Another round of Champions League was completed last night. The goals dried up (as expected) compared to the first day. Here's a recap on selected matches for those who missed out on the action (like me, due to a certain saint).
First up, we head to Benfica in Portugal where they hosted Man United. The line up that Sir Alex Ferguson put out was to let the senior players absorb the pressure from Benfica. They can be very intimidating with the crowd behind them.
Benfica 1 - 1 Man Utd: Oscar Cardozo put Benfica ahead but golden oldie Ryan Giggs levelled the scores with a wonder goal. Sir Alex rested a number of players with the view of Chelsea on Sunday. Not a perfect start to the campaign but it's always a good result away from home.
Next, we have a shocker. Inter Milan v Trabzonspor at the San Siro. It should have been an easy ride on the park for the 2010 champions but the Turkish side had other ideas.
Inter Milan 0 - 1: You got that right. Inter lost at home to Trabzonspor. The biggest shocker so far. With Gasperini deploying his 3-4-3 formation, it's like an accident waiting to happen. In my personal view, 3-4-3 formation has been dead for a long long time. A powerhouse club once did, FC Barcelona, back when Louis Van Gaal was in charged for a second spell. It only lasted 6 months before he was fired from his job. My advise, either Gasperini change the formation, or there's the EXIT door son. Hahaha...
Let's head to Spain where Villareal hosted Bayern Munich. Okay so it was an expected result for Bayern to win in Spain. Here's a photo.
Villareal 0 - 2: An expected result for Bayern to win in Spain. The goals were scored Tony Kroos and Rafinha. A good start for the Germans then. Not much to review here.
Finally, let's review the most talked about team debuting in Champions League, Man City.
Plenty of talk about them in the press. Even former Arsenal legend, Ian Wright said City could even beat Barcelona. You sure about that Ian??? I guess a lot of people were saying City are above and better than Barcelona. Errr, do not write off the Catalans yeah. Even Real Madrid were beaten 5 - 0 last season. Yeah 5 - 0!!!
Man City 1 - 1 Napoli: Cavani gave Napoli the lead, only for Kolarov to levelled the scores few minutes later. Here's a quote from The Sun tabloid from the UK. "And pretenders City now know just what this Champions League malarkey is all about. At least their big night did not end in defeat, although they came mighty close. But all comparisons with Pep Guardiola's European Champions need to stop and straight away. Roberto Mancini has said as much already but the thousands turning up for this big European debut came in wild excitement and expectation. They left soberly, realising that romping to wins here over Swansea and Wigan is one thing — taking on the might of Europe is quite another". NUFF SAID!!!
Other results: Ajax 0 - 0 Lyon, Lille 2 - 2 CSKA Moscow, Dinamo Zagreb 0 - 1 Real Madrid and FC Basel 2 - 1 Otelul Galati
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