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Fan Fervor Assured at Rare Champions League Home Games for Newcastle, Lens and Union Berlin 

Football - Premier League - Newcastle United v Burnley - St James' Park, Newcastle, Britain - September 30, 2023 Newcastle United's Miguel Almiron celebrates scoring their first goal. (Reuters)
Football - Premier League - Newcastle United v Burnley - St James' Park, Newcastle, Britain - September 30, 2023 Newcastle United's Miguel Almiron celebrates scoring their first goal. (Reuters)
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Fan Fervor Assured at Rare Champions League Home Games for Newcastle, Lens and Union Berlin 

Football - Premier League - Newcastle United v Burnley - St James' Park, Newcastle, Britain - September 30, 2023 Newcastle United's Miguel Almiron celebrates scoring their first goal. (Reuters)
Football - Premier League - Newcastle United v Burnley - St James' Park, Newcastle, Britain - September 30, 2023 Newcastle United's Miguel Almiron celebrates scoring their first goal. (Reuters)

For their first home games in the Champions League in more than 20 years, Newcastle and Lens will walk out to rousing ovations in their famously noisy stadiums this week.

Union Berlin makes its Champions League debut in the borrowed 75,000-capacity Olympic Stadium that will be a raucous home in the competition for a team that played in the German third tier as recently as 2010.

Don’t tell fans at these three clubs the Champions League group-stage format that is being dumped next year became stale and predictable.

Newcastle, Lens and Union were nowhere near the debate when the European Super League was plotted, launched and failed in 2021 by club owners who took the Champions League for granted and craved extra riches and control running their own show.

Exactly two years ago, Newcastle was still in a grim winless run in the Premier League relegation zone.

The Champions League survived the closed-shop Super League threat and now includes long-time absentees and a debutant that qualified on merit – fourth in the Premier League, runner-up in France’s Ligue 1 and fourth in the Bundesliga.

Newcastle will show Kylian Mbappé and Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday the atmosphere 52,000 create inside St. James’ Park.

Lens welcomes Arsenal on Tuesday to Stade Bollaert-Delelis where the capacity of 38,000 is bigger than the town’s population.

Union is using the Olympic Stadium – which hosted the 2015 Champions League final – because its intimate Stadion An der Alten Försterei (Stadium at the Old Forester’s House) is too small for home games in Group C, starting Tuesday against Braga.

“A Champions League for all Unioners,” club president Dirk Zingler explained to club members. “We were guided by this idea and we will try to ensure that as many people as possible can afford these games too.”

The interim move takes the club from the former East Germany into the west of once-divided Berlin.

Napoli and Real Madrid will later visit Union, and the group favorites first meet Tuesday at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.

100th birthday

Few club homes that are 100 years old still host Champions League games. Fewer still waited more than 60 years between staging games in Europe’s top club competition.

Royal Antwerp hosts Shakhtar Donetsk on Wednesday at the Bosuil Stadium on the site where the club has played since 1923.

There were 45,000 fans there in October 1957 — most of them standing on steep curved terraces – at the venue once known as “Hell of Deurne” when defending champion Real Madrid won 2-1 in a European Cup first-round, first-leg game.

Antwerp’s wait for a next home game ended in August in the qualifying playoffs. Just over 13,000 were there in the compact seated stands to see a 1-0 win over AEK Athens.

Bosuil is not the oldest stadium site seeing Champions League action this week.

Manchester United hosts Galatasaray on Tuesday at Old Trafford where it moved 113 years ago. Celtic welcomes Lazio on Wednesday to Parkhead where the Scottish champion has been playing for 131 years, since 1892.

Rematches

Erling Haaland scored five against Leipzig in March when Manchester City won 7-0 in the second leg of the round of 16.

On Wednesday, Leipzig hosts the defending champion who managed without Haaland’s scoring in a 3-1 win over Red Star Belgrade two weeks ago.

Inter Milan eliminated Benfica in the quarterfinals on its way to losing the final last season and hosts the Portuguese champion Tuesday.

Old hand Pepe

European soccer can unite the generations if Porto captain Pepe makes a historic appearance Wednesday against Barcelona.

At 40 years, 220 days old on Wednesday, Pepe can become the oldest outfield player ever to play in the European Cup or Champions League. Only a few goalkeepers, including Gianluigi Buffon, will be ahead of him in the record book.

When Pepe made his Champions League debut in September 2004, Barcelona’s new 16-year-old starlet Lamine Yamal was still almost three years from being born. Gavi was six weeks old and Pedri was approaching his second birthday.

Pepe played the full game two weeks ago as captain in Porto’s 3-1 win over Shakhtar Donetsk. Barcelona opened its campaign by beating Antwerp 5-0.

The current oldest outfield player in the competition’s 68-year history is AC Milan defender Alessandro “Billy” Costacurta. He played in a 1-0 loss at AEK Athens in November 2006 at 40 years, 211 days.

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Zheng Loses to No 97 Siegemund, Osaka Rallies to Advance at Australian Open

Germany's Laura Siegemund (L) shakes hands with China's Zheng Qinwen after the women's singles match on day four of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 15, 2025. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)
Germany's Laura Siegemund (L) shakes hands with China's Zheng Qinwen after the women's singles match on day four of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 15, 2025. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)
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Zheng Loses to No 97 Siegemund, Osaka Rallies to Advance at Australian Open

Germany's Laura Siegemund (L) shakes hands with China's Zheng Qinwen after the women's singles match on day four of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 15, 2025. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)
Germany's Laura Siegemund (L) shakes hands with China's Zheng Qinwen after the women's singles match on day four of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 15, 2025. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)

Distracted by a time penalty and unable to counteract No. 97-ranked Laura Siegemund's aggressive approach, Zheng Qinwen's loss in the second round Wednesday fell a long way short of last year's run to the Australian Open final.
Zheng lost the 2024 decider at Melbourne Park to Aryna Sabalenka and went on to win the Olympic gold medal in Paris and finish runner-up at the WTA Finals in a breakout season.
But her first tournament of the year ended in a 7-6 (3), 6-3 loss on John Cain Arena against 36-year-old Siegemund, who attacked from the first point and put Zheng off her game.
Zheng needed a change of shoes early in the second set, got a time warning on her serve from the chair umpire — she said she couldn't clearly see the clock — and was worried about some minor issues which sidelined her before the Australian Open.
“I feel maybe today is not my day. There’s a lot of details in the important points. I didn’t do the right choice,” The Associated Press quoted Zheng as saying.
Of a weak serve that bounced before the net, Zheng said the time warning from the umpire “obviously that one really distracted me from the match.”
“This is my fourth year in the tour, and never happen that to me.”
Both of last year's women's finalists were playing at the same time on nearby courts.
Sabalenka, the two-time defending champion, extended her run to 16 wins at Melbourne Park by winning the last five games to beat No. 54-ranked Jessica Bouzas Maneiro 6-3, 7-5.
Naomi Osaka, another two-time Australian Open champion, reached the third round of a major for the first time since 2022 when she weathered an early barrage from US Open semifinalist Karolina Muchova before rallying to win 1-6, 6-1, 6-3.
Osaka lost in the first round here last year to Caroline Garcia in her comeback from maternity leave but avenged that with a first-round victory over Garcia this week.
Osaka said she used a loss to Muchova at the US Open as motivation.
“She crushed me in the US Open when I had my best outfit ever,” Osaka joked in a post-match interview. “I was so disappointed. I was so mad. This was my little revenge.”
Osaka will next meet Belinda Bencic, the Tokyo Olympic gold medalist who is playing in her first major since the birth of her daughter, Bella, last year.
Also advancing were No. 7 Jessica Pegula, had a 6-4, 6-2 win over Elise Mertens, and 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, the No. 14 seed who beat Moyuka Uchijima 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (8).
The scoreline in Sabalenka's match didn't reflect the difficulty, with Bouzas Maneiro taking huge swipes at the ball in her Australian Open debut and dictating some of the points against the world No. 1-ranked player. Her serve let her down, with Sabalenka able to relieve some pressure on her own serve with five breaks.
No. 7 Jessica Pegula had a 6-4, 6-2 win over Elise Mertens to reach the third round, along with Belinda Bencic and 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, the No. 14 seed who beat Moyuka Uchijima 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (8).
Siegemund has never been past the third round in Australia, but is taking confidence from her big upset. Her only lapse was when she was broken serving for the first set. She recovered to dominate the tiebreaker, while Zheng remained too conservative in her tactics until right near the end.
“I knew I just had to play more than my best tennis. I had nothing to lose. I just told myself to swing free,” Siegemund said. Zheng is “an amazing player. One of the best players right now, but I know I can play well and I wanted to show that to myself.”
Third-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, aiming to add the Australian Open title to complete a set of all four major crowns, advanced 6-0, 6-1, 6-4 victory over Yoshihito Nishioka.
“The less time you spend on the court in the Grand Slams, especially at the beginning of the tournament, it’s gonna be better, especially physically,” Alcaraz said. “I just try to be focused on spending as less time as I can,” on court.