Champions League: Arsenal and Barcelona finish 2024 on a excessive, in contrast to Manchester Metropolis
Simply two rounds of video games stay within the expanded first spherical of this season’s UEFA Champions League, which tied a bow on 2024 Wednesday with the conclusion of Matchday 6.
Listed here are three fast takeaways from Wednesday’s video games.
Final season, Arsenal’s first again on the planet’s high membership competitors after a six-year hiatus, they progressed to the quarterfinals. The Gunners wish to go even deeper in 2025.
Arsenal took care of Monaco with ease in London on Wednesday to complete 2024 in third place, trailing solely Barça and Premier League rival Liverpool. Bukayo Saki scored twice within the 3-0 win.
Barcelona’s day went even higher at one of the vital imposing venues on the continent. Barca’s Brazilian ahead Raphinha silenced the well-known yellow wall inside Borussia’s 81,000-seat Westfalenstadion when he put the guests forward early within the second half.
However final yr’s shedding finalists got here again to equalize after which did it once more earlier than Ferran Torres‘ second in a 10-minute span lastly put Hansi Flick’s squad up for good with simply 5 minutes of standard time remaining.
It was Barça’s fifth victory in six Champions League video games to date. First place Liverpool is the one unbeaten, untiled workforce left within the event.
Man Metropolis’s 3-0 Premier League victory over Nottingham Forest every week in the past feels prefer it occurred in one other lifetime. The end result snapped a six-match winless run. It was imagined to spark the Sky Blues heading into the busy festive interval.
As a substitute, after being compelled to come back again twice simply to salvage some extent in opposition to Crystal Palace final weekend, Juventus ran Pep Guardiola’s workforce off the sector in Turin on Wednesday because the hosts handed the Residents their seventh defeat in 10 video games.
Dušan Vlahović’s first half header put the hosts forward. U.S. males’s nationwide workforce star Weston McKennie got here off the bench within the second and sealed the win, ending a play he began 50 yards from Metropolis’s purpose when he volleyed dwelling a cross offered by USMNT teammate Tim Weah:
The loss left Guardiola & Co. with a 2-2-2 report and in twenty second place within the 36-team standings. Solely the highest 16 advance to the knockout stage. The 2023 European titlist’s subsequent Champions League take a look at comes on Jan. 22 in Paris versus PSG. Metropolis closes out the “league” stage of the event every week later after they host Belgium’s Membership Brugge.
Gio Reyna will get a uncommon begin in Borussia Dortmund’s loss
Reyna got here into Wednesday’s excessive profile go to from Barcelona having performed simply 63 minutes all season for Borussia, however there the American was nonetheless in Nuri Şahin’s lineup for his first begin of 2024-25.
The 22-year-old playmaker did not look misplaced within the 3-2 loss. Shortly earlier than Raphinha opened the scoring for Barca, Reyna’s intelligent move sprung a Dortmund counterattack that appeared to offer the host the lead early within the second half, just for the would-be purpose 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 activities. A employees author with ESPN and Yahoo Sports activities earlier than becoming a member of FOX Sports activities in 2021, he has coated United States males’s and ladies’s nationwide groups at FIFA World Cups on 5 continents. Observe him @ByDougMcIntyre.
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