Some idiot on this site identified this round of the Champions League as the quarterfinal round in his last post. It isn’t the quarterfinals, it’s the round of 16 (or octafinal round, if you want to show off your vocabulary). Anyway, the top contender for the trophy with the big ears took a fall in this round, while the rest of it went chalk. Let’s note my embarrassment over my error and recap.
Champions League winners
Gianluigi Donnarumma
Paris Saint-Germain really don’t need a shot-stopper of his caliber to win Ligue 1, but they signed him for occasions like the match against Liverpool. Despite the Reds playing the second leg much more evenly than the first one, the Italian keeper stopped them at every turn and then kept out shots by Dárwin Núñez and Curtis Jones in the penalty shootout to end Liverpool’s perfect Champions League record and send them out of Europe.
Arsenal and Aston Villa
With Liverpool out of the Champions League, these Premier League teams can now concentrate on their European competition without the big red phantom to their north distracting them. They both have mountains to climb with Arsenal facing Real Madrid and Villa matched up with PSG, but taking home the European Cup would be the best consolation prize for their domestic seasons.
Lamine Yamal
He’s got a ways to go before he really earns those Lionel Messi comparisons that are being thrown around, but Barcelona’s wonder kid keeps delivering these performances at this level. His breathtaking dribbling runs from the right side against Benfica resulted in an assist on Raphinha’s opener and a great, precisely placed shot for a goal of his own that put the tie out of reach.
Harry Kane
He nabbed his 10th goal in the Champions League by walking the ball into the net, but the assist he made for Alphonso Davies’ goal was the more impressive play in Bayern Munich’s win. No English player has ever scored this many goals in one Champions League campaign.
Borussia Dortmund
The Yellow Wall has had precious little to cheer about this season, but the Dortmunders held their nerve after giving up the first goal in Lille, and their superior experience and talent saw them through for a 2-1 win that will see them through to a quarterfinal match-up against Barcelona.
Oleksandr Zinchenko
He doesn’t get many scoring chances, but Arsenal’s defender made the most of his against PSV with a left-footed strike from outside the box. Slava Ukraini!
Couhaib Driouech
PSV may have lost 9-3 on aggregate, but the Moroccan striker’s chip over David Raya to tie the game at the Emirates at 2-2 was a thing of beauty.
Champions League losers
Marcos Llorente
The hoodoo continues. Six times Atlético Madrid have faced Real Madrid in the Champions League, and six times the team in the all-white uniforms has come away the winners. With the penalty shootout tied up, the experienced Atlético midfielder (descended from a line of Real players, ironically enough) stepped up and bashed his spot kick off the crossbar, handing Antonio Rüdiger the opportunity to win the tie for Real. Just as with Liverpool, the home-field advantage for Atlético only translated into a shootout loss. This will haunt his sleep as well as the sleep of Coach Diego Simeone, who has overseen five of those defeats at Real’s hands.
Dárwin Núñez
His inconsistency in front of goal was cute when Liverpool was stretching out a massive lead in the Premier League and keeping a perfect record in the Champions League, but not many Liverpool fans think it’s cute now after he blew some chances to put the tie away late against PSG and then served up a weak penalty in the shootout. Liverpool can blame the new format for their exit — had they finished second in the league phase, they would have played a much more winnable tie against Bayer Leverkusen — but the Uruguayan striker has made himself a bigger target.
Bayer Leverkusen
Not even one goal to make the tie interesting? Yeesh. The second-place team in Germany created some decent chances against Bayern Munich, but mostly had so much pointless possession that they showed why they are a distant second.
Kyriani Sabbe
Any chance Club Brugge had of getting back in the tie likely evaporated when the defender failed to deal with a simple long ball to Ollie Watkins and saw red after pulling Watkins down from behind. Making it to the last 16 is probably better than the Belgian club imagined, but it would have been nice to lose straight-up instead of with only 10 men.
Gregor Kobel
Hockey goalies are beaten all the time with shots that go between their legs, but it’s not supposed to happen to soccer goalkeepers because, y’know, a soccer ball is much bigger than a hockey puck. Yet, Jonathan David’s shot took a deflection and found its way through the Dortmund keeper’s wickets to put Lille ahead in the tie. The Swiss netminder managed to stop other Lille chances and help his team advance, but that was embarrassing.
Vinícius Júnior
He had a chance to wrap up the tie for Real Madrid in regulation, and instead, sent an ugly penalty kick into the seats at the Wanda Metropolitano. It’s a good thing that Real Madrid won anyway because the Brazilian at the center of a number of racism controversies in La Liga would be hearing it from Spain’s racists if Real hadn’t. Let’s be happy that he’s being spared that.