Photo courtesy of Alex Livesey – Danehouse via Getty Images, 2024
As every year, the Champions League is back for Valentine’s Day for all the football lovers. This week, the first way of the Round of 16 teams started with the first four games held on Tuesday the 13th and Wednesday the 14th of February.
Even though the matchups disappointed the fans when announced, the first games of the first leg ended up being eventful. While PSG struggled to qualify out of the group stage with tough opponents, they managed to win the first game against Real Sociedad 2-0. The Spanish team demonstrated beautiful football during the first part of the competition and managed to finish first of their group without losing a game. Despite this prowess, PSG stayed the favorite and the better team by the final score. After a tough first half, Kylian Mbappe, who has recently been announced to leave PSG at the end of the season, scored the first goal to lead the game at the Parc des Princes stadium. This was followed 10 minutes later by a goal scored by Bradley Barcola. Real Sociedad will still have a chance to comeback in Anoeta, their home stadium, to try to qualify for the quarter finals during the second leg of the Round of 16 teams.
Another Spanish team that played was Real Madrid, who ended up in another arbitration polemic. In fact, after being accused of being favored in their respective nationale league, La Liga, it is this time during a Champions League game that accusations were made. Two minutes into the game against their German opponent, Leipzig scored a header goal that was later disallowed for being offside. Even if some fans argue on social media that it wasn’t offside, Leipzig still ended up having a hard time to find the cages as the Madrid goalkeeper Lunin made nine saves during the game. Expectations were high towards him as he had to replace Thibault Courtois and Kepa Arrizabalaga, both injured world class goalkeepers. Thanks to a good defense and despite Jude Bellingham’s injury, Madrid won this game on the score of 1-0. Brahim scored an incredible goal at the entrance of the penalty box at the beginning of the second half and got elected as the goal of the week by the tournament. Leipzig still has a margin to come back during the second leg, but this time it will be at the Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid’s stadium, which will be complicated.
On the other hand, the current holder of the Champions League, Manchester City won 3-1 against Copenhagen, which did not surprise anyone. The Citizens opened the score quickly at the 10th minute on a beautiful pass in depth from Phil Foden to Kevin DeBruyne. Around the same minute, Manchester City player Jack Grealish was injured. The British player is suffering a groin injury and will be out for two to three weeks. The Dutch managed to come back to 1-1 but Bernardo Silva gave the lead back to his team on a pass from DeBruyne right before half time. Finally, Foden closed the game in the additional time on a beautiful shot in the middle of the penalty area, once again on a pass from DeBruyne. The current champion shouldn’t have problems to qualify as the second leg will be played at home, at the Etihad Stadium.
Finally, one of the recurrent favorites, Bayern Munich, lost 1-0 against Lazio. The German team was already going through a tough time after losing 3-0 to Bayern Leverkusen in the Bundesliga (German national league). The Italian team scored the only goal of the game on a penalty after Dayot Upamecano, a Bayern defender, got a red card and was expelled from the game during the second half. Ciro Immobile converted the penalty and allowed his team to be one step closer to the quarter-finals. Nevertheless, Bayern Munich is known for always coming back during the second leg, especially if they play at home, which will be the case against Lazio. The fans wouldn’t be surprised to see the German team score at least five goals during the second leg. But as of now, Lazio is in the best position to qualify thanks to the penalty.
After the first four hectic games for the first leg of the round of 16, we will now be turned towards the next upcoming four games of the first leg tonight and tomorrow. FC Barcelona will face Napoli; PSV will face Dortmund; Inter Milan will face Atletico Madrid and Porto will face Arsenal.
Sophomore Agathe Vanmassenhove is the Sports Editor. Her email is avanmass@fandm.edu.