Liverpool picked a foul time to lose its first European match this season.
The Reds’ dream of claiming a Champions League-Premier League double title this yr is lifeless after Paris Saint-Germain shocked the previous’s high seed in a penalty shootout on Tuesday at Anfield.
PSG rode a first-half objective by Ousmane Dembélé to win the second leg away following final week’s 1-0 Liverpool win within the French capital.
Elsewhere on the continent, Barcelona, Inter Milan and Bayern Munich additionally superior on Tuesday to the quarterfinals of the 2024-25 UEFA Champions League. The final eight, which will likely be rounded out following 4 extra spherical of 16 second leg contests on Wednesday, kicks off subsequent month.
Listed below are three fast ideas on Tuesday’s video games:
Liverpool’s defeat was no fluke
Slot’s lot has no one in charge however themselves after squandering its hard-fought first leg benefit by failing to a least safe a tie within the decisive encounter. It is not just like the hosts did not have probabilities.
Liverpool fired 19 photographs in direction of PSG keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma however could not beat the rangy Italian or the woodwork with any of them. In reality, the Reds pressured Donnarumma into simply three saves over 120 minutes on Merseyside.
Meantime, the guests performed like a crew on a mission. They completed the match main in each statistical class. Had they been a bit extra scientific themselves — and had Reds backstop Alisson Becker not made a slew of top-drawer stops to maintain his crew in it — Liverpool would have been knocked out lengthy earlier than 19-year-old Désiré Doué transformed the ultimate spot-kick within the tiebreaker.
It is a crushing blow for Liverpool and there is no two methods about it, even when the historic membership’s second English title since 1990 is now a forgone conclusion due to a 15-point lead atop the Prem.
As for PSG, the result’s nothing in need of a triumph — particularly in a season earlier than which exceptions have been as little as they’d been in years following the drawn-out 2024 departure of hometown celebrity Kylian Mbappé.
What a narrative it could be if PSG, sans Mbappé, can now experience that momentum all the best way to its first European crown in Munich on Might 31.
All-world Lamine Yamal leads Barça previous Benfica
Having earned a vastly spectacular, probably season-defining 1-0 win in final week’s first leg in Portugal regardless of enjoying most of that match with 10 males, Barcelona got here into Tuesday’s decider hell-bent on ending the job. Additionally they arrived recent and stuffed with goal following an emotional weekend that noticed their La Liga contest towards Osasuna postponed following the sudden loss of life of the membership’s physician, Carles Miñarro.
It was Barça’s youngest participant who led the best way. Yamal, Spain’s 17-year-old sensation, used an ankle-buckling cutback to arrange the hosts’ opener for red-hot Raphinha simply 10 minutes in.
Yamal then canceled out the equalizer scored by Benfica’s Argentine World Cup-winning defender Nicolas Otamendi with a panoramic solo objective earlier than the primary half was completed.
Raphinha made it 4-1 on mixture earlier than the groups headed to their respective dressing rooms on the break, however there was no query who was the star of the present.
It was pure to marvel what Yamal, who will not flip 18 till July, would do for an encore after serving to his nation win the Euros final yr. The reply is now clear, because the brace-faced teen continues to firmly set up himself as one of many planet’s constantly elite gamers.
Businesslike Bayern; Inter ends Feyenoord’s run
There was no want for Bayern Munich to take any probabilities again in Munich on Tuesday towards Bundesliga rival (and present titleholder) Bayer Leverkusen, not after profitable 3-0 in enemy territory final week.
Certainly, Vincent Kompany’s crew was content material to sit down again for the primary half of the return leg in Munich, with no targets for both aspect over the opening 45 minutes. With the end result past doubt at that time, the gloves got here off. Bayern padded their already lopsided benefit by means of second-half strikes by Harry Kane and Alphonso Davies for a 5-0 mixture shellacking.
In Italy, Inter Milan went 3-0 up on whole targets over Feyenoord earlier than the Dutch darlings pulled one again. The guests’ Cinderella run nonetheless appeared destined to finish on the San Siro, although, and Hakan Çalhanoğlu promptly ensured that it did by restoring the 2023 silver medalists’ three-goal total lead early within the second half.
Bayern and Inter will now meet within the quarters subsequent month.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer author for FOX Sports activities who has lined the United States males’s and ladies’s nationwide groups at FIFA World Cups on 5 continents. Observe him at @ByDougMcIntyre.
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