league games with Celtic the leaders in Scotland and Dortmund, 3-0 winners at Belgian side Club Brugge in their European opener, fifth in the Bundesliga.

“The quick goal killed us and rattled us a little bit. When you give good players time on the ball, they will kill you. And that’s what they did,” said McGregor.

Dortmund coach Nuri Sahin said his team set the bar high.

“We were always looking to go forward, and we’re difficult to beat when we play like that. I was incredibly pleased with the amount of effort we put in,” he said.

Dortmund’s next game is at Real Madrid on Oct. 22, a repeat of last year’s Wembley final, while Celtic play last year’s Europa League winners Atalanta in Italy on Oct. 23.

-Reuters