Champions League Returns Missing Mbappe, Rodri, Barella as Injury Wave Hits European Soccer

Key players will be sidelined when the Champions League resumes Tuesday after a wave of injuries within a week of the new-look competition starting.

Kylian Mbappe’s sore hamstring is likely to sideline him beyond Wednesday when he was due to return to France with defending champion Real Madrid to face Lille.

Serious knee injuries mean Manchester City midfielder Rodri is out for the season and Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen will miss at least most of it.

Inter Milan midfielder Nicolo Barella, who was a standout playing against Rodri on Sept. 18, will miss at least one Champions League game because of a thigh strain.

The injuries to four players who were involved at the European Championship into the knockout phase have sharpened the debate about player workload in a calendar made more congested by the bigger Champions League.

The extended program is what influential clubs all-but forced UEFA to create and the 18 games this week, split between Tuesday and Wednesday, still leaves each of them with six more to play through January.

Another final rematch

There were two repeats of past finals in the first week of games that relaunched the Champions League in a single-standings format. Man City and Inter drew 0-0 and Liverpool won 3-1 at AC Milan.

The next rematch comes Wednesday when Aston Villa hosts Bayern Munich, a giant of the European Cup era that was shocked 1-0 in the 1982 final.

Villa Park will host a first game in the competition since March 1983 when the English side’s title defense was ended by Juventus.

Both eased to winning starts two weeks ago. Villa won 3-0 at Young Boys and Bayern’s nine goals against Dinamo Zagreb was a record for any team in the 33-season Champions League era.

Harry Kane scored four in Bayern’s 9-2 win and has a good record visiting Villa, with five goals there in five Premier League games for Tottenham. He faces a late check on an ankle injury.

Kane edges Haaland

Kane’s fast start to the season with 10 goals in seven games for Bayern has outpaced even Erling Haaland’s 10 in eight games for Man City.

Haaland was kept quiet by Inter for the second time in 16 months, a fact he was reminded of in a post-game talk with the Italian champion’s center back Francesco Acerbi, who smiled and held up two fingers.

Haaland should find it easier on Tuesday in Slovakia when Man City faces Slovan Bratislava, which took the second biggest beating in the opening round, 5-1 at Celtic.

Crowd size and fan fervor

The pulsating atmosphere at Celtic Park for a rare European win by the Scottish champion stood out in an opening week where anticipation was not universal.

Pundits including former Man City goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel noted a quietness about the stadium for the Inter game. The attendance was nearly 2,000 higher five days later when Man City met Arsenal in a tempestuous Premier League clash where title ambitions were already in play.

Milan-Liverpool was a heavyweight European fixture yet far from sold out, with fewer than 60,000 at San Siro. The crowd topped 70,000 at each of Milan’s first two Serie A home games this season, and 66,000 on the equivalent Champions League opening night last season to see another English club, Newcastle.

Paris Saint-Germain drew at least 46,000 fans for each home game in Ligue 1 this season — and all three Champions League group-stage games last season — yet fewer than 40,000 were at Parc des Princes to see European debutant Girona two weeks ago.

Sporting Lisbon also had 40,000 fans for a Champions League opener against Lille that was 6,000 down on the crowd for a domestic league game against Porto.

The attendance and atmosphere trends will be watched as fans respond to the longer and more expensive program of four Champions League home games. The 36-team standings is set to be more dynamic for the final two rounds in January.

Tuesday's games

The raucous atmosphere should follow Celtic to Borussia Dortmund whose fans in the Yellow Wall tribune are among the noisiest in Europe.

Bundesliga champion Bayer Leverkusen hosts Milan after making a fast start in a 4-0 rout at Feyenoord. San Siro now reverts to Inter to host Red Star Belgrade.

Arsenal hosts PSG in a meeting of two teams chasing a trophy they never won. Each was a beaten finalist once. Also, Barcelona hosts Young Boys.

Wednesday's games Even without Mbappe, Madrid should have too much for Lille playing in the stadium that hosted basketball group-stage games at the Paris Olympics.

Premier League leader Liverpool hosts Bologna, and Girona’s first European visitor to the Montilivi stadium is Feyenoord.

Dinamo Zagreb fired its coach, Sergej Jakirovic, after the drubbing at Bayern and brought back Nenad Bjelica for a second spell. He starts in the Champions League hosting Monaco.

Lando Norris may be top of the F1 standings, but he feels like he's driving "nowhere near" his best and can't work out why.

After placing third Sunday at the Bahrain Grand Prix — won by his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri — Norris said he felt far more confident last year, when he lost out on the drivers' title to Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

"I’m confident that I have everything I need and I’ve got what it takes," Norris said. "I have no doubt about that, that I’m good enough, but something is just not clicking with me in the car."

Norris, who qualified sixth for Sunday's race, saw Piastri close to within three points of him in the standings.

"As soon as you're not gelling (with the car), then you're going to be in issues, and that's what I have at the moment," Norris said.

Even though he's still leading and won the season-opening Grand Prix in Australia last month, Norris said he hasn't felt comfortable all year with McLaren's car — widely considered the fastest on the grid.

Last year, "I knew every single corner, everything that was going to happen with the car, how it was going to happen. I felt on top of the car. This year could not have felt more opposite so far," Norris said.

"Even in Australia, I won the race but never felt comfortable, never felt confident. The car was just mega and that’s helping me get out of a lot of problems at the minute, but I’m just nowhere near the capability that I have, which hurts to say."

Norris and Piastri combined to help McLaren win the constructor title in 2024, the team's first since 1998.

Teammate battles which shaped F1

The years when F1 has been dominated by a single team have produced some of the most bitter rivalries, as McLaren witnessed in the late 1980s with a feud between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

More recently, the relationship between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg turned sour during their championship fight at Mercedes in 2016.

Norris and Piastri are keeping things civil, though there were awkward moments last year when Norris was asked to make way for his teammate in a race.

McLaren has faced tests from other teams, with Verstappen winning in Japan last week for Red Bull and Mercedes' George Russell competing with Norris and Piastri on Sunday. Still, the pace of the other teams seems to be fluctuating from race to race, and McLaren's isn't. The gap of 58 points on the constructor standings to second-place Mercedes after just four races is vast.

"We haven't had a consistent challenger week-in, week-out," Piastri, a 24-year-old Australian, said. "As long as we have the best car, it's going to be tight between Lando and I."

Champions League Returns Missing Mbappe, Rodri, Barella as Injury Wave Hits European Soccer