Matchday 3 of the Champions League is upon us with 16 games across Tuesday and Wednesday. Manchester United hope to get things going after their slow start, Arsenal aim to rebound and Paris Saint-Germain hope to forget about Matchday 2's disaster at Newcastle. Here, as ever, are five players I'm going to be keeping a close eye on and how to watch all the action:
How to watch
All of the Champions League action can be found on Paramount+ this season, while CBS Sports Network will also carry UEFA Champions League Today before and after the main slate of games. CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo Network will also air select matches on both Tuesday and Wednesday. If you want all your action in one place, Paramount+ will also carry the Golazo Show, on both days, for whiparound action capturing the biggest moments no matter where they happen.
On both days, Champions League coverage will continue with The Champions Club on the Golazo Network, which airs after the UEFA Champions League Today post-match show. Wednesday's episode of The Champions Club will be followed by a new episode of Kickin' It, which will feature a sit-down interview with former U.S. men's national team forward Jozy Altidore. Scoreline, the Golazo Network's daily highlight show, recapping the day's action, will air after Kickin' It.
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1. Alvaro Morata, Atletico Madrid
For most of his career, Morata has been a byword for striking ineptitude among football's more generalist audience. Fans of Chelsea, Juventus and Spain had been driven to distraction by the misses. There were a lot of them, but even that spoke to a bigger truth. At least Morata was getting in position to miss the chances that came his way. That is one of the qualities shared by all top strikers, they keep getting in positions. And if you buy enough lottery tickets you might eventually hit the jackpot, although in Morata's case you might already have gone broke chasing that pay out.
In six of his last eight seasons, Morata averaged more than 0.5 expected goals per 90 minutes. The issue was that in his mid 20s, a few too many of the best chances that came his way went unconverted. Perhaps it did not help that he was bouncing from one dysfunctional club to another, invariably the scapegoat for bigger woes, a player who seemed to feel every miss too deeply.
Since returning to Atletico Madrid, however, something seems to have changed. Morata has found contentment in a team that needs and publicly values, his qualities. They are numerous. He's a striker who still has the pace to stretch in behind the defense, who can link play with his back to goal and who is particularly deadly when the ball is crossed into the box.
Interest from Saudi Arabia in the summer was spurned, with Morata signing not one, but two extensions at the Metropolitano. The 30-year-old has found something and with that the stakes don't seem so high for him with every shot. If ever one wanted evidence of a shift in mindset being reflected in data it might just be post-World Cup Morata, scorer of 15 goals off 12 xG.
Suddenly his biggest games are defined by an altogether different contribution from Morata. His braces turned the tide for Atletico Madrid against Feyenoord and won the derby in the Spanish capital against Real Madrid. The veteran striker and captain delivered in the clutch to take La Furia Roja past Scotland and into Euro 2024. The misses are still there, as evidenced in the graphic above. They always will be, but perhaps now one does not beget half a dozen more.
2. Julian Brandt, Borussia Dortmund
As they travel to face Newcastle in England's north east, the pressure is firmly on Dortmund, bottom of their group without so much as a goal to their name. Results have picked up somewhat in the Bundesliga, but there is little room for further setbacks. They need players to step up and deliver in what might be the hardest game left in their group stage campaign. If someone is to do so it will surely be Brandt.
His second-half winner against Werder Bremen on Friday means he has a goal or assist in his last seven league games. He may not be playing the number 10 role that he would consider to be his natural position, but what Brandt has done with great aplomb in 2023 is force his qualities into the position he's occupying on the wing. The veteran of 300 Bundesliga games tends not to run at his full back and unleash a barrage of flicks but his interplay with Marco Reus has much the same effect.
"I interpret the position quite differently than classic wingers do," Brandt said after the win over Bremen. "I try to move in as much as possible and I think that fits in well with Marco. It's a hybrid position, but I have a certain responsibility to bring the game width."
While the goals aren't flowing as freely on the continent, the chance creation struggles might be all the more pronounced without the 27-year-old. Along with Julian Alvarez and Kvicha Kvaratskhelia, he is the leading chance creator in the group stage with eight, many of them coming from fizzing corners and free-kicks. Those dead balls could be the swing factor at St. James' Park where the team ranked 32nd in open play xG across the group stages host one ranked 27th. It could well be a match decided by who is best outside open play. Happily for Dortmund, they have a man who is consistently delivering for them.
3. Leroy Sane, Bayern Munich
Brandt is not the only Germany international to have hit a rich vein of form early in 2023-24, with Leroy Sane perhaps in the prime of his Bayern Munich career so far. Like so many wide forwards before him, the 27-year-old is discovering the joys that come with having Harry Kane on your inside. The England captain havs laid on four of the seven goals Sane has scored in 12 matches this season. The first of those might even function as a hastily scrawled goodbye note to Heung-min Son.
Kane drops deep, drawing the Werder Bremen center back with him, to collect the pass from Sane, who accelerates into the vacated space. He knows his No. 9 won't need to take a touch before flicking a pass forward. He can fly forward at full tilt. When he does, no one gets close.
Off the pitch, Sane gives his new teammate a sense of familiarity with his command of English. On it, the same is true. The colors might have changed, but Kane still has incisive wide men cutting in onto their strong foot for him to slip in. "For our style of play, it's important that we have a real number nine, but Harry also drops deep so that we can rotate well," Sane said of Kane. "I love moving from attacking midfield up front with pace — it's worked well with Harry a few times and with more games and training sessions, it can definitely get better."
There is more to Sane's fine form than just the presence of a new teammate. That much was apparent from his goals for Germany last month, his teammates and coaches speak of a player who is more physically imposing and perhaps even happier than ever before. At the peak of his powers, this is a player who could swing knockout ties in Bayern's favor.
4. Mauro Icardi, Galatasaray
Though Sane and Bayern look likely to get to those knockout stages, they may yet find that Galatasaray put up quite the fight in the hunt for top spot. An hour into their group stage return, such a scenario seemed impossible but having fought back from two goals down at home to Copenhagen, they stunned Manchester United at Old Trafford. On Tuesday, they host the German champions in Istanbul, where a point or more would give them a tangible chance of making the last 16.
At this stage of any season it can be hard to truly assess Champions League representatives of a league as stratified as Turkey. In Europe, they look fairly impressive with the competition's 11th best xG tally, indeed their xG difference through those first two games is slightly superior to Bayern's. In the Super Lig, meanwhile, they remain unbeaten and held Besiktas, down to 10 men for an hour, to just two shots in a 2-1 win at Rams Park on the weekend. The scorer of their goals could yet be a swing factor on Tuesday.
Icardi may be too much of a pure finisher to thrive with the very best teams in Europe, where many strikers are expected to have more strings to their bows, but when the Champions League margins are as tight as they can be for clubs like Galatasaray, a player who averages four shots per 90 can take you a long way. The 30-year-old may be occasionally wasteful, invariably temperamental and a complicated figure off the field, but he can sprinkle games with moments of real quality like his precise chip over Andre Onana in the win at Old Trafford.
MAURO ICARDI MAKES UP FOR HIS MISSED PENALTY AND SILENCES OLD TRAFFORD! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/3SSyNIhXD4
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) October 3, 2023
If Galatasaray's defense can keep it tight at the other end, Icardi may well have a say in the course of Tuesday's contest.
5. Jack Grealish, Manchester City
Certainly one to keep an eye out for, but there are no guarantees that you will actually get to see Grealish when Manchester City take the field away to Young Boys. In customary fashion, Pep Guardiola has quietly eased out of the lineup one of his star players from last season. In 2022-23, City started 20 of their 61 games in all competitions without Grealish. Now they have done without him in eight of 14 XIs so far. In Saturday's 2-1 win over Brighton, City deployed what you would assume, aside from Ederson's resting, was their strongest XI. There was no room in it for Grealish, who replaced Jeremy Doku in the 75th minute.
The explanations for Grealish's diminished role may be relatively prosaic. He started four of City's first five games this season before suffering a dead leg against Sheffield United. Once injuries take you out of that particular XI, it is no easy path back into it. Meanwhile, replacing Kevin De Bruyne's direct play is perhaps the work of two men in Guardiola's squad: Julian Alvarez provides the shots and some of the creativity, Doku the ball progression. Grealish's best work came as a player who was not far off a left midfielder in a 4-4-2, he and Bernardo Silva brought the pausa outside the front two.
Certainly we are some way from crisis point in the career of a £100 million man who did so much to assuage the doubters last season. However, Grealish's presence, or lack thereof, promises to be a fascinating subplot as City attempt to match last season's treble.
