Spanish, German royalty collide in third round of UEFA Champions League games

It’s the best in Spain against German soccer royalty in the latest round of games in the Champions League, reports AP.

A rematch of last season’s final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund is the headliner today, before Barcelona hosts Bayern Munich tomorrow in the next chapter of what has been a fairly one-sided rivalry in Europe’s top club competition.

All four teams have been European champions inside the last 30 years and they’ve made mixed starts to this season’s revamped format.

Dortmund has won both of their opening matches — 3-0 at Club Brugge and 7-1 at home to Celtic — to be the early leader and top scorer of the league stage, which sees all 36 teams play eight matches: four at home and four away.

Just like last season when reaching the Champions League final against the odds before losing to Madrid, Dortmund has been far more impressive in Europe than in the Bundesliga.

Indeed, after thrashing Celtic, Dortmund lost at Union Berlin four days later.

Madrid, meanwhile, is coming off a surprising 1-0 loss at Lille, the defending champions’ first defeat in the competition since the semi-finals in the 2022-23 season.

In fact, the second round of matches threw up a few shockers, including Bayern losing 1-0 at Aston Villa to end its unbeaten run under new coach Vincent Kompany.

Now Bayern heads to Barcelona in search of a seventh straight win in their head-to-head, a streak that includes a humiliating 8-2 loss for Barca in the quarter-finals in 2020.

Hansi Flick was in charge of Bayern that night and is now the coach of Barcelona.

If Manchester City beat Sparta Prague at home tomorrow, the English champions will set the record for consecutive games undefeated in the history of the competition — even stretching back before