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Spanish and German Soccer Royalty Collide in Third Round of Champions League Games

21 October 2024, Spain, Madrid: Borussia Dortmund coach, Nuri Sahin takes part in a press conference for the team at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Real Madrid. Photo: Alberto Gardin/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
21 October 2024, Spain, Madrid: Borussia Dortmund coach, Nuri Sahin takes part in a press conference for the team at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Real Madrid. Photo: Alberto Gardin/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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Spanish and German Soccer Royalty Collide in Third Round of Champions League Games

21 October 2024, Spain, Madrid: Borussia Dortmund coach, Nuri Sahin takes part in a press conference for the team at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Real Madrid. Photo: Alberto Gardin/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
21 October 2024, Spain, Madrid: Borussia Dortmund coach, Nuri Sahin takes part in a press conference for the team at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League soccer match against Real Madrid. Photo: Alberto Gardin/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

It’s the best in Spain against German soccer royalty in the latest round of games in the Champions League.

A rematch of last season’s final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund is the headliner on Tuesday, before Barcelona hosts Bayern Munich on Wednesday in the next chapter of what has been a fairly one-sided rivalry in Europe’s top club competition.

All four teams have been European champions inside the last 30 years and they’ve made mixed starts to this season’s revamped format.

Dortmund has won both of their opening matches — 3-0 at Club Brugge and 7-1 at home to Celtic — to be the early leader and top scorer of the league stage, which sees all 36 teams play eight matches: four at home and four away.

Just like last season when reaching the Champions League final against the odds before losing to Madrid, Dortmund has been far more impressive in Europe than in the Bundesliga. Indeed, after thrashing Celtic, Dortmund lost at Union Berlin four days later.

Madrid, meanwhile, is coming off a surprising 1-0 loss at Lille, the defending champions’ first defeat in the competition since the semifinals in the 2022-23 season.

In fact, the second round of matches threw up a few shockers, including Bayern losing 1-0 at Aston Villa to end its unbeaten run under new coach Vincent Kompany.

Now Bayern heads to Barcelona in search of a seventh straight win in their head-to-head, a streak that includes a humiliating 8-2 loss for Barca in the quarterfinals in 2020. Hansi Flick was in charge of Bayern that night and is now the coach of Barcelona.

Man City record

If Manchester City beats Sparta Prague at home on Wednesday, the English champions will set the record for consecutive games undefeated in the history of the competition — even stretching back before 1992 into the European Cup era.

City is currently on 25 matches unbeaten, tied with Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United team from 2007-09.

The last loss for Pep Guardiola’s team in the Champions League was the 3-1 defeat against Real Madrid in the second leg of the semifinals in 2022, which cost City a place in the final that season.

Since then, City has won 17 matches and drawn eight, having won the competition in 2022-2023 and been eliminated on penalties by Madrid in 2023-24 after back-to-back draws in the quarterfinals.

Unlikely high-flyer

Of the seven teams on a maximum six points, Brest is undoubtedly the most surprising.

This is the unheralded French team’s European debut — in any competition — after an unexpected third-place finish in Ligue 1 last season. It couldn’t be going any better.

A 2-1 win over Austrian champion Sturm Graz was followed by a 4-0 thrashing of another Austrian team, Salzburg, in the second round of games.

They will be the easiest opponents Brest is going to face. Now the hard work begins, with German champion Bayer Leverkusen next up on Wednesday.

Leverkusen won’t be heading to Brest, a pretty port city in Brittany, but Guingamp — about 114 kilometers (71 miles) away. That’s because Brest’s stadium doesn’t meet UEFA standards so its home games have been relocated.

Bad starts

With each team playing eight games in the new league system, opening with back-to-back losses isn’t the nightmare start it would have been in the old format when there were six matches per side in the group stage.

Still, AC Milan, Leipzig, Girona, Salzburg, Sturm Graz, Slovan Bratislava, Young Boys and Red Star Belgrade will be desperate to get at least one point on the board in the third round of fixtures.

Salzburg and Young Boys haven’t even scored a goal.

One of the eight pointless teams is sure to get off the mark, with tournament newcomer Girona hosting Slovan Bratislava on Tuesday.

Leipzig could easily be on zero points after three games, though, with Liverpool visiting on Wednesday — a match that has more intrigue since former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was signed as the head of global soccer at Red Bull, whose international network of clubs includes Leipzig.

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Tunisian Freediver Eyes Records and Developing the Sport

Walid Boudhiaf, Franco-Tunisian freediving world champion, stands near fishing boats before a training session at the Carthage Punic Ports near Tunis on October 17, 2024. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / AFP)
Walid Boudhiaf, Franco-Tunisian freediving world champion, stands near fishing boats before a training session at the Carthage Punic Ports near Tunis on October 17, 2024. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / AFP)
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Tunisian Freediver Eyes Records and Developing the Sport

Walid Boudhiaf, Franco-Tunisian freediving world champion, stands near fishing boats before a training session at the Carthage Punic Ports near Tunis on October 17, 2024. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / AFP)
Walid Boudhiaf, Franco-Tunisian freediving world champion, stands near fishing boats before a training session at the Carthage Punic Ports near Tunis on October 17, 2024. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / AFP)

Tunisian freediver Walid Boudhiaf, the Arab world's only international champion in the sport and a one-time world record holder at 150 meters, is eyeing new achievements and hopes to expand the sport in his home country, where "thousands practice it without even realizing.”

During a recent visit to Tunisia, the 46-year-old, who spends half the year in Colombia and the other half training in the Bahamas, shared his remarkable journey with AFP.

Though he grew up in Tunisia, where he spent most of his summers by the sea, Boudhiaf didn't discover freediving until later.

His father, a Tunisian university professor, and French doctor mother were both "sea lovers" and taught him to swim at the age of three, later introducing him to spearfishing.

By his mid-20s, freediving came to him a continent away and nowhere near the sea -- "by chance in a pool in Bogota,” the Colombian capital that sits over a thousand kilometers from the Pacific Ocean.

Boudhiaf initially took up underwater rugby, which, he said, proved "not aggressive enough.”

His coach had then noticed his ability to control his breath, which years later would help him achieve a personal record of seven minutes 38 seconds.

Boudhiaf said living in Bogota at 2,600 meters above sea level has also helped develop "excellent cardiovascular conditions" by stimulating red blood cell production due to the low oxygen levels.

He then began training up to six hours a day, he said, while balancing a job as a computer engineer.

"I stopped going out," he recalls. "All I did was train."

- World record -

Boudhiaf entered his first competition in Marseille in 2007, but it wasn't until 2012 that he was able to fully dedicate himself to freediving, following a "last job in the Canary Islands, where I went to be closer to the sea.”

Today, thanks to sponsorship from Tunisian companies, he can finally make a living from his passion and also organizes workshops and conferences based around the sport.

In Egypt in 2021, he gained international renown when he set a world record at 150 meters in the variable weight category, which requires using a pulling rope on the way down and fins to go back up.

He said he was inspired by Luc Besson's 1988 film "The Big Blue" that put freediving on the map, and the achievements of legendary diver Umberto Pelizzari.

"It was a dream that I had since I watched 'The Big Blue' and saw Umberto Pelizzari's records," he said. "One hundred fifty meters is a symbolic frontier, a testament to human potential."

Boudhiaf was also crowned world champion in 2022, diving to 116 meters in free immersion apnea timed at three minutes 54 seconds.

After collecting several medals at the Deep Blue competition in Dominica this past April -- one gold, two silver, and one bronze -- he has been training for the 2025 Vertical Blue, an elite freediving competition held in the Bahamas, which he calls "the Wimbledon of freediving".

He is hoping to beat the constant weight record of 136 meters, currently held by Russia's Alexey Molchanov, who broke Boudhiaf's variable weight record with a depth of 156 meters in March 2023.

- 'Everyone can do it' -

Beyond competing and pursuing records, which "have ups and downs and challenges to maintaining peak performance", another focus of Boudhiaf's is growing the sport in Tunisia.

"Many Tunisians are already practicing it without knowing it, through amateur spearfishing, which is a form of freediving," he said, referring to Tunisia's long-standing traditions of sponge diving and coral collecting.

Additionally, interest in pool-based freediving is growing, he added, especially at the Rades Olympic Complex near Tunis.

"I'm motivated to provide more support," Boudhiaf said, adding that the sport required little resources and equipment and that it "isn't a sport for the wealthy".

While Egypt, Greece or Türkiye are better for competition-oriented training with "very deep spots close to the shore" in the Mediterranean, according to Boudhiaf, Tunisia is still suitable for "recreational freediving”

"You don't need to dive 100 meters," he said. "At 20, 30, or 50 meters, beginners can improve and even reach an advanced level."

Freediving is also "the most natural way to observe and interact with marine life," he added.

Breathing techniques also promote good health, he said, because the exercises can help manage stress.