The second matchday of the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League league phase is in the books and, while the table is only starting to take shape, there are plenty of talking points beginning to crop up.
Defending champions Paris Saint-Germain won away at Barcelona, while Arsenal and Real Madrid ensured that their campaigns have begun with maximum points.
Liverpool, however, slumped to a 1-0 defeat against Galatasaray, while Julián Álvarez and Rasmus Højlund were amongst the goals in wins for Atlético Madrid and Napoli.
Read on as ESPN experts Mark Ogden, Julien Laurens, Sam Tighe and Gab Marcotti offer their thoughts on Matchday 2.
What’s wrong with Liverpool? Another bad defeat, tons of mistakes … is this is a quick-fix situation, or do they need so much more?
Marcotti: Let’s not kid ourselves, because we knew the bump in the road was coming. Sure, they won six in a row — seven if you count the Carabao Cup, which you really shouldn’t — but the writing was on the wall and when you need late goals to win time and time again, something’s wrong. Performances matter, and they simply haven’t been there.
There’s no quick fix here for Liverpool, but time should help. Among the key holdovers from the title-winning squad, Alexis Mac Allister and Mohamed Salah have been several notches below last season’s level. They’ll get better, you imagine. Alexander Isak, too, should improve in time: his difficulties are understandable given the summer he had.
I think they just tried to do too much over the summer in adding five starter calibre players to a team that won the title. That will take time — especially when the new full backs, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez, are so different from the guys they replaced. It explains why Arne Slot has screwed around with Dominik Szoboszlai at right-back: Liverpool aren’t ready yet to carry two full backs with those attacking skill sets.
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There’s also, in my view, a massive misconception around Florian Wirtz. It’s a big enough jump going from Bayer Leverkusen with their 25,000-fans-per-game average attendance to the spotlight at Liverpool. To compound this by having him play in the No. 10 hole — something he didn’t really do much at all at Leverkusen, certainly not with two wingers and a striker in front of him — and effectively learn a new position on the fly hasn’t helped.
Will it get better? In the long run I imagine so, because Slot is a good coach and these are good players. But he has to find the balance and, in my view, it won’t be with Wirtz in that position. He may need to start out wide or possibly as a Roberto Firmino-type center forward. (But, then … where does Isak go? Left side? Maybe: let Slot decide). That said, it could also get worse pretty quickly because the biggest summer screw-up was the failure to bring an additional central defender.
Virgil van Dijk is 34, while Ibrahima Konaté has started more than 17 league games just twice in his eight-year career (one of them was last season). You needed cover with the sort of congested fixture list Liverpool face, and some combination of Joe Gomez (another guy who has injury problems), Giovanni Leoni (who is 18, started just 14 games last year for a relegated side and is now out for the season anyway) or Wataru Endo (who is undersized and a holding midfielder anyway) isn’t adequate cover. They’re paying a really hefty price for whatever sunk the Marc Guéhi deal on deadline day.
1:08
Why injuries won’t be a problem for Liverpool vs. Chelsea
Craig Burley explains why Liverpool’s recent injuries shouldn’t affect their performance against Chelsea at the weekend in the Premier League.
Tighe: Liverpool have won a lot of games so far this season, but they’ve won them late, in somewhat desperate fashion, and that’s often a sign that you’re winning simply because you have better players. It’s not necessarily sustainable. Now that the losses have begun, people look at their displays through an entirely different filter — “Champions’ mentality” or “bailout wins” — while the individual struggles of players like Konaté, Kerkez and even Salah become far, far more alarming.
The carefully crafted balance between defence and attack has disappeared, with full backs being placed outside their comfort zones, Wirtz struggling to gain traction, and Salah often existing on the periphery games. If Ryan Gravenberch produces a 10/10 performance in the middle, then Liverpool can just about survive, but if ever he fails to hit a frankly absurd level, the Reds will be in grave danger.
Julien Laurens: Slot has lost me in the last two matches. Last season, Liverpool only lost back-to-back games once, and that didn’t happen until March. Now we are still only in September, they were well beaten by Crystal Palace and Galatasaray, and Slot’s starting XIs have made no sense. Whether seeing Wirtz as a false-nine with Isak on his left at Selhurst Park, or Frimpong as a right winger with Szoboszlai at right back and Salah on the bench in Turkey, it was incomprehensible.
In both games, the Reds made mistakes, were exposed, unbalanced and inefficient in attack. Salah’s cameo off the bench was terrible (no shots in 30 minutes while chasing the game), and don’t get me started on Isak’s and Wirtz’s performances on Tuesday. Slot has a lot of work to integrate his new players (£500 million worth of them), find the right formula and get the team back on track.
Salah is being wasted at the moment, playing too far from the opposition’s box. Wirtz looks lost. Liverpool used to have strong build-up play with a flat back four and Trent Alexander-Arnold at the heart of it. Now that he’s not there and neither Frimpong nor Conor Bradley can seemingly do what he used to with the ball, the English champions are all over the place, and teams are exploiting it.
Ogden: Liverpool have been way too open all season. The clues were there in the Community Shield defeat against Crystal Palace; the crazy opening Premier League game against Bournemouth; when they lost a two-goal lead against 10-man Newcastle United (before scoring a winner in the 97th minute); well, the list goes on.
For me, there are two obvious issues. Wirtz has disrupted the balance of the team in midfield because Liverpool now pretty much play 4-2-4 when he starts games. He doesn’t do anything from a defensive point of view and, to be brutal, Liverpool often look like they’re playing with 10 players when he is in the team. Their strength last season was their work-rate and tenacity all over the pitch, especially in midfield. This season, Gravenberch and Mac Allister are being asked to do too much on their own.
The other key issue is the players Liverpool have lost. The focus has been on under-performing new signings, but Alexander-Arnold has left a huge hole, Luis Díaz (now at Bayern Munich) made a big difference, and the tragic death of Diogo Jota has left Liverpool without a forward who always seemed to deliver when a goal was needed.
Maybe Slot won the title last season because of one last flourish from Jurgen Klopp’s team, and the transition has now well and truly started.
Where would Madrid’s work in progress be without Kylian Mbappé and his goal record? Is he helping to mask the issues Xabi Alonso needs to address?
Marcotti: I’m not sure Mbappé’s scoring prowess actually papers over the team’s wider issues. It wasn’t the case last season, for one, and he scored 40+ goals. Sure, Real Madrid will beat most opponents just because they have an absurdly good keeper and attacking players who can create out of nothing. But I don’t think running up the score in Almaty, against an 18-year-old goalkeeper making only his second first-team start, is what we need to tell us Mbappé is good.
Overall, Xabi Alonso’s issues remain. He’s a system coach who has taken over a side that, throughout the Zinedine Zidane/Carlo Ancelotti era, was very successful by having the players — and not the set-up — come first. And he has to work with that.
Sure, they fixed some things in the summer — the defense, above all (though you couldn’t tell against Atleti on Saturday), maybe Gonzalo García can fill the Joselu role of “big, target center forward” when you need him, Arda Güler has grown as a player and Franco Mastantuono brings quality and youth. But let’s not forget what hurt them last year: a lack of creativity in midfield post-Toni Kroos/Luka Modric era, and that’s still an issue against better teams than Kairat Almaty.
Maybe Güler is the answer … but then, where does Jude Bellingham go? Maybe Xabi’s patterns of play and sophisticated tactics will lessen the need for a creative playmaker … but that will take time. In either case, we’re not there yet.
1:46
Burley: Real Madrid need to match Mbappé’s standard
Craig Burley reacts to Real Madrid’s 5-0 win over Kairat Almaty in the Champions League to bounce back from their Madrid derby defeat.
Tighe: Mbappé’s early season numbers are gaudy (13 goals by the end of September is pretty ridiculous) and he’s looked absolutely unstoppable so far, but there are other shoots of green Alonso can point to, too. Los Blancos have limited their opponents to less than 1 xG in five of their first nine games. Specifically in LaLiga, they’ve allowed the fourth-fewest shots on target (22) and when you watch them, you can see pressure being applied after losing the ball in an attempt to win it back high. That did not happen last season under Ancelotti.
That’s not to say they’ve suddenly become an excellent pressing team, but those spurts of energy — with Aurélien Tchouaméni dominating in the centre — have been a factor in some sturdy performances that Mbappé has capped. The Atlético Madrid performance last weekend really jarred because it was their first major test and they flunked it, but just three goals conceded in the six preceding league games suggests it’s not all about King Kylian.
Laurens: Mbappé is totally carrying this team so far this season. Without him and his goals, there’s no way Madrid would have started the 2025-26 campaign so well in terms of results.
He had never started a season in his career so well, scoring 14 goals in nine appearances for his club in all competitions. Mbappé has even scored in six consecutive games in all competitions for the Merengues — eight straight games if you count the two World Cup qualifiers he played for France in September.
Now, he started brilliantly back in 2018, while at PSG, but he was much younger and didn’t give this impression of being unstoppable and unplayable at times. He comes on the pitch and he knows he will score. Only Mallorca have kept him quiet so far this season. While Alonso is stuttering with his changes and we don’t see much improvement on Madrid’s performances collectively compared to last season, at least he knows that he has the goal-scorer who will win him games out of nothing.
Ogden: Without sound too much like Roy Keane, Mbappé is scoring goals — and that’s his job! For some reason, all of the big strikers have started this season in incredible form — Harry Kane has 20 goals in 14 games, Erling Haaland has 14 in 13 appearances — so Mbappé’s numbers (14 in 12) are basically what a forward of his calibre should be producing.
It’s probably taking it too far to suggest he is carrying Madrid right now or masking their problems, although I accept Juls will always stand up for his guy. Basically, Alonso has had to work without his best midfielder (Bellingham) and deal with the injury to Alexander-Arnold and Dani Carvajal’s return from a lengthy lay-off. And let’s not forget the departure of Modric to AC Milan.
Alonso is averaging 2.6 points per game so far, which is a better rate than Ancelotti or Zidane managed so — aside from the Atleti defeat — things aren’t that bad. But, of course, it helps when your superstar forward is doing what he is expected to do.
1:05
Alonso: This could be a spectacular season for Mbappe
Real Madrid boss Xabi Alonso says the team have to work hard to help Kylian Mbappe’s “qualities flourish” this season.
Should Julian Álvarez be in the conversation of elite CFs? He was No. 7 in the FC 100 this summer, but has he shown he’s better after dominating Eintracht Frankfurt?
Marcotti: He’s certainly elite, and I say this as someone who hasn’t really been a fan. But it’s hard to ignore his technical ability.
Should he be higher than 7th in the world? Let’s see: in no particular order … Mbappé, Kane, Haaland … I’ll take all those guys ahead of him. And then you’ve got a group with Victor Osimhen, Isak, Lautaro Martínez and Álvarez. (Maybe Serhou Guirassy too, if you look at his goal record).
So yeah, I’d say 7 is about right. (Note that I haven’t mentioned Cristiano Ronaldo…)
Tighe: Álvarez is my kind of forward. He’s multi-faceted, hardworking and versatile. He’s incredibly talented and he’s on quite the tear, so instinctively, when you see “No.7 in the world,” you think that feels a little low. But looking at the names that finished above him in that list, I’m still not convinced I’d shift him above any of them except one — Martínez — and that’s in part because I don’t necessarily consider him a striker in the traditional sense.
Álvarez is certainly proving his chops as a fully-fledged No. 9, but to rise above ridiculous talents like Haaland, Robert Lewandowski and Isak? I still need more from the Argentine. He’s on the cusp of something special, though…
1:11
Burley reflects on Atlético Madrid’s ‘brilliant’ week
Craig Burley reacts to Atlético Madrid’s 5-1 win vs. Frankfurt in the Champions League following their 5-2 Madrid derby victory.
Laurens: I know he is not everyone’s cup of tea (hello, Stewart Robson and Gab!) but what a player he is! Watching him dismantle the Frankfurt defence on Tuesday was beautiful. Real Madrid couldn’t cope with him last weekend and neither could Rayo Vallecano a few days earlier — making it a week in which he scored six goals in three games. His movement, intelligence, stamina, technical ability and understanding of the game makes him such a fascinating player, even if he plays for a Diego Simeone team. He can play in any forward position if you play on his strengths.
I just love watching him play, wherever he is and whoever he is facing.
Ogden: No. He’s not in the same league as Mbappé, Kane and Haaland and I wouldn’t take him over Salah or Isak either. Álvarez never had to carry the goal-scoring pressure at Manchester City because he had Haaland alongside him and he is playing a little bit away from the spotlight with Atlético.
Yes, they are a top club who always compete in the Champions League, but the expectancy in an Atleti shirt bears no comparison to those of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or Liverpool. He’s a great technical forward and will always score goals, but he needs to be the main guy at a super club before we even start to compare him to the best forwards.
Paris Saint-Germain rallied to win 2-1 at Barcelona in the tie of Matchday 2. So what did we learned about these two as they’re favorites (along with Arsenal) to go all the way this year?
Marcotti: There’s a big Iñigo Martínez-shaped hole in the heart of the Barcelona back line. It’s frankly absurd that you’d lose him and choose to spend what little money you have on more attacking players (Marcus Rashford, Roony Bardghji, etc) than added help at the back. Pau Cubarsí is great, though he badly mistimed his tackle for the opener, and is still just 18 years old. But the others? You’re going to go with some combination of Cubarsi and one of Eric García, Andreas Christensen and Ronald Araújo for the rest of the season? Really?
Defending in space with a high line isn’t easy; not everyone can do it, even very competent defenders struggle to adapt. But that doesn’t mean it’s rocket science and you have to stick with players who are already in the system.
As for PSG, I was hugely impressed — again — with Luis Enrique. Yeah, we can all rattle off the many absentees, but it’s the way the kids stepped in and did the job. Ibrahim Mbaye is 17. Senny Mayulu is 19. They’ve made 18 league starts between them and most were against weaker Ligue 1 sides — certainly nothing to match facing Barcelona in the Champions League. PSG don’t get rattled and don’t get ruffled (as well as all the quality they have) and that’s huge. Credit Lucho. Again.
1:32
Moreno: Barcelona need to learn lessons from last season
Ale Moreno explains what went wrong for Barcelona in their 2-1 defeat to PSG in the Champions League.
Ogden: Two things. We learned that Barça are still the same as last season — great going forward, but not good enough defensively. And with PSG, they showed that they are much more than their starting XI. No Ousmane Dembélé, Désiré Doué, Marquinhos or João Neves, but they still went to Barcelona and beat a team many regard as one of the favourites to win the Champions League this season.
Barcelona won’t win the competition unless they learn how to defend, though. This was their first big test since the semifinal second-leg defeat against Inter Milan last season and they ended the game in exactly the same fashion: by conceding a crucial last-gasp goal because of terrible defending. Why were they playing with such a high line in the 90th minute? Just take the sting out of the game and be pragmatic, but no, Barcelona continue to defend like a team of Under-10s.
Yes, they will score plenty of goals with Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, Rashford and Lewandowski, but there’s no point having a world-class forward line if your defence is no better than Manchester United’s.
Tighe: Mark’s list of absent PSG players is quite the collection of talent, yet they still beat Barcelona away. Their ability to not only dig deep in terms of squad depth, but also in terms of finding answers and other ways to win, should serve as nightmare fuel to their fellow contenders.
The visitors initially tried and failed to play through their typical possession game, often turning the ball over under pressure. They spent the first 20 minutes getting pummelled as a result: genuinely, things looked like they might get ugly. But roughly around the half-hour mark, Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes figured out that if they simply ran directly at Barça’s full backs at max speed, their opponents would quickly wilt.
It was fitting that Hakimi also provided the assist for the winning goal, as he spent the entire evening jetting up and down the flank at remarkable speed. He even blocked a goal-bound shot at the other end, flying into the ball’s path in the nick of time. PSG’s forward line was makeshift and their midfield half-injured, but they still found a solution. Scary.
Laurens: We learned that even with half of their starting XI out, Paris can go to Barcelona and get a deserved win. Having more possession, a highest xG, more shots, more shots on target, more big chances, and more passes than Barça on their own turf is pretty remarkable.
As always, the Catalans and head coach Hansi Flick orchestrated some of their own downfall with their stupid high line in the 90th minute which helped PSG score the winning goal. But Luis Enrique outsmarted Flick with his coaching while the two full backs, Mendes on the left and Hakimi on the right, played a big part in the victory. They are the two best full backs in the world for a reason. They both created a goal and kept Yamal and Rashford mostly quiet. The average age for the PSG team that started the game was just 23.9 years, and yet they played with so much character and bravery that they made a proper statement.
1:20
Leboeuf praises PSG’s ‘statement’ UCL win vs. Barcelona
Frank Leboeuf reacts to PSG’s 2-1 victory over Barcelona in a bid to retain their Champions League crown and praises Nuno Mendes’ performance.
Rasmus Højlund scored twice and Napoli got a big win at home to Sporting CP. Is he the answer Antonio Conte was looking for up front? And why do players get better when they leave Old Trafford and start fresh away from Manchester United?
Ogden: I don’t think we’ll know who the real Højlund is for maybe three or four years. He had a miserable time at United and looked extremely limited last season, but he is still just 22 years old, and he was let down badly by United. They expected him to lead the line for one of the biggest clubs in the world with no experienced forward in the squad who could share the load and help guide him through his tough period.
He clearly wasn’t ready to be United’s first-choice — and only — striker, but there is something there and maybe Conte is the coach to get the best from him. Playing in Serie A, which is not as strong as the Premier League, will also help. But every goal that Højlund scores, not to mention those that Scott McTominay contributes too, will only add volume to the question about why players thrive when they leave Old Trafford.
It probably helps to work in a positive environment with a proven coach and alongside players with a winning mentality. United have none of those things, so Højlund should enjoy himself in Naples.
Marcotti: He’s only there because of Romelu Lukaku’s injury (speaking of Manchester United players), but he did exactly what Conte instructed him to do on Wednesday, especially in terms of attacking the space and playing front to goal. And he looks very confident.
For his first goal, Kevin De Bruyne emerged from a cluster of players and started to break, Højlund accelerated ahead of him and demanded the ball. De Bruyne found him in stride and he scored. That’s exactly what Conte wants from him.
But I wouldn’t get overly carried away. He was poor against AC Milan at the weekend, and I imagine he’ll share time with Lorenzo Lucca up front in Lukaku’s absence. So yeah: I wouldn’t say players automatically get better when they leave Manchester United. More that if they move to a stable club with a good manager (witness Lukaku) they can be more productive.
Tighe: I understand why everyone’s keen to pump the brakes on Højlund. It’d be silly to get carried away and start projecting a 25-goal season just because he’s had a good night in the Champions League (against a side from a non-top-five league), but we can still celebrate the fact that this was a big moment for a young player who has endured a rough couple of years.
He looked genuinely confident when bearing down on goal for that first strike, and the finish was really assured. No scuffing, no second-guessing, just a nice, composed hit. And the second was brave, jumping into an area where the goalkeeper is looking to claim the ball.
Hopefully it’s a big step in the right direction for the Denmark international and if he can find consistency, he’ll become the latest in what is becoming a long line of players to leave Old Trafford and flourish.
Laurens: Højlund didn’t become a bad player by going to Manchester United. He was not the problem there and he is showing it at Napoli. United is a mess of a club which deprives their own players of confidence and momentum. There is no structure on or off the pitch for players to thrive.
That’s why when you leave Old Trafford, you usually feel revitalised. That’s the case for the Dane. He looks like the player he was at Atalanta before his big move to England which came too early and to the wrong club. But when you play on his strengths like Conte, De Bruyne and Napoli do, Højlund is good. He is still young and has much more to learn but it is good to see him smiling and enjoying his football again.
