Promotion favorites West Ham and Leicester played to an ill-tempered 0-0 draw, while Leeds and Ipswich won on the opening day of the Football League Championship season.
Leicester's Dion Dublin, a former England player, was given a red card in the 18th minute for kicking Rufus Brevett. Brevett was handed a yellow card and picked up another yellow in the 85th minute.
"It was much ado about nothing," Leicester manager Micky Adams said of Dublin's dismissal. "We started the game well and were looking quite dangerous, so it was a big blow for us."
West Ham striker Marlon Harewood was stopped twice by 'keeper Ian Walker while Leicester was down to 10 players.
"I think we had two or three good chances to win the game, and we didn't take those," West Ham manager Alan Pardew said.
Leicester was relegated last season, while West Ham dropped two seasons ago. The London club lost last season's playoff final to Crystal Palace.
Leeds, also relegated in 2003-2004, downed Derby County 1-0, and Ipswich, which lost to West Ham in the first round of the playoffs, beat Gillingham 2-1.
The top two in the division advance automatically, and one of the next four goes up through the playoffs.
The English Premier League season begins Aug. 14.
Rangers, a distant second to Celtic last season, played to a 0-0 draw against Aberdeen in the season opener.
Rangers signed five internationals in the offseason but couldn't unlock the defense of Aberdeen, which finished second last in 2003-2004. Danish winger Peter Lovenkrands came closest, hitting the crossbar in the 82nd minute and seeing another shot cleared off the line by defender Phil McGuire.
When Michael Ballack and Sebastian Deisler both scored in Bayern Munich's 2-0 win over Hamburger SV in their Bundesliga opener, it was as Bayern envisioned when they signed them three years ago.
Newly promoted FC Nuremberg beat FC Kaiserslautern 3-1, while Borussia Dortmund's season got off to a rocky start when it fell unexpectedly to Wolfsburg 2-1 behind two goals by Germany forward Thomas Brdaric as the Bundesliga's 42nd season went into full swing.
It was a German plan to groom Ballack and Deisler together to lead a winning 2006 World Cup effort. And while Ballack emerged as the country's most acclaimed player, his younger teammate was derailed by knee operations and a bout of depression, and they rarely shone at the same time at Bayern.
The Bundesliga season got off to a strange start on Friday when the first match between defending champion Werder Bremen and Schalke was delayed for 65 minutes by a power blackout.
Bremen won the matchup of title hopefuls 1-0.
Dortmund, coming off a messed up season, started the same way as it dominated Wolfsburg but lost 2-1. By the final whistle, the club drew boos from the 71,000 at Westfalenstadion.
Ernesto Chevanton scored two minutes into his debut as Monaco beat newly-promoted Saint-Etienne 1-0 in first division matches.
The Uruguay striker collected a ball on the edge of the penalty area, span past his marker and planted the ball into the bottom corner.
But Paris Saint-Germain's season got off to a disappointing start with a 2-1 defeat away at Rennes.
Midfielder Olivier Sorlin and Swiss striker Alexander Frei scored early in the first-half for Rennes.
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