Daryl's Notebook: What I learned from matchweek 1 of the Champions League
Just a quick post where I note down some of my thoughts and observations from some matchweek 1 Champions League matches of the 2024/25 season.
As the new format of the Champions League arrives, it comes with more teams and…more matches to watch! The quality level of the teams participating in this season’s edition has also jumps up by a large margin with surprising entrants from the top 5 leagues. With that in mind, I have decided to watch some matches from the first matchweek and noted down my thoughts about those matches. Instead of writing long pieces about a single match and gets a bit boring, this will be a compilation of a few matches that I have chosen to watch with some quick analysis.
Note: I cannot guarantee that I will do this for every matchweek due to time constraints. However, I will try to maintain my Notebook series throughout this season for other leagues as I try to watch more football this season.
Juventus 3-1 PSV Eindhoven
Reason for choosing: I have heard good things about Thiago Motta at Bologna last season and thought I should give this match a watch to see if there is anything interesting about his Juventus side. I also know that PSV is a good team, mainly because they won the Eredivisie last season, so I wanted to do a quick scout of them too. And I want to watch more Dutch teams play, that’s it.
Quick thoughts:
The match was an interesting tactical battle between two good sides. Motta did bring a few bits of his Bologna style over to Juventus and it was shown through constant rotations of the midfielders and left-back Andrea Cambiasso. Though, I cannot say that Juventus will be a good/interesting team yet since I don’t watch a lot of Serie A (I should…), but I can definitely see signs of what they can be on some occasions.
I think the individual side of Juventus was put on show more than the tactical side in this match since I was impressed with quite a few of Bianconeri’s players. Both wingers Kenan Yıldız and Nico González lit up the flanks with their dribbling skills and managed to get their names on the scoresheet. Teun Koopmeiners was everywhere, to the point where I could not determine if he was a 10 or a Carrilero. Koopmeiners showed up on the left mostly, then dropped deep to pick up the ball from the centre-backs, sometimes moved to the right, he was literally everywhere. Manu Locatelli was decent as well as he played as a dictator at the back for Juve, basically helped bringing the ball from defence up to the attackers.
I didn’t think PSV was too bad either. On some occasions they showed a glimpse of what they could do, but those occasions were far few in between. They also…lacked attacking ideas, because what they mostly did was just get the ball to Johan Bakayoko and he did his own things. While Bakayoko actually did some things, you just cannot simply rely on one individual to create chances. Malik Tillman and Guus Til did help out sometimes, but it was not enough because PSV seemed like they were lost whenever they had the ball.
PSV were vulnerable when dealing with counter-attacks because they tried to push as many players as they could forward. It was a dangerous thing to do because they were left exposed on many occasions, and Juventus did capitalise on a few of them. In the Champions League, those few occasions were all you needed to win matches, unfortunately. Special shoutout to Olivier Boscagli because I kinda understand why Brighton wanted him during the summer. His defending was decent and his on-ball abilities were exactly what Brighton wanted.
Overall: An interesting match, to say the least. Juventus were good, but more on the individual side than the tactical side, which was slightly not what I expected to see from Thiago Motta’s side. I would love to see how Motta and Juventus play against a similar strength, or even, a stronger side in the UCL. PSV shouldn’t be panic too much, maybe just a bit, but they need to find other attacking outlets against stronger teams because you cannot rely on just Bakayoko to do his things.
AC Milan 1-3 Liverpool
Reason for choosing: Simply because this is a classic Champions League match against two good teams. I was also interested to see what Paulo Fonseca and Arne Slot brought to their new teams this season.
Quick thoughts:
Milan started the match quick and they seemed raring to go, which was indicated by the early opening goal by Christian Pulisic. While I’m unsure of the reason, the fact that both Mike Maignan and Theo Hernández were already down injured within the first few minutes (and captain Davide Calabria in the second half) showed me that Milan might have been tired too early. That was two of your full-backs, who should have been working the hardest on the pitch, and your key keeper down. I have not watched a Milan match in the Serie A this season, but I have to wonder, what on earth is Fonseca doing?
Back to the match, and, all I can say is Milan looked lost after Liverpool got the equaliser through Ibrahima Konaté. They did not look like a proper team as they just tried to get the ball forward and scrambled from there. Tijjani Reijnders looked lively in possession at times, but when both Rafael Leão and Álvaro Morata were marked out of the match, Reijnders’ effort was just not enough to help Milan create something.
To me, Liverpool were never in doubt to lose this match given how fast they grew back into the first half. They showed some of the tactical ideas from Slot’s Feyenoord team and what many have observed from early Premier League matches, including artificial transactions to create fast breaks for Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo to capitalise. I’m a bit surprised that two of their goals came from set pieces, which could hint at Liverpool scoring a fair few goals from similar situations throughout this season.
Dominik Szoboszlai was particularly good both on and off-the-ball as he constantly found space to move into, received the ball, and created something from such situations. His presence allowed Mo Salah to drift inside more and attack Theo and Strahinja Pavlović’s channel on multiple occasions.
Overall: It does not seem to me that this was the sort of match that Liverpool would lose. But that says more about Milan being very underwhelming from my perspective even though Liverpool were also decent on the night. Similar to Motta’s Juventus, it is hard for me to say if Slot’s current Liverpool is their best version or not, but on some occasions they were actually good and showed what they can be in the future. Meanwhile, Milan need to sort themselves out in order to be in contention for the Serie A title because both Juventus and Internazionale (I will touch on them very shortly) look a lot better right now.
Bologna 0-0 Shakhtar Donetsk
Reason for choosing: I was interested to see what Bologna could offer in their return to the Champions League, especially under an interesting manager like Vincenzo Italiano. Italiano had led Fiorentina to two consecutive Conference League finals, which is a great achievement, so I was looking forward to seeing what he could do in the Champions League as well. Coincidentally, Bologna are the fourth team in this compilation that oversaw a new managerial appointment throughout the summer.
Quick thoughts:
This is going to be short, but I found the match to be slightly boring. This could be because I was running out of steam after watching two consecutive matches, but there were not many interesting moments that I could recall from the match. I could be wrong, and I would love to be proven wrong.
There were a few build-up moments from Bologna that I thought was interesting. It seems like Italiano kept some of the principles that Motta had applied last season and still encouraged his centre-backs to be wild on the ball. But I found the best progressor of the ball to be left winger Dan Ndoye, who demonstrated his trickery through his dribbles and caused quite a hard time for Shakhtar’s right-back Yukhym Konoplya and Vinícius Tobias. Remo Freuler also stood out a bit as the deep-lying playmaker and linked the defence with the attackers.
The thing that surprised me the most was Italiano’s man-to-man pressing system. Even though Shakhtar did not expose them…too much, Bologna cannot expect to play in a similar system against a tactically-better team like Liverpool or Aston Villa. The fact that, on some occasions, Sam Beukema found himself deep inside of Shakhtar’s half marking one of the attackers and left the defenders all in 1v1 situations feel dangerous to me and left them easy to be exposed, especially against attackers with better ability.
Overall: Bologna definitely should have done better with their chance creation process against a team with similar strength like Shakhtar. That is not to say that Shakhtar defended badly because both Valeriy Bondar and Mykola Matviyenko had a decent performance. So no disrespect to the Ukranian side and credits to them for pulling off a good defensive match to secure a precious point and some revenue for the club.
PSG 1-0 Girona
Reason for choosing: Girona was one of the teams that I followed quite closely last season due to their league performance. They also had a very underrated transfer window, in my opinion, with a lot of bargain signings and “project-rebuild” players. Those two reasons already made me very interested to see how they will perform in the Champions League and against big teams like PSG.
Quick thoughts:
Right off the bat, it was clear that PSG were the better team and they wanted to dominate possession, which was typical for what a Luis Enrique’s team should be doing. But it also seemed like Míchel came into this match well-prepared to counter the attacking threat from their opposition. I will now let my post + video (you gonna have to bear with me and click the link to view my LinkedIn post) demonstrates Girona’s plan out of possession.
PSG found it tough to break through Girona’s defensive structure given how compact it was, especially when Girona fell back into their low block. PSG players could not find space in between the lines to get into the penalty box and they had to result to using early crosses or long shots to create chances. The fact that Girona limited the host to only 6 shots in the first half was a huge testament to their out of possession plan.
Credits should be given to the whole team for the discipline and hard work that they showed, but I wanted to highlight players like Arnau Martínez, Iván Martín, and Bryan Gil (yes, that Bryan Gil) for their defensive work and limiting the threats from PSG’s attackers. But special shoutout to Ladislav Krejčí as he just stood out from the rest of the defence with his defensive actions. Honestly, with a recovery and a clean tackle like this (you gonna have to bear with me again and click the link to view the Twitter post), Krejčí deserves more plaudits for his performance.
Girona also showed some good ideas and execution when they had the ball as well, even though those moments were hard to come by. They were confident to play out from the back against a slightly aggressive press by PSG and they did it very well through short combinations and small-sided games. The only problem was, once they got the ball forward to Bryan Gil and Viktor Tsygankov, they were quickly outnumbered by PSG as the host regrouped fast.
Overall: Girona were very unlucky to concede a goal right at the 90th minute because Paulo Gazzaniga should have done a lot better with Nuno Mendes’ cross. But I am excited to see what else can Girona offer, particularly in the in possession phase, in this Champions League campaign after what they had showed at the Parc des Princes. The fact that I have mentioned more about Girona than PSG showed how impressed I was with the Spanish side, so they should be among the ones to watch for this season’s Champions League.
P/s: I still have three more matches that are on my watchlist and I hope to go through them in my free time. If I can get them done very soon then a Part 2 of this Notebook might come to you soon… But for now, thank you for reading!