Champions League
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Published on Dec, 11 2024
Hello there! The UEFA Champions League continues with another round of high-profile matches on Wednesday, while FIFA was busy making news of their own.
📺 Footy fix
All times U.S./Eastern
Wednesday, Dec. 11
🇪🇺 UCL: Atletico Madrid vs. Slovan Bratislava, 12:45 p.m.
🇪🇺 UCL: Borussia Dortmund vs. Barcelona, 3 p.m.
🇪🇺 UCL: Juventus vs. Manchester City, 3 p.m.
🇪🇺 UCL: Arsenal vs. Monaco, 3 p.m.
Thursday, Dec. 12
🇪🇺 UECL: Astana vs. Chelsea, 10:30 a.m. ➡️
🇪🇺 UEL: Roma vs. Braga, 12:45 p.m.
Network, Paramount+
🇪🇺 UEL: Viktoria Plzen vs. Manchester United, 12:45 p.m.
🇪🇺 UEL: Rangers vs. Tottenham Hotspur, 3 p.m.
⚽ The Forward Line 🇪🇺 Course corrections in the Champions League
Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain used Tuesday's UEFA Champions League action to pick up some much-needed wins, both sides beginning to undo the damage of poor results to start their league phase campaigns.
The reigning champions' 3-2 win at Atlanta was the headlining act of Tuesday's action, especially as stars played a big role in Real Madrid's win. Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham each scored in Italy, ensuring that they would survive being outplayed by Atalanta. Mbappe's 10th minute goal was the reward for Madrid's strong start, but the Italian side quickly clawed their way back into the game and by the end, had 20 shots to the opposition's 10 and outdid them 3.33 to 2.1 on expected goals. Yet, the imperfect performance offered a sharp reminder of Madrid's run to the Champions League and La Liga titles last season – they are imbalanced by design, living and dying by the star quality only few teams can hoard at the level they have. The result brings them up to 18th place, up from 24th but still with half of Matchday 6's games to go.
PSG, meanwhile, dug themselves out of 25th place with a 3-0 win over Red Bull Salzburg, one of the bottom-dwellers of the league phase so far. Goals from Nuno Mendes, Goncalo Ramos and Desire Doue breathed new life into PSG's post-Mbappe rebuild, taking them up to 24th with Wednesday's games to play.
One more European heavyweight will target a rebound of their own on Wednesday – 2022-23 champions Manchester City. They travel to Juventus with just one win in their last nine games, a run that includes a 4-1 defeat to Sporting Lisbon and a surprise 3-3 draw with Feyenoord in Champions League play. Unlike Madrid and PSG, City run less of a risk of missing out on a knockout berth, but the tight margins of the league phase mean Pep Guardiola's side likely do not have many points to waste.
The big question for them, though, is which version of City will show up at Juventus. Under new manager Thiago Motta, the Italian side has prioritized defense and have conceded just five goals so far in Champions League play. While City's Erling Haaland remains in form with 18 goals across all competitions, the English champions are not at their usual attacking best with just 12 goals in their last nine games. City's bigger problem, though, is that they are defensively wobbly – they have conceded 21 goals during that poor run, which makes them uniquely vulnerable against anyone, including a Juventus side that has just seven Champions League goals so far.
FIFA officially selected the locations of the 2030 and 2034 World Cups on Wednesday, reaching an unsurprising conclusion on hosting rights that reinforced the controversial nature of the selections.
The 2030 tournament, which will celebrate the World Cup's centennial, will be primarily hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco, though the anniversary games of the competition will take place in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. The three games in South America are a celebration of the fact that the first World Cup took place in Uruguay, while the 2034 World Cup will head to Saudi Arabia. Both of these bids were the only contenders for their respective World Cups by the time of FIFA's Extraordinary Congress session on Wednesday, with the centennial World Cup playing second fiddle to Saudi Arabia's bid for much of the last year.
FIFA's unconventional decision a year ago to consolidate the Spain-Portugal-Morocco bid with the South American venture was not viewed as a celebration of the World Cup's centennial, but rather as a favor to Saudi Arabia's 2034 plan. By FIFA's rules, a country cannot bid for a World Cup unless their continent has not hosted the tournament in eight years, leaving only nations from Asia and Oceania eligible to host the tournament in 2034. FIFA also made the decision to combine the 2030 bids just weeks before the deadline to submit interest to host the 2034 World Cup, leaving nations unprepared to put together a package that would rival Saudi Arabia's. Australia considered entering the race, but withdrew their candidacy in Oct. 2023.
Though the final result of Wednesday's decision was predictable, an air of contention clouded the meeting. Soccer associations from Norway and Switzerland announced their disapproval of FIFA's processes around both World Cup bids, with Norway saying that it "cannot endorse a process it considers flawed and inconsistent with the principles of FIFA's own reforms." FIFA also put both bids up for a vote together, meaning the 211 member associations had to vote to approve both hosting groups or neither. That was not the only flaw with the process – FIFA merely asked 211 people to vote by clapping while muted during a video conference, failing to produce an official tally of votes while declaring the two bids as winners.
The controversy will not end with the host selections, either. While the 2030 World Cup will take place during the summer, FIFA has yet to share whether or not the 2034 tournament will be staged in the winter like the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was. Saudi Arabia's bid also resembles Qatar's in that several stadiums still need to be constructed, and also raises several questions that FIFA continues to leave unanswered about the nation's human rights record. FIFA mostly feigned ignorance about Qatar's human rights record before and during the 2022 World Cup and will likely borrow from that playbook again, despite the fact that estimates suggest that thousands of migrant workers were injured or died building stadiums for the Qatar tournament.
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