Top European sides Real Madrid, Inter Milan, holders Paris Saint-Gernain and Juventus will have to go through the playoffs to reach this season’s UEFA Champions League round of 16 stage.
While Juventus and PSG recorded draws and Inter won, Madrid suffered a dramatic 4-2 loss to Benfica, on the final day of the league phase.
Madrid started the day in third place and needed a win to secure their spot in the top eight.
But a stoppage time goal by Benfica’s goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin sent Madrid to the playoffs.
Inter defeated Borussia Dortmund 2-0 in Germany, Juventus held AS Monaco to a goalless draw and PSG played 1-1 with Spurs in France.
Madrid ended the league phase in ninth place on 15 points, Juventus in 13th spot on 13 points, in 10th place is Inter on 15 points and PSG finished in 11th on 14 points.
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All the five Premier League teams – Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs all made it to the round of 16.
The Gunners topped the league phase with a perfect record of 24 wins out of 24 matches.
Mikel Arteta’s men bounced back from their defeat to Manchester United by edging out Kairat Almaty 3-2.
In other results, Chelsea defeated Napoli 3-2, Barcelona came from behind to thrash Copenhagen 4-1 and Liverpool hammered Qarabag 6-0.
Also Galatasaray, with Victor Osimhen in action lost 2-0 to Manchester City and Ademola Lookman’s Atalanta lost 1-0 at Union SG.
The eights who have already booked automatic qualifications to the first knockout stage are Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Spurs, Barcelona, Chelsea, Sporting Lisbon and Man City.
2 Comments
Hmmmmm……..all 18 matches were played same day, same time, simultaneously. That’s how things are done in places where their heads aren’t just serving the purpose of adding numbers to the magnitude of their height.
I know of one corrupt and fraudulent confederation that would rather play final group games of this nature on separate days and separate times, hours apart, so that the team(s) they intend to ‘be gracious to’ can have the benefit of knowing how many points and goals they need to extract from the final day to overtake their closest competition.
No one should ever compare Osimhen to haaland ever again! Haaland is miles ahead…He wasted the opportunity to shine against man city and before pep..who knows that would have been the opporrunity for guadiola to come rescue/save him out of tolotolo situation and get him signed….