It was a big night of Champions League action on Wednesday, and if you support an English club, most of it was pretty painful to watch. Three of the four Premier League sides in action lost their first-leg ties, leaving only Arsenal with anything resembling a positive result.
Let's go through each game.
Bayer Leverkusen 1-1 Arsenal (at BayArena)
The only English side to avoid defeat on the night, and even they had to dig deep for it.
Arsenal went into this game with a perfect record in this season's Champions League, which made Mikel Arteta's team selection all the more interesting. He rotated heavily, making 10 changes from the side that had beaten Mansfield in the FA Cup at the weekend. That sort of boldness shows how much confidence Arteta has in his squad, but it also carried risk against a Leverkusen side playing at home with plenty to prove.
The Gunners started well enough. Gabriel Martinelli, who had six Champions League goals going into the tie, came close early on after being found by Viktor Gyokeres, only to see his shot rattle the crossbar. It was the kind of moment that feels significant in hindsight, because Leverkusen gradually got a grip on things from there.
Their midfield pair of Aleix Garcia and Exequiel Palacios were excellent throughout. They made Arsenal's attacks look disjointed, and the visitors could only muster one shot on target before the break. For a team known for their set-piece threat, it was notable that Arsenal did not earn a single corner in the first half.
The second half started badly for the away side. Leverkusen nearly caught Arsenal off guard from kick-off with a clever routine that ended with Martin Terrier heading just over, David Raya tipping it away. From the resulting corner though, Robert Andrich found himself completely unmarked at the back post and powered a header into the net. One minute into the second half, and the home side were ahead.
Arteta responded by bringing on Noni Madueke and Kai Havertz, and both made an immediate difference. Madueke drove into the box with purpose and was brought down by Malik Tillman, giving the referee no choice but to point to the spot. That brought up perhaps the most emotionally loaded moment of the evening.
Havertz, who spent a decade at Leverkusen before leaving for Chelsea in 2020 for around £71 million, stepped up to take the penalty. He rolled it into the corner with composure, though his celebration was notably quiet. You can understand why. These are the supporters who watched him grow up as a player, and scoring against them clearly meant something different.
A draw away from home is a decent result, and Arsenal will be the slight favourites heading into the return leg at the Emirates next Tuesday. History is on their side too. When these teams met in the 2001-02 group stage, Arsenal drew 1-1 in Germany before winning 4-1 at home.
The bigger picture for Arsenal is that they are still competing on four fronts, and the pressure that comes with that is only going to grow. Showing the character to come back from behind in Germany, without playing their best football, is the sort of thing that matters in long seasons.
Real Madrid 3-0 Manchester City (at the Bernabeu)
This one was difficult to watch if you were a City supporter, and Federico Valverde was the main reason why.
Real were without Kylian Mbappe, Jude Bellingham, and Rodrygo through injury, so on paper this felt like a winnable tie for Pep Guardiola's side. City started reasonably well and had some early moments of promise, with Jeremy Doku causing problems down the flank.
Then came the 20th minute, and it all fell apart.
The first goal was worryingly simple. Thibaut Courtois launched a long ball forward that dropped in behind Nico O'Reilly, and Valverde was onto it in a flash. He rounded goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and finished from a tight angle. Seven minutes later, he added a second with a low shot across the keeper.
The third was the pick of the bunch. Receiving a perfectly weighted through ball, Valverde showed remarkable skill in a tight area, lifting the ball over Marc Guehi before volleying home. For a midfielder not known for his goals, it was a stunning hat-trick.
City had their moments. Donnarumma saved a penalty when Vinicius stepped up after being brought down, and O'Reilly thought he had pulled one back after robbing the ball from Thiago in the area, only for Courtois to stick out a leg. Those moments will give City a sliver of hope, but overturning a three-goal deficit at the Etihad is a massive ask.
Erling Haaland barely touched the ball throughout the game. Guardiola had picked an attacking lineup, but City's open midfield kept getting exposed, and Real were ruthless every time they had space to run into. Former Liverpool right back Trent Alexander-Arnold had a difficult start but grew into the game and received a warm reception from the crowd when he came off late on.
The bottom line for Real Madrid is always the same: never count them out in this competition. Even missing three key players, even with question marks hanging over their domestic form, they produced a performance of the highest quality on the biggest stage. They are simply built differently in the Champions League.
PSG 5-2 Chelsea (in Paris)
Where do we start with this one?
Chelsea were actually pretty good for large parts of this game. They were energetic, tactically sharp, and showed real fight to come back twice after going behind. Then, with about 15 minutes to go and the score at 2-2, goalkeeper Filip Jorgensen passed the ball straight to Bradley Barcola.
Vitinha lobbed the out-of-position keeper to make it 3-2, and everything collapsed from there. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who had only just come off the bench, curled in a stunning long-range strike to make it four, and then added a sidefoot finish in stoppage time to complete the scoring. Chelsea had gone from an even contest to a 5-2 humiliation in the space of about 15 minutes.
It had been a night of momentum swings before that point. Bradley Barcola opened the scoring inside 10 minutes with a powerful strike. Malo Gusto levelled for Chelsea with a composed finish. Then Ousmane Dembele, brilliant throughout, put PSG back in front with a slick finish after great work from Desire Doue. Chelsea came back again when Enzo Fernandez converted a low cross from Neto, who had won the ball after Doue lost possession cheaply.
So it was 2-2, Chelsea were level and playing with genuine belief, and then Jorgensen's mistake changed everything.
It is hard to be too harsh on Jorgensen because Chelsea have had goalkeeper problems all season, but that was a costly error in the biggest game of his career. The decision about who should be first choice between him and Robert Sanchez is not an easy one for head coach Liam Rosenior.
There were other issues beyond the keeper though. Captain Reece James stumbled at a key moment for the fourth goal. Cole Palmer wasted a clear chance just seconds before Dembele scored on the counter. And Neto, who had actually done well to win the ball for the equaliser, then pushed a ball boy after the fourth goal and sparked a confrontation between the two sets of players. He gave the boy his shirt afterwards, but that will not necessarily protect him from further UEFA action.
The wider point about Chelsea is that they can be genuinely brilliant on their day, but they can also implode when things go wrong. PSG have younger players on average, but they have cooler heads, and Kvaratskhelia arriving from the bench to score twice is exactly the kind of attacking depth that separates them from their opponents right now.
A 5-2 aggregate deficit to overturn at Stamford Bridge next Tuesday is realistically too much. But then again, stranger things have happened in this competition.
Bodo/Glimt 3-0 Sporting CP (in Norway)
And finally, the story of the night. Maybe the story of the whole competition so far.
Bodo/Glimt, a small fishing community club from northern Norway, beat Sporting CP 3-0 in the first leg of their last-16 tie to continue one of the most unlikely runs in Champions League history. They had already knocked out Manchester City and Atletico Madrid in the earlier rounds, and then beat Inter Milan home and away in the play-offs. Wednesday was just the latest chapter.
Sondre Fet scored a penalty after a VAR review awarded a foul on him, and Ole Blomberg added a lovely second just before half-time with a clinical first-time finish from a deflected ball. Kasper Hogh bundled in a third in the 71st minute to put the tie firmly in Bodo's hands.
Sporting had some moments, particularly through Luis Suarez and Francisco Trincao, but could not cope with the relentless pressing and patient build-up play that Bodo bring to every game. Coach Kjetil Knutsen named the same starting lineup for the fifth consecutive match, something only Auxerre managed in the competition's history over two decades ago.
There is something genuinely warming about a team like this reaching the last 16. The Jose Alvalade Stadium in Lisbon, where the second leg will be played next Tuesday, could fit nearly every single resident of Bodo inside it. The tie is not over, and Sporting will be much better at home, but this Bodo side have already proven that size is not always what matters most.
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