The Champions League has resumed and we’ve already seen a couple of upsets in the opening round.
The Champions League is *the* club tournament in Europe and it has finally made its triumphant return.
The first round of fixtures featured some enticing matchups like Borussia Dortmun hosting Barcelona, PSG taking on Real Madrid, a couple of rematches with Juventus visiting Atletico Madrid and Liverpool traveling to Napoli, and a team in crisis like Valencia somehow coming away from Stamford Bridge with a victory.
Aside from the games mentioned, some of the more surprising results included Dynamo Zagreb making easy work of Atalanta, last year’s Cinderella story in Serie A as well as Leipzig beating Benfica in Portugal.
There were other less surprising ones like Man City easily brushing past Shaktar Donetsk and Bayern Munich making light work of Crvena Zvezda.
For the most part, the higher-profile games delivered in terms of entertainment. At the same time, it left a couple of teams wondering where they stood with regards to their prospects in the tournament.
For others, like Tottenham, their draw against Olympiacos left a bitter taste in their mouths and has only compounded upon a season that has not started as well as they would have hoped.
Trying to draw concrete conclusions after one round of games is unwise as things could change following the second matchday. The narratives constructed can quickly change and what was once the narrative for one side can become the same for another.
Some of the takeaways include questions about a club’s manager, if a club was properly structured, and how some of these teams are dealing with the same problems from the past.
But without further ado, let’s go ahead and look at the five takeaways we took following the first round of the group stage.