Man City survive scare to progress, Lille storm through

LONDON: Manchester City came from behind to beat Club Brugge 3-1 and secure their place in the Champions League playoffs, as big guns Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris St Germain also won to progress, while AC Milan and Juventus will join them despite both losing on Wednesday.

A goal-stacked night of 18 simultaneous kick-offs in the final group matchday of the competition’s new format, eventually ended as the traditional format usually ended - with all the big guns still alive.

Liverpool and Barcelona were the only teams already guaranteed a place in the top eight and automatic progress to the round of 16 and they stayed first and second respectively despite Liverpool losing 3-2 to PSV Eindhoven and Barca drawing 2-2 with Atalanta.

Joining them are Arsenal, Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen, Aston Villa and Lille, who produced the performance of the night to thrash Feyenoord 6-1.

Although they eventually progressed reasonably comfortably, it was anything but for Man City at the Etihad. The 2023 European champions were exposed just before halftime when Raphael Onyedika brilliantly finished off a Brugge sweeping move.

  Mateo Kovacic pulled one back for City early in the second half but at that stage they were still heading out of the competition and they needed an own goal by Joel Ordonez to get the lead and then a third by Savinho to relax.

PSG, who were in 22nd place and in danger of missing out at kickoff, avoided a nervous night by racing into a 3-0 halftime lead at Stuttgart. Bradley Barcola opened the scoring and a hat-trick for in-form Ousmane Dembele completed the 4-1 win.

It was the same score for Atletico Madrid at Salzburg. The visitors were helped by two goals for Antoine Griezmann.

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