Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday launched their latest quest for UEFA Champions League success with a statement win over Real Madrid, while a late Atletico Madrid comeback foiled Juventus as Manchester City eased to victory in Ukraine.
French giants PSG have failed to make their mark in Europe, crashing out of the Champions League in the last 16 each of the past three years, despite huge sums of money spent by their Qatari owners.
With Neymar suspended and Kylian Mbappe and Edinson Cavani sidelined by injury, Angel di Maria stepped up in their absence by grabbing two first-half goals in a 3-0 triumph at the Parc des Princes.
Photo: Reuters
Thomas Meunier added the third late on as Madrid, who beat PSG on the way to lifting the trophy in 2016 and last year, were soundly beaten in their Group A opener, with Eden Hazard kept quiet on his full debut.
“There’s no message sent, but we dominated this game very well,” PSG captain Thiago Silva told RMC Sport. “We have to play like this all the time, in the league as well, with character and hunger.”
Real, the 13-time European champions, are still favorites to advance from a section that includes Club Brugge and Galatasaray, who drew 0-0 in Belgium, but the nature of the loss underscored the work that lies ahead for coach Zinedine Zidane.
“They were superior to us in everything they did, and in intensity, which annoys me the most,” the Frenchman said.
Diego Simeone’s Atletico clawed their way back from two goals down in the final 20 minutes to rescue a 2-2 draw at home to Juventus in Group D.
The anticipated clash between Cristiano Ronaldo and Joao Felix, the teenager touted as the heir to Ronaldo’s throne, took a back seat to a rousing Atletico comeback after second-half goals from Juan Cuadrado and Blaise Matuidi put Juve in control.
Stefan Savic nodded home from point-blank range to give Atletico hope and substitute Hector Herrera headed in a corner in the final minute to snatch a point.
“I think we played well, but we have a bitter taste in our mouth now because we felt we had the game in our hands,” Juventus boss Maurizio Sarri said.
Both sides trail Lokomotiv Moscow, who had a 2-1 win at Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Grzegorz Krychowiak and Dmitri Barinov scored for Lokomotiv either side of an own-goal by former Germany defender Benedikt Hoewedes.
Premier League champions City bounced back from defeat by Norwich City over the weekend with a comfortable 3-0 victory against Shakhtar Donetsk in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Riyad Mahrez slammed home a rebound after Ilkay Gundogan hit the post, and the German international smacked in a second before Gabriel Jesus sealed the points on 76 minutes.
“When you win, the manager makes the right decisions, when you lose, the wrong decisions. We lost one game in eight months and we will not doubt who these players are. It is a joy to be their manager,” coach Pep Guardiola told BT Sport.
City are second to Dinamo Zagreb in Group C after the Croatian champions made it a night to forget for competition debutants Atalanta BC with a 4-0 rout.
Dinamo failed to score a single goal as they lost all six matches in their last group stage appearance in 2016-2017.
However, Marin Leovac gave them a 10th-minute lead and Mislav Orsic bagged a hat-trick as Dinamo got off to a dream start ahead of a trip to City on Oct. 2.
Bayern Munich needed late goals from Robert Lewandowski and Thomas Mueller to make sure of victory against Red Star Belgrade in Group D.
Kingsley Coman’s bullet header gave Bayern a first-half lead, but the German champions were forced to wait until the 80th minute for Lewandowski to end Red Star’s threat.
Substitute Mueller volleyed in a third in stoppage time.
Last year’s finalists, Tottenham Hotspur, blew a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 at Olympiakos.
Harry Kane’s penalty and a fine Lucas Moura strike put Spurs 2-0 up after 30 minutes in Greece, but Daniel Podence cut the deficit shortly before the break and Mathieu Valbuena leveled from the spot in the second half.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier