Liverpool Shines in Champions League, Dumping Real Madrid Down the Table

Liverpool is 100% on top of the Champions League after dumping title holder Real Madrid into an almost unbelievable 24th place in the 36-team standings on Wednesday.
No one felt the embarrassment of Madrid’s 2-0 loss at Anfield more than Kylian Mbappé, the superstar added in the offseason by the storied club that also was European champion against Liverpool in the finals of 2022 and 2018.
Mbappé had a penalty saved in the second half and was earlier dumped on his behind by Conor Bradley’s superb tackle in an instant viral moment, The Associated Press reported.
Only Liverpool has started the new Champions League format with five wins and first-year coach Arne Slot's team is two points clear of Inter Milan. Barcelona is third, trailing Liverpool by three points.
Madrid is, remarkably, with three rounds left just one place above being eliminated. The top eight teams at the end of January go direct to the round of 16 in March, and teams placed from ninth to 24th enter a round of two-leg playoffs in February.
“(This) doesn’t change much, because even with a win it was going to be tough to secure a top-eight finish,” Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti said. ”It was a fair result."
Monaco missed a chance to go second in the table, giving up a lead playing with 10 men from the 58th minute in a 3-2 loss at home to Benfica. Swiss forward Zeki Amdouni scored the winning goal in the 88th.
Borussia Dortmund, the beaten finalist against Madrid in May, is up to fourth place after beating Dinamo Zagreb 3-0. Champions League standout Jamie Gittens now has four goals in five games, curling a rising shot in the 41st to open the scoring in Croatia.
The best comeback was at PSV Eindhoven, where the home team trailed Shakhtar Donetsk by two goals in the 87th minute before a 3-2 win was sealed by United States forward Ricardo Pepi’s goal deep in stoppage time.
US defender Cameron Carter-Vickers scored an embarrassing own goal for Celtic — playing a no-look pass far beyond goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel — in a 1-1 draw with Club Brugge.
“One of those things,” Schmeichel said. “Cam gets pressed and he hasn’t heard me shout that I’m not in (goal).”
Congo teammates Ngal’Ayel Mukau and Silas impressed in wins for Lille and Red Star Belgrade.
Mukau scored twice in 12th-place Lille’s 2-1 win at Bologna and Silas leveled for Red Star in a 5-1 rout of Stuttgart, though he barely celebrated his goal. Silas is on loan with the Serbian champion from Stuttgart.
Aston Villa's 0-0 draw with Juventus was preserved by an excellent save by Emiliano Martinez, the World Cup-winning Argentina goalkeeper, diving low to push away a header from Francisco Conceição.
Bradley beats Mbappé Liverpool’s stand-in right back Bradley was a standout Wednesday, denying Mbappé at high speed in a signature defensive play in the 32nd.
The 21-year-old Northern Ireland defender, deputizing for fit-again Trent Alexander-Arnold, joined the attack in the 52nd to play a key pass returning the ball to Alexis Mac Allister who scored the opening goal.
After Mbappé’s penalty was pushed away by goalkeeper Caoimhín Kelleher in the 61st, Liverpool star Mo Salah missed with his spot-kick in the 70th, before substitute Cody Gakpo sealed the win with a header in the 77th.
Madrid now has lost three of five games after defeats at Lille and at home to AC Milan. The record 15-time European champion has another tough trip next, at fifth-place Atalanta on Dec. 10. On the same date, Liverpool is at 30th-place Girona and looks to be cruising into the round of 16.
“You know how special it is to play against a team that has won the Champions League so many times," Liverpool coach Slot said of Madrid. “They were a pain for Liverpool for many years too.”
First wins, first points Red Star Belgrade and Sturm Graz ended four-game losing runs to get their first points and wins.
Red Star rallied against Stuttgart after the German team led in the fifth minute. The 1991 European Cup winner’s goal to level the game in the 12th was scored by on-loan Silas. He held up his hands as if in apology as part of a low-key celebration.
Sturm Graz won 1-0 against Girona, the Spanish newcomer to European competitions. It was the Austrian champion’s first Champions League game since coach Christian Ilzer left to join Hoffenheim.

Israel's Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team returned to Europe on Wednesday for the first time since its fans were assaulted in the Netherlands earlier this month in attacks that were condemned as antisemitic by authorities in Israel and across Europe.
The team will face off Thursday against Türkiye’s Besiktas in an Europa League match that was relocated to Hungary. The contest at Nagyerdei Stadium in the city of Debrecen will be played without fans due to security concerns following the violence in Amsterdam on Nov. 7 that resulted in five people being treated in hospitals and dozens of detentions.

Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Zarko Lazetic told a news conference on Wednesday that his team was focused on its game, regardless of what tensions may exist elsewhere, The Associated Press reported.
“It’s not a question for me what happened outside of the stadium. We saw some videos and everything, but we really try to focus on football,” he said. “We’ll see tomorrow what is the effect.”
The violence in Amsterdam came after local authorities banned pro-Palestinian demonstrators from gathering outside the stadium where Maccabi was playing Dutch team Ajax.
A large crowd of Israeli fans chanted anti-Arab slogans on their way to the match, video showed. Afterward, youths on scooters and on foot crisscrossed the city in search of Israeli fans, punching and kicking them, according to Amsterdam’s mayor.
The city's police commander said the incidents had “an antisemitic character."
Maccabi press officer Ofer Ronen-Abels said Wednesday the events in Amsterdam “had nothing to do with football."
Before the assaults, Besiktas had requested its home game against Maccabi, originally scheduled for Istanbul, to be moved to “neutral ground” over security concerns.
The club later said on social media that Hungary was the only country willing to host the match and that Hungarian authorities requested it be played behind closed doors.
Hungary has hosted several home games for Israel's national team for security reasons since the war in Gaza began.
Maccabi held its final practice session at the Kiryat Shalom training complex in Tel Aviv on Wednesday before departing for Hungary, the team said on its website.

Liverpool Shines in Champions League, Dumping Real Madrid Down the Table