A young Ajax team showed the Premier League champion Manchester City how to play Champions League football. The Dutch now have new hopes and City is threatened by an early Champions League exit. Paris Saint-Germain has the thank superstar Zlatan Ibrahimovic to remains on track for the next round.
PSG took a big step towards the knock-out stage against Zagreb thanks to Ibrahimovic. The Swedish superstar scored the lead in the 33rd minute. Jeremy Menez extended PSG’s lead just before half-time. The other Group A match was won by Porto with 3:2. Porto is leading the way in Group A with 9 points followed by PSG with 6 points.
In Group B, Olympiakos won against France’s surprise champions Montpellier HSC with 2-1. Olympiakos is now third, right behind Schalke and Arsenal. Montpellier’s Gaetan Charbonnier scored the lead in the 49th minute. However, Vasilios Torosidis (73rd minute) and Kostas Mitroglu turned the match in favour of the Greek champion in the 90th minute. Schalke 04 also won against Arsenal with 2-0. Arsenal failed to make any improvements from the weekend and let the Germans who bulged with confidence after the 2-1 win over the German champions Dortmund, walk all over them. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Ibrahim Afellay scored to a deserved victory. A great and important win for the Germans.
In Group C, Malaga sensationally beat AC Milan with 1-0 and put AC Milan into misery. Spain’s international, Joaquin scored for Malaga in the 64th minute and secured their third win in the third game against Milan, after he had missed a penalty in the 45th minute. The Italians, now have 4 points and are just ahead of St. Petersburg (4 points) in Group C. RSC Anderlecht celebrated a victory against St. Petersburg thanks to a penalty-goal from Alexander Kerschakow (72nd minute).
Manchester City came to Amsterdam to win, but was sensationally punished by Ajax. City went 1-0 up thanks to a sublime finish from Frenchman Samir Nasri but the Premier League Champions were rumbled when De Jong slotted home a well worked goal for Ajax on the stroke of half time. Ajax came out the much better of the teams in the second half and managed to grab two crucial goals through Moisander and Eriksen with the final score 3-1 Man City will need a few miracles in their next games if they want to qualify. It will be a cold winter in Manchester, currently in 4th place in Group D with only 1 point. Dortmund won sensationally at home against Real Madrid. The golden goals were scored by Robert Lewandowski and Marcel Schmelzer.
Chelsea FC had an embarrassing defeat. Even with captain John Terry, who was eligible to play despite ban for racist insults in the Premier League, the “Blues”, had no chance from the start. Alex Teixeira (4th minute) and Fernandinho (52nd minute) scored for Shakhtar. Shakhtar is leading Group Group E with seven points followed by Chelsea with 4 points.
Group F remains very exciting. Bayern Munich won in Lille with 0:1 and Valencia won against BATE Borisov with 3:0. This means that 3 clubs are at par. Valencia, Bayern Munich and Borisov all have 6 points.
FC Barcelona also had a difficult game at home against the guests from Glasgow. Glasgow scored the early lead through Samaras in the 18th minute. The remaining game, Glasgow sat in their own half defending and had Barcelona running at them. Iniesta scored the equaliser in the 45th minute and Alba the lead for Barcelona in the 90th minute. After 9 points out of 3 games, Barcelona can start planning for the next round.
ManUnited was almost punished in Group H against Braga. Man United had an awful Champions League campaign last year and I’m sure Sir Alex will be looking to make up for that this year. United got off to the worse possible start conceding twice in the first twenty minutes courtesy of two goals from Braga’s Alan. United, however, came back straight after through Hernandez. The second half displayed a much better performance from United and they managed to show their character by securing the victory through a goal from defender Jonny Evans and a second goal for Hernandez to seal the win.
