UEFA Champions League (Soccer)

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    Champions League’s New Format Creates a New Reality

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    This year more than ever is showing that the competition means different things to different clubs. And that’s a good thing.Lille’s players lingered on the field at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy, communing with their fans. The stands were still full, long after the game had finished, and the party was showing no signs of ending. Ethan Mbappé — famous name, if not quite a familiar face — wore the broad grin of a man who was going to take considerable pleasure in messaging his brother later.His team had enjoyed a mixed start to the season. Lille sat fifth in Ligue 1, France’s top division: three wins, two losses and a draw. Quite what the next few months would bring was not yet clear. There would not, in all likelihood, be a title challenge in the league. Competition for a Champions League slot was looking intense.And now, all of a sudden, everything had gathered into cold, sharp focus. Whatever else happened during this campaign, whether those early victories heralded the start of something or whether those defeats were harbingers of trouble, this would always be remembered as the year that Lille beat Real Madrid.Lille’s victory in the Champions League on Wednesday ended Real Madrid’s 36-match unbeaten streak.Francois Lo Presti/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOver the course of its first two rounds, it has been difficult to know what to make of the new format for the Champions League. There is some firm ground: The competition’s new guise is, we can agree, a monument both to the self-interest of Europe’s most powerful teams and the cravenness of the bodies charged with acting as custodians of soccer’s health.It has been expressly designed, after all, to bow to the incessant demands of the continent’s aristocrats. They wanted more games against each other. Thanks to UEFA’s spinelessness, they got them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Champions League: Bayern Munich, Dortmund and the Lure of the Past

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      Change comes neither easily nor naturally at Germany’s two most successful clubs. Will success in the Champions League delay it again?In those few minutes after Niclas Füllkrug had scored, as the Yellow Wall swayed and roared, Borussia Dortmund must have felt the stirring of some distant memory. Waves of attacks pounded down on Paris St.-Germain, now dizzied and wearied. The world shimmered with possibility. A place in the Champions League final felt, for a moment, close enough to touch.This is how it used to be, or at least some approximation of it, back in the days when Dortmund made Europe shake. Gregor Kobel, the team’s goalkeeper, was pulling off daring turns in his own penalty area. Mats Hummels, a fixture in the lineup a decade ago, was spraying languid passes with the outside of his foot. Jadon Sancho and Karim Adeyemi were electric, relentless.There is a chance, of course, that it will all count for nothing. More than a chance, really: Dortmund may live to regret that a second goal never came. P.S.G. had enough opportunities to hint at its threat, too, hitting the post twice in the space of 10 seconds at one point. It may not prove quite so forgiving in the return leg in Paris on Tuesday.But that Dortmund will travel to France with hope — perhaps even with a little expectation — is still an unanticipated development. This was supposed, after all, to be a chastening week for German soccer: Most expected Dortmund and Bayern Munich, the Bundesliga’s two great crisis clubs, to be exposed in the Champions League semifinals. And yet, halfway through, both teams remain vividly alive.Niclas Füllkrug scored the goal that gave Dortmund a 1-0 victory over P.S.G. in their two-legged Champions League semifinal.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDortmund’s case was the more extreme. The club has spent much of this season engaged in a bout of restive soul-searching. Dortmund’s coach, Edin Terzic, has been under such scrutiny for so long that it is probably fair to assume he has memorized the password to his H.R. portal. The club enters this weekend languishing in fifth place in the Bundesliga, its form patchy, its progress stalled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Champions League: Security Increased After ISIS Threats

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      Online messages urged violent attacks on four matches, prompting the police in England, France and Spain to step up precautions.Public safety officials in England, France and Spain said Tuesday that they would step up security for matches this week in the Champions League, Europe’s marquee soccer competition, after ISIS-related groups called for violent attacks on the contests.The first of four quarterfinal matchups were scheduled in London and Madrid on Tuesday, and were to feature some of the top clubs in world soccer: Spain’s Real Madrid; the English giants Arsenal and Manchester City; and Germany’s Bayern Munich. Two other high-profile matches will take place on Wednesday in Paris and Madrid.“We don’t know what location might be particularly targeted, neither in what conditions,” the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, told reporters in Paris. But he said he had spoken with police officials in Paris on Tuesday morning and had been assured that they “have considerably reinforced the security measures.”In Spain, the interior ministry said it had raised the country’s terrorist alert level after the appearance of a photo online carrying the message “Kill them all” and the names of the four stadiums where this week’s games are to be played, according to reports in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. The ministry said security measures at the matches in Madrid had been increased and additional agents deployed.At least one of the threats was accompanied by an image showing the main entrances to Arsenal’s stadium in London.“The U.K. terrorism threat level remains at ‘substantial,’ meaning an attack is likely,” said Ade Adelekan, the deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police in London. The Metropolitan Police said it would have a “robust” security plan in place for the Arsenal-Bayern Munich match at London’s Emirates Stadium.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Real Madrid's Marcelo May May Miss Game for Election Duty

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      Unless the Brazilian defender is excused from working at a polling place next week, he may miss his club’s Champions League match at Chelsea.Real Madrid could be without one of its best defenders for a semifinal match in the Champions League next week because he was randomly selected to work a shift at the polls during local elections in Madrid.Marcelo, a fullback who started the first leg of Real Madrid’s semifinal against Chelsea on Tuesday in Spain, was randomly selected by the Spanish government to work at the polls next Tuesday, when there will be elections for seats in the Madrid Assembly, El Mundo reported. A second Madrid player, Victor Chust, was also selected, but he is injured and will not be missed by the team.All registered voters in Spain are eligible to be randomly selected to work at the polls. Though Marcelo, 32, was born in Brazil, he has played for Real since 2007 and has been a Spanish citizen for a decade.Spanish law allows for exemptions, which may be given for “professionals who must participate in public events to be held on the voting day that are scheduled before the electoral call when the party cannot be replaced and his nonparticipation forces suspension of the event, producing economic damages.”In the past, soccer players and others with pressing business have been excused from the polling duty. In 2019, for example, Aitor Fernández, a Levante goalkeeper, did not have to work the polls because his team had a match that day.Even leaving aside whether Marcelo is irreplaceable and whether the game would have to be canceled in his absence, there is another problem for Real’s appeal: In the case of Fernández, his game was the same day as the election. In Marcelo’s case, the second leg of the semifinal against Chelsea in London is not until the following evening. But Real Madrid is planning to travel to England a day early, the same date of the elections, and because of coronavirus protocols it may not be possible for Marcelo to make the trip on game day.El Mundo reported that Marcelo was “very upset by his electoral luck.” Real Madrid and Chelsea tied the first leg, 1-1, on Tuesday, when Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic became the first American to score in the semifinals of the competition.If he has to stay behind, Marcelo will at least pick up a small bonus: Poll workers are paid 65 euros ($78) for their day’s work.A logical replacement for Marcelo at left back would be Ferland Mendy, but it is not clear if he will be ready to return from a calf injury. More