Just two rounds of games remain in the expanded first round of this season’s UEFA Champions League, which tied a bow on 2024 Wednesday with the conclusion of Matchday 6.
Here are three quick takeaways from Wednesday’s games.
Last season, Arsenal’s first back in the world’s top club competition after a six-year hiatus, they progressed to the quarterfinals. The Gunners are looking to go even deeper in 2025.
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Arsenal took care of Monaco with ease in London on Wednesday to finish 2024 in third place, trailing only Barça and Premier League rival Liverpool. Bukayo Saki scored twice in the 3-0 win.
Barcelona’s day went even better at one of the most imposing venues on the continent. Barca’s Brazilian forward Raphinha silenced the famous yellow wall inside Borussia’s 81,000-seat Westfalenstadion when he put the visitors ahead early in the second half.
But last year’s losing finalists came back to equalize and then did it again before Ferran Torres‘ second in a 10-minute span finally put Hansi Flick’s squad up for good with just five minutes of regular time remaining.
It was Barça’s fifth victory in six Champions League games so far. First place Liverpool is the only unbeaten, untiled team left in the tournament.
Man City’s 3-0 Premier League victory over Nottingham Forest a week ago feels like it happened in another lifetime. The result snapped a six-match winless run. It was supposed to spark the Sky Blues heading into the busy festive period.
Instead, after being forced to come back twice just to salvage a point against Crystal Palace last weekend, Juventus ran Pep Guardiola’s team off the field in Turin on Wednesday as the hosts handed the Citizens their seventh defeat in 10 games.
Dušan Vlahović’s first half header put the hosts ahead. U.S. men’s national team star Weston McKennie came off the bench in the second and sealed the win, finishing a play he started 50 yards from City’s goal when he volleyed home a cross provided by USMNT teammate Tim Weah:
The loss left Guardiola & Co. with a 2-2-2 record and in 22nd place in the 36-team standings. Only the top 16 advance to the knockout stage. The 2023 European titlist’s next Champions League test comes on Jan. 22 in Paris versus PSG. City closes out the “league” stage of the tournament a week later when they host Belgium’s Club Brugge.
Gio Reyna gets a rare start in Borussia Dortmund’s loss
Reyna came into Wednesday’s high profile visit from Barcelona having played just 63 minutes all season for Borussia, but there the American was nonetheless in Nuri Şahin’s lineup for his first start of 2024-25.
The 22-year-old playmaker didn’t look out of place in the 3-2 loss. Shortly before Raphinha opened the scoring for Barca, Reyna’s clever pass sprung a Dortmund counterattack that appeared to give the host the lead early in the second half, only for the would-be goal to be flagged offside.
Reyna was substituted in the 73rd minute, when the score was still 1-1.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer reporter for FOX Sports. A staff writer with ESPN and Yahoo Sports before joining FOX Sports in 2021, he has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams at FIFA World Cups on five continents. Follow him @ByDougMcIntyre.
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