It’s not been the best week for Neymar. On Monday, the Brazilian missed out on the 30-player shortlist for the 2019 Ballon d’Or award. On Tuesday, he missed PSG’s 5-0 beatdown of Club Brugge due to a hamstring injury he picked up on international duty.
There were not, admittedly, many great matchups in Tuesday’s Champions League slate. All the big clubs played opponents they were expected to beat, and while some struggled to claim all three points, most came away with easy victories.
Two of the most emphatic victories came from PSG (5-0 over Club Brugge) and Manchester City (5-1 over Atalanta). Their star men both recorded stunning hat tricks.
There’s something about Ángel Di María that changes when Neymar isn’t in the lineup with him for PSG. For whatever reason, the Argentine seems to take his play to another level when he’s the lead creative force.
Di María started against Nice without names like Neymar, Edinson Cavani or Kylian Mbappé alongside him on Friday. Those superstars weren’t needed, because Di María provided two magnificent goals early on in PSG’s 4-1 win.
It’s easy to get cynical about the Brasil Global Tour sponsored by Chevrolet, which is simply adspeak for the series of globetrotting friendlies that the Seleção contests in between Copa Américas, World Cups and World Cup qualifying.
In the preposterously bloated football calendar, nobody likes a meaningless friendly. But what’s Brazil supposed to do during the international break with no qualifying stage for the 2020 Copa América and with 2022 World Cup qualifying matches not beginning until March of 2021?
Things are heating up in the Champions League (read: Real Madrid bottom of Group A) and there’s no surer sign of the increase in dramatics than managers getting booked. In a first for the Champions League, coaches can now be on the receiving end of both yellow and red cards from the match official, and although Match Day 1 of the competition came and went without history being made, Match Day 2 brought the moment we’d all been waiting for.
There’s a lot to like about this Galatasaray club. First off, in a match against the global superpower that is Paris Saint-Germain, Fatih Terim’s side featured a quintet of guys fast approaching their mid-30s, including Radamel Falcao, Yuto Nagatomo, Mariano, Fernando Muslera and Ryan Babel.
It’s no wonder that Terim was profusely sweating his way through proceedings on the touchline.
An excellent Ángel Di María brace spearheaded PSG to a 3-0 victory over Real Madrid on Wednesday night, giving belief to Parisians that this is finally their year. On the other side of things, Zinedine Zidane’s greatest nightmare came to fruition as he was forced to watch James Rodríguez and Gareth Bale attempt to orchestrate an attack that finished with zero shots on goal.
108 days after Liverpool lifted the Champions League trophy in Madrid, we’re set to do it all over again with a competition that’ll reach its conclusion on May 30 in Istanbul. Matchday one begins tomorrow (Tuesday, Sept. 17) with a couple massive group stage encounters before carrying through to Wednesday with a couple more.
Below, we’ll highlight those four games while also breaking down the Champions League TV schedule on TNT.
Tuesday, September 17
Neymar returned to PSG for the first time this season on Saturday after a long injury layoff and nearly endless transfer drama. The Parisian fans jeered him relentlessly and viciously, angry he tried to leave. The response was an unbelievable Neymar bicycle kick in the 92nd minute to give PSG a 1-0 win over Strasbourg.
Count Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo among the legion of Parisians happy Neymar did not bolt the French capital to return to Spain this summer. But she’s not content with Neymar sticking with Paris Saint-Germain — she wants the big-eared trophy.