Champions League briefing: Ballon d’Or contenders dazzle, a 12-minute hat-trick and a two-man canoe

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Two hat-tricks, including one that was scored in the space of 12 first-half minutes, tell only part of the story on a night when six Champions League matches delivered 25 goals.

For Paris Saint-Germain, who have won back-to-back Champions League titles, it was business as usual. Slovan Bratislava, managed by the former Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure, were hit for six in the French capital as Ferran Torres, Spain’s World Cup final hero, marked his Champions League debut for PSG with three goals. Ousmane Dembele, with two goals and two assists, didn’t perform too badly either.

Marcos Llorente, who enjoys playing (and scoring) against Liverpool so much that he has a dog called Anfield, did it again. The Spaniard put Atletico Madrid ahead inside the first 20 minutes, but goals from Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister (it pays to be two-footed, kids) turned the game around for Liverpool and gave Andoni Iraola his first Champions League victory.

Elsewhere, Barcelona continue to score goals at an astonishing rate, putting five past Feyenoord at Camp Nou, where the miserable weather was the least of the Dutch club’s problems. Raphinha, revelling in his new role as a No 9, scored twice (pity those two Feyenoord players mocked up in a canoe), while Lamine Yamal turned the pitch into a playground for 90 minutes.

In Naples, Martin Odegaard — who else? — scored again for Arsenal, taking his tally to four goals in five games this season as the Premier League champions celebrated a 1-0 victory in Italy. Odegaard for the golden boot, anyone?

Indeed, Napoli were the only team not to score as Sporting CP beat Galatasaray 3-1, and Stuttgart defeated Viking by the same scoreline, courtesy of Ermedin Demirovic’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it first-half hat-trick.

Matchday 1 results on September 9

Barcelona 5-1 Feyenoord
Stuttgart 3-1 Viking
Liverpool 2-1 Atletico Madrid
Napoli 0-1 Arsenal
PSG 6-1 Slovan Bratislava
Sporting CP 3-1 Galatasaray

Yamal, Dembele… or Torres for the Ballon d’Or?

Did someone mention the Ballon d’Or?

Hot on the heels of Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe scoring on the night Champions League football returned, three of the other contenders for the sport’s most prestigious individual prize provided a timely reminder of their own credentials.

Lamine Yamal, who finished the evening wearing the captain’s armband for Barcelona, delivered a sparkling performance that included a backheeled nutmeg, two assists, a goal direct from a free kick and some wonderful footwork that tied the Feyenoord players in knots.

Other than that, the teenager was quiet.

Last year, Yamal finished second in the Ballon d’Or vote to Ousmane Dembele, and there was an element of “anything you can do, I can do better” about the way that the Paris Saint-Germain winger responded later in the evening.

With 31 minutes on the clock at Parc des Princes, Dembele already had two goals and an assist to his name as PSG raced into a three-goal lead against Yaya Toure’s Slovan Bratislava. A second assist arrived in the second half — both of them for Ferran Torres — as the Champions League holders romped to a 6-1 victory that included a hat-trick for the Spanish striker.

Torres, who came off the bench to grab the winner against Argentina in the World Cup final in July, scored his three goals in the space of 26 minutes either side of half-time, with the second — a beautifully placed shot from the edge of the penalty area — the pick of them.

Ferran Torres (right) celebrates with Ousmane Dembele, who set up two of his three goals (Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images)

Although it’s easy to imagine Yamal and Dembele will be closely matched again this year in the final Ballon d’Or rankings, realistically there will be far bigger threats to the pair of them elsewhere.

Dembele, speaking to the Ballon d’Or’s official media channels, named his PSG team-mate Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, France team-mate Mbappe, and England and Bayern Munich forward Harry Kane as his chosen three for the individual award.

Asked about Dembele’s remarks the day before Barcelona’s game against Feyenoord, Yamal told reporters: “He’s friends with Kylian. I don’t care. I’m happy with the year I’ve had.

“Whenever I’ve faced both of them, I’ve won. They must have taken a dislike to me for some reason. He has to put someone in; that’s normal. I get along very well with Ousmane. I’m happy with the year I’ve had.”

That year takes in 16 goals and 12 assists in La Liga, where Barcelona won the title and Yamal was named the competition’s player of the season. He also scored six goals in the Champions League, taking his tally in the tournament to 11 before he turned 19. Goal number 12 in the Champions League arrived courtesy of a free kick against Feyenoord as Barcelona ran out comfortable winners.

Ousmane Dembele set the tone for PSG against Slovan Bratislava (Franco Arland/Getty Images)

Mac Allister is… right-footed?

It was a goal worthy of winning any game and hit so sweetly that you had to remind yourself that Alexis Mac Allister is actually right-footed.

Arrowed home from just outside the penalty area, the goal that the Argentina international scored with his “weaker” left foot against Atletico Madrid was a perfect example of the value of being totally comfortable striking a ball on either side. Mac Allister’s technique was so good that the ball exploded off his boot.

The term “weaker foot” drives football supporters crazy, and understandably so when we are talking about elite professional players who are earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. “How can they have a weaker foot?”

Yet the reality is there are very few genuinely two-footed players at the highest level of the game, with research showing that footballers typically use one foot significantly more than the other. (Rayan Cherki and Santi Cazorla, you’re a couple of exceptions to the rule.)

In some cases it feels as though players bend over backwards to avoid swinging a leg that, so the saying goes, is just for standing on.

Mac Allister, however, did not think twice about taking on a shot from 22 yards that was hit so true that it flew past the Atletico Madrid goalkeeper Jan Oblak.

The goal was well-timed from a Liverpool perspective, but also from Mac Allister’s point of view, too, bearing in mind that he had expressed his disappointment only 24 hours earlier that the club had been unwilling to open talks over a new contract this summer.

“I see Dominik (Szoboszlai) and Ryan (Gravenberch) renewing their contracts, which makes me very happy because they deserve it. But at the same time it makes me sad that I didn’t get mine,” Mac Allister told reporters. “Of course there is still time and fans don’t need to worry because I will give 100 per cent until my last day.

“We will see what happens. There were options to leave but I think right now I’m in the right club.”

Alexis Mac Allister smashes Liverpool ahead with his left foot (Jan Kruger – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)

Raphinha, Feyenoord and a two-man canoe

Torrential rain is great for making sliding tackles. But not so clever when Raphinha dribbles into the penalty area and fakes to shoot.

That was the scene at a drenched and sodden Camp Nou as two Feyenoord players, Jeremiah St Juste and Charles Vanhoutte, sailed on by — comically so with their legs in the air (dads at a water park stuff) — as Raphinha effortlessly glided inside the pair of them.

The Brazilian took a touch — St. Juste and Vanhoutte were now in a totally different part of the penalty area from the Barcelona striker — before emphatically despatching his seventh goal of the season.

Naturally, social media was quickly doing its thing and having a field day at the expense of the two Feyenoord players, with one mocked-up image showing St. Juste and Vanhoutte in a two-man canoe with a paddle in their hands.

It was that kind of night for Feyenoord, who were up a creek of some description against a Barcelona team that is making the art of goalscoring look ridiculously easy this season. After scoring 17 times in their first four La Liga games, Barcelona added another five against Feyenoord to get their Champions League campaign off to the best possible start.

Jeremiah St. Juste and Charles Vanhoutte are helpless as Raphinha slides home Barcelona’s first goal of the night (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)

All of which makes you wonder why Barcelona were so desperate to sign Julian Alvarez this summer to replace Robert Lewandowski, especially when Raphinha has turned into a world-class No 9 overnight. The former Leeds winger scored twice against Feyenoord — his second after an intelligent run in behind that was a feature of his game all night — taking his tally to eight in five appearances this season.

Nowhere to be seen on the 30-man Ballon d’Or shortlist that was announced on Tuesday (last season was derailed by three separate hamstring injuries), Raphinha is showing the sort of form that made him a serious contender for the award in 2025 when he racked up 34 goals and 22 assists in 57 matches as Barcelona won three trophies.

With Lamine Yamal on one side of Raphinha and Anthony Gordon or Karim Adeyemi on the other flank, Barcelona’s new-look front line has a formidable feel right now. Adeyemi scored Barcelona’s second against Feyenoord with a curling shot, Yamal added the fourth with a free kick and there was also a first goal for Gabriel Jesus, who joined from Arsenal on deadline day.

It was another Barcelona goal deluge in the rain.

A striker in a hurry

Ermedin Demirovic wasn’t hanging about. With little more than half an hour on the clock, the Stuttgart striker already had three goals to his name, registering the fifth earliest hat-trick in Champions League history.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina striker, who had scored only once in his previous eight Champions League appearances for the Bundesliga club, could claim ownership of the match ball after only 32 minutes. It was a blistering start to the game against the Champions League debutants Viking, with Demirovic scoring three times in the space of 12 minutes in a 3-1 victory over the Norwegian club.

Only four players have scored a hat-trick earlier in a game, with Lewandowski holding the record after he put three past Salzburg inside 23 minutes in a last-16 second leg tie for Bayern Munich in 2022.

Ermedin Demirovic had secured the match ball after a little over half an hour against Viking (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

Remaining matchday 1 fixtures