liverpool
Liverpool beat Lille 2-1 at home to book their place in the last 16 of the Champions League football tournament, while Barcelona came back from two goals down to beat Benfica 5-4 in a thrilling match. Harvey Elliott scored the winning goal to give Liverpool their seventh win in seven matches. Earlier, Mohammed Salah had scored the first goal for Liverpool in the 34th minute but Lille was able to equalize with the help of a goal scored by Canadian striker Jonathan David in the 62nd minute. Lille had to play the last half hour with 10 players.
Liverpool needed to score only one point in this match to make it to the last 16 but their team continued their winning campaign and entered the next stage in great style.
Barcelona made a spectacular comeback from 2–4 down to win. For his part, Raphinha scored the winning goal in injury time. With this, Barcelona has 18 points in seven matches and is in second place after Liverpool. Liverpool has 21 points.
Benfica’s Vangelis Pavlidis scores the third-fastest hat-trick in the Champions League. He scored two goals by taking advantage of mistakes by Barcelona goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny. Robert Lewandowski scored two penalties for Barcelona. He remains the Champions League top scorer with nine goals. Rafinha also scored two goals.
Another Spanish club, Atletico Madrid, defeated Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 thanks to Julian Alvarez’s winning goal in the 90th minute. With this win, Atletico Madrid has reached third place. In another match, Monaco defeated Aston Villa 1–0. This has dealt a blow to Villa’s hopes of entering the last 16 directly.
In other matches, Bologna beat Borussia Dortmund 2–1, Atalanta beat Graz 5–0 and PSV Eindhoven beat Red Star 3–2. Stuttgart recorded a comfortable 3–1 win over Slovan Bratislava. The match between Club Brugge and Juventus was a 0-0 draw.
