Watch all the best bits from our opening @ChampionsLeague win! 🤩
— Manchester City (@ManCity) October 21, 2020
🔷 #ManCity | https://t.co/axa0klD5rehttps://t.co/W5tTc6I0oF
Eight matches highlighted Wednesday's Champions League slate as Matchday 1 came to a close. There were some surprising scorelines, but the most shocking was Real Madrid's 3-2 loss to Shakhtar Donetsk. Meanwhile, Bayern Munich picked up where they left off with a 4-0 win and Premier League sides Liverpool and Manchester City both got their UCL seasons started with three points.
Champions League scores and results
- Red Bull Salzburg 2, Lokomotiv Moscow 2
- Real Madrid 2, Shakhtar 3
- Bayern Munich 4, Atletico Madrid 0
- Inter Milan 2, Borussia Monchengladbach 2
- Manchester City 3, Porto 1
- Olympiacos 1, Marseille 0
- Ajax 0, Liverpool 1
- Midtjylland 0, Atalanta 4
If you missed action from the previous day, check out "The Champions Club," featuring Jules Breach, Julien Laurens and Ade Akinfenwa. It's the ultimate nightly highlights show for fans of the Champions League on CBS All Access.
Believe in Shakhtar
Let's get one thing out of the way: yes, this Ukrainian club very nearly blew a three-goal lead on Wednesday. But in the end, they not only ended up winning the match, they did so against one of the best teams in the world. Real Madrid were presumably going to be the best club in this group, and if Shakhtar is able to put together that kind of performance away from home against the favorite, then the prospects of this club's ceiling in this year's competition are quite promising. Their approach to the game -- speedy counters combined with solid defense -- is also a sustainable one going forward. Today, that game plan results in three goals against one of the best clubs in Europe; maybe next time it's even more against the weaker competition.
Bayern seemed poised to repeat
The German giants haven't lost a step from last year's utterly dominant campaign in Europe and in the domestic league as shown by the way they utterly trounced Atletico Madrid. A club that's supposedly known for being a strong wall of defending absolutely crumbled at the hands of Kingsley Coman (twice), Leon Goretzka and Corentin Tolisso. If this is what the Bavarians can do with the biggest names of the club off the scoresheet, imagine what they'll do at full strength. It might be a bit early to bet on this club to win it all again, but it still seems like a safer wager than putting money on anyone else.
VAR calls obstruction on Madrid clubs
One of the changes in officiating that has come as a result of the implementation of VAR has been an increase in obstruction calls. What this means is that if an opposing player is offside and blocking the view of a goalkeeper when a goal happens, then the goal gets disallowed. It was rarely, if ever, called on the pitch when officiating was just dependent on which sets of eyes were watching, but it was called twice on Wednesday, once against each Madrid team in the competition. Atletico had a strong start to the second half wiped off when an early goal from Joao Felix was wiped off because Luis Suarez was standing in front of Manuel Neuer, and, more consequentially, Real had a point-saving injury time equalizer wiped off the board after Vinicius Jr. was caught standing in front of the keeper during Federico Valverde's shot from outside the box.
Top Plays
Let's take a look at the top five golazos of the day, courtesy of our Nico Cantor, host of "Golazo Show" -- CBS' new whip-around Champions League show -- on CBS Sports Network and CBS All Access.
🚨Here are the top 5 Golazo's of the day from The Golazo show🚨
— Champions League on CBS Sports (@UCLonCBSSports) October 21, 2020
Who do you have as number 1? 👀 pic.twitter.com/FOAUcPzsM5
CBS Sports was with you the entire way providing updates, analysis and highlights of Wednesday's Champions League matchday below.
