Champions League returns missing Mbappe, Rodri, Barella
Real Madrid’s French forward #09 Kylian Mbappe jumps for the ball during the Spanish league football match between Real Madrid CF and Deportivo Alaves at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid on September 24, 2024. (Photo by JAVIER SORIANO / AFP)
Key players will be sidelined when the Champions League resumes Tuesday after a wave of injuries within a week of the new-look competition starting.
Kylian Mbappé’s sore hamstring is likely to sideline him beyond Wednesday when he was due to return to France with defending champion Real Madrid to face Lille.
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Serious knee injuries mean Manchester City midfielder Rodri is out for the season and Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen will miss at least most of it.
READ: Man City’s Rodri ‘out for season’ after ACL injury
Inter Milan midfielder Nicolò Barella, who was a standout playing against Rodri on Sept. 18, will miss at least one Champions League game because of a thigh strain.
The injuries to four players who were involved at the European Championship into the knockout phase have sharpened the debate about player workload in a calendar made more congested by the bigger Champions League.
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The extended program is what influential clubs all-but forced UEFA to create and the 18 games this week, split between Tuesday and Wednesday, still leaves each of them with six more to play through January.
Another final rematch
There were two repeats of past finals in the first week of games that relaunched the Champions League in a single-standings format. Man City and Inter drew 0-0 and Liverpool won 3-1 at AC Milan.
The next rematch comes Wednesday when Aston Villa hosts Bayern Munich, a giant of the European Cup era that was shocked 1-0 in the 1982 final.
Villa Park will host a first game in the competition since March 1983 when the English side’s title defense was ended by Juventus.
Both eased to winning starts two weeks ago. Villa won 3-0 at Young Boys and Bayern’s nine goals against Dinamo Zagreb was a record for any team in the 33-season Champions League era.
Harry Kane scored four in Bayern’s 9-2 win and has a good record visiting Villa, with five goals there in five Premier League games for Tottenham. He faces a late check on an ankle injury.
Kane edges Haaland
Kane’s fast start to the season with 10 goals in seven games for Bayern has outpaced even Erling Haaland’s 10 in eight games for Man City.
Haaland was kept quiet by Inter for the second time in 16 months, a fact he was reminded of in a post-game talk with the Italian champion’s center back Francesco Acerbi, who smiled and held up two fingers.
Haaland should find it easier on Tuesday in Slovakia when Man City faces Slovan Bratislava, which took the second biggest beating in the opening round, 5-1 at Celtic.
READ: Liverpool struts past Milan in confident Champions League opener
Crowd size and fan fervor
The pulsating atmosphere at Celtic Park for a rare European win by the Scottish champion stood out in an opening week where anticipation was not universal.
Pundits including former Man City goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel noted a quietness about the stadium for the Inter game. The attendance was nearly 2,000 higher five days later when Man City met Arsenal in a tempestuous Premier League clash where title ambitions were already in play.
Milan-Liverpool was a heavyweight European fixture yet far from sold out, with fewer than 60,000 at San Siro. The crowd topped 70,000 at each of Milan’s first two Serie A home games this season, and 66,000 on the equivalent Champions League opening night last season to see another English club, Newcastle.
Paris Saint-Germain drew at least 46,000 fans for each home game in Ligue 1 this season — and all three Champions League group-stage games last season — yet fewer than 40,000 were at Parc des Princes to see European debutant Girona two weeks ago.
Sporting Lisbon also had 40,000 fans for a Champions League opener against Lille that was 6,000 down on the crowd for a domestic league game against Porto.
The attendance and atmosphere trends will be watched as fans respond to the longer and more expensive program of four Champions League home games. The 36-team standings is set to be more dynamic for the final two rounds in January.
Tuesday’s games
The raucous atmosphere should follow Celtic to Borussia Dortmund whose fans in the Yellow Wall tribune are among the noisiest in Europe.
Bundesliga champion Bayer Leverkusen hosts Milan after making a fast star in a 4-0 rout at Feyenoord. San Siro now reverts to Inter to host Red Star Belgrade.
Arsenal hosts PSG in a meeting of two teams chasing a trophy they never won. Each was a beaten finalist once. Also, Barcelona hosts Young Boys.
Wednesday’s games
Even without Mbappé, Madrid should have too much for Lille playing in the stadium that hosted basketball group-stage games at the Paris Olympics.
Premier League leader Liverpool hosts Bologna, and Girona’s first European visitor to the Montilivi stadium is Feyenoord.
Dinamo Zagreb fired its coach, Sergej Jakirović, after the drubbing at Bayern and brought back Nenad Bjelica for a second spell. He starts in the Champions League hosting Monaco.
