PARIS: Arsenal beat Paris St Germain 2-0 in their heavyweight duel on Tuesday, while Karim Adeyemi starred as last season’s beaten finalists Borussia Dortmund ran riot against Celtic and Barcelona and Manchester City claimed their first wins in the restructured Champions League on Tuesday.
Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal outclassed his former team with Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka scoring in the first half for the Gunners as PSG coach Luis Enrique’s gamble on leaving Ousmane Dembele out did not pay off.
Arteta enjoyed a successful 18-month loan spell at PSG while still he was still a teenager at Barcelona.
Adeyemi scored a first-half hat trick as Dortmund gave Celtic a brutal reality check with an emphatic 7-1 win in Germany. It was the second big win from a German team in the competition after Bayern Munich’s 9-2 bashing of Dinamo Zagreb in the first matchday.
Robert Lewandowski got Barca off the mark as the Spanish giants eased to a 5-0 home win over Swiss team Young Boys, while his former team-mate Ilkay Gundogan got City off to a 4-0 win at Slovan Bratislava and Champions League debutants Brest won 4-0 at Red Bull Salzburg.
City were held 0-0 by Inter Milan in their opening game, while Barca responded to its 2-1 loss at Monaco, the team’s first defeat under new coach Hansi Flick.
This season UEFA changed the structure of Europe’s premier competition to add four more teams. The group stage was scrapped for a league system with each of the now 36 participating teams playing eight opponents once in a first phase of the competition.
UEFA claimed the changes would ensure more evenly matched games, but Tuesday’s results — the big wins for Barca, City and Dortmund — appear to belie that claim.
The clash between Arsenal and French champions PSG in London was the big game of the day as the second round of matches in the new format of European football’s elite club competition got underway.
The Gunners were worthy winners with Havertz heading in from a Leandro Trossard cross to open the scoring on 20 minutes and Saka doubling their lead before half-time as his free-kick delivery from the right evaded everybody on its way in.
PSG saw Nuno Mendes strike the outside of the post from range in the first half while Joao Neves hit the woodwork after the break, but the visitors could not get back into the game.
It is a first win in the Champions League this season for Arsenal, who drew 0-0 away to Atalanta on matchday one two weeks ago.
“Really, really happy with the performance,” Arteta told broadcaster Amazon Prime. “The Champions League brings different demands but I think we handled it really well.”
Dortmund are currently on top of the 36-team league after they followed a 3-0 win at Club Brugge in their first game by trouncing Scottish champions Celtic in Germany.
Dortmund were 5-1 ahead at half-time. Emre Can opened the scoring from the penalty spot before Daizen Maeda equalised, but Adeyemi then took centre stage.
Serhou Guirassy netted a penalty before the interval and made it 6-1 midway through the second half, with substitute Felix Nmecha wrapping up the victory late on.
It is Dortmund’s biggest winning margin in the Champions League alongside a 6-0 win away to Legia Warsaw in 2016.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect game, but it was very, very good,” said Can. “This has to be the standard we aim to set.”
BARCA, CITY WIN
Lewandowski scored twice either side of goals by Raphinha and Inigo Martinez before a late Mohamed Ali Camara own goal wrapped up the victory for Barca, who bounced back from their first defeat of the season in La Liga last weekend at Osasuna.
“We knew after the game against Monaco in the Champions League we had to give a quick reply in the next game, which was this one, and we did that well,” Raphinha told broadcaster Movistar.
Winners of the Champions League in 2023, Pep Guardiola’s City were comfortable winners in Slovakia, with Gundogan, Phil Foden, Erling Haaland and James McAtee getting the goals.
Inter, who lost to City in the final in Istanbul two seasons ago, won by the same scoreline at home to Red Star Belgrade.
Hakan Calhanoglu set Inter on their way with a stunning early free-kick before Marko Arnautovic, Lautaro Martinez and Mehdi Taremi all netted in the second half, the latter from a penalty.
German champions Bayer Leverkusen got their second straight win in this season’s competition as a well-worked move finished by Victor Boniface early in the second half allowed them to beat AC Milan 1-0.
Brest, the French Champions League newcomers, also made it two wins out of two with a remarkable victory away to Salzburg in Austria.
Senegal striker Abdallah Sima, the forward on loan from Brighton & Hove Albion who got their winner against Sturm Graz two weeks ago, scored twice.
Mahdi Camara and Mathias Pereira Lage also found the target with Brest scoring three of their goals in the space of 10 second-half minutes.
Salzburg, Slovan Bratislava and Young Boys are the bottom three in the early standings.
VfB Stuttgart and Sparta Prague drew 1-1 with Enzo Millot putting the German side ahead and Finnish international Kaan Kairinen equalising before the interval.
Stuttgart fans displayed a huge choreography saying “Back in Europe” behind one of the goals. It was the German team’s first Champions League match at home since a 1-1 draw with Barcelona in February 2010.
PSV Eindhoven and Sporting Lisbon also drew 1-1. Jerdy Schouten’s opener for the Dutch champions was cancelled out by Daniel Braganca’s late leveller.
Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2024
