• Kane gets guard of honour before 6-1 win over Magdeburg

• Serie A: Inter sink Venezia, Milan lose at home to Bologna

Bayern Munich sailed to a 6-1 win over second-tier Magdeburg in the DFB-Pokal after their head coach, Vincent Kompany, was discharged from hospital earlier on Wednesday.

Kompany’s assistant, Aaron Danks, was in the dugout for Bayern for the last-32 tie, while Harry Kane was rested. The Ballon d’Or winner received a guard of honour from his teammates before kick-off in front of 75,000 fans at the Allianz Arena.

• Five teams level on points after Monaco lose to Lorient

• Real Madrid ease past Sevilla with Mbappé double

Ten-man Lyon held on for a 2-1 comeback victory over Nice to move top of Ligue 1 on Sunday, as previous pacesetters Monaco lost for the first time this season. Five teams are level on 14 points at the top of the table with Lyon heading Paris Saint-Germain, Paris FC, Lille and Monaco on goal difference.

It was a close run affair for Lyon, playing in front of local boy and French cycling prodigy Paul Seixas, following Keito Nakamura’s dismissal 20 minutes from time.

Two of our writers pick over the German’s contribution to Liverpool and what the £116m forward could yet produce

Some criticism has been OTT and a fee rising to £116m heightens demands but, yes, compared with his performances in Germany and for Germany Wirtz has underwhelmed at Liverpool. The past week has encapsulated his Liverpool career so far. In the Champions League rout of Lask he was everywhere, exploiting gaps between and behind the Austrian club’s defence and knitting together a dominant display against limited opposition. In the previous game against Manchester City, however, when Andoni Iraola needed big players to step up in the absence of Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai, Wirtz was ineffective, wasteful and withdrawn when his team were chasing the game at 0-1. It also did not help his cause that Rayan Cherki, a cheaper alternative whom Liverpool considered and passed on, completed City’s victory with a sublime goal. AH

• Barcelona 3-0 Getafe, Inter 3-0 Parma, PSG 3-1 Le Mans

• Bayern concede fastest Bundesliga goal in Augsburg draw

Anthony Gordon scored his first goal for Barcelona as they extended their perfect start in La Liga with a 3-0 home win over Getafe. The England international opened the scoring in the second minute and Gabriel Jesus added another after half an hour for the league leaders, who have won every match they have played this season.

Gordon, who has impressed since joining from Newcastle this summer, grabbed his first Barça goal with a low deflected effort after bundling his way past three players. Getafe defender Zaid Romero gave the ball away in his own box for Barça’s second, passing it straight to Jesus who stroked into the bottom corner.

• Champions Inter and Roma pull off stunning comebacks

• Schalke 0-0 Bayern Munich; Hoffenheim 2-3 Dortmund

Lautaro Martínez scored in the 91st minute as Inter rallied from two goals down ⁠to secure a stunning 3-2 home victory over Napoli, continuing their 100% start to their ⁠Serie A title defence.

Napoli looked ⁠to be ​on course for victory when Matteo Politano and Rasmus Højlund put them 2-0 up after 53 minutes, but Martínez’s ⁠first goal halved the deficit and Marcus Thuram equalised eight minutes from the end. Both sides had excellent chances to win ⁠it after that but it was Inter who took theirs when the Argentinian stabbed ​home the ball at the back ‌post from a corner.

• Team from town of 13,000 shock 2024 champions

• Juventus 2-0 Parma; Sevilla 1-3 Atlético Madrid

The Bundesliga newcomers Elversberg began their first top-flight campaign in style, stunning Bayer Leverkusen with an impressive 3-2 home victory on Saturday.

Lukas Petkov and Cole Campbell scored within 60 seconds of each other to put Elversberg 2-0 up before the 10-minute mark. David Mokwa added another early in the second half in front of 9,307 delirious fans.

BVB are re-energised and Leverkusen have stabilised, but can anyone stop the champions?

The Franz Beckenbauer Supercup has a modicum more intensity than most of its European equivalents. There are many reasons for this. The Bundesliga’s traditional season curtain-raiser pitting league champions against cup winners is not played on neutral territory, giving it the feeling of a domestic game with proper stakes.

German fans would also never accept it taking place on foreign soil, as the Borussia Dortmund managing director, Carsten Cramer, reiterated in clear terms over the course of the weekend. It feels like a match, rather than a showpiece.

• Bundesliga club want at least €50m for England defender

• Gunners remain interested in Aston Villa’s Ezri Konsa

Arsenal have opened talks with Bayer Leverkusen over a move for Jarell Quansah as they intensify efforts to bring in cover for William Saliba and Jurriën Timber.

The England defender, who left Liverpool last summer for an initial £30m and was part of Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad, has been identified as an ideal replacement for the France and Netherlands defenders, who will miss the start of the new season due to injury. While Quansah’s preferred position is in central defence, he was also deployed at right-back by Tuchel at the World Cup and was sent off in the last-16 victory over Mexico.

To better highlight the whole field among Europe’s elite, we chose an XI that couldn’t feature more than one player from any one team

This year we are picking a team of the season with a difference: I am allowed only one player per team. Of course, as finalists Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal have players with claims to all of these positions, so apologies to Willian Pacho and Declan Rice, among others. But what this format does allow for is an overall view of the Champions League season that was.

***

Positions fourth to sixth are separated by goal difference as Hoffenheim rue being out of the Champions League spots

“This is perhaps the most difficult moment of my career.” It was not, it is fair to say, what Andrei Kramaric had expected on a day – and a week – that was going along like a dream. Two days after he had extended his expiring contract for two years at “my second home”, Hoffenheim’s all-time record scorer had dragged them even closer to a surprise return to the Champions League, scoring goals 157 and 158 for the club on a sunny afternoon with the mood of celebration in the air, as they dominated direct rivals Stuttgart. But in the 95th minute, up popped the visitors’ Tiago Tomás out of nowhere to shatter it all. In the race for the top four in the Bundesliga, life comes at you fast.

One could understand Kramaric’s difficulties in absorbing what had just happened. When he left the field in stoppage time to the warm applause of the PreZero Arena Hoffenheim were in fourth position, the (likely) final Champions League spot which they have worked so hard to recover in recent weeks after a big wobble either side of Easter. By the time that the Croatia striker got comfy on the bench his team had seen their lead improbably evaporate, and when he sat down for dinner they were in sixth, following Bayer Leverkusen’s 4-1 demolition of RB Leipzig in the early evening Topspiel.

• Forward subbed after scoring winner against Celta Vigo

• PSG stay in Ligue 1 title hunt with victory over Nantes

Barcelona moved closer to retaining their La Liga title with a 1-0 victory over Celta Vigo on Wednesday, but the win was overshadowed by an injury to Lamine Yamal, who scored the first-half penalty that settled the match.

With six games remaining, Barcelona lead the standings on 82 points, nine clear of Real Madrid on 73. The result keeps the champions firmly in control of the title race, though concern now surrounds Lamine Yamal with a Clásico looming in two weeks and the World Cup less than 50 days away.

• Goretzka hits leaders’ 102nd goal in 5-0 win at St Pauli

• Ferran Torres double helps Barcelona beat Espanyol 4-1

Bayern Munich crushed hosts St Pauli 5-0 in the Bundesliga to set an all-time season scoring record while also extending their lead at the top to 12 points with five games left to play.

The Bavarian club, who host Real Madrid on Wednesday in their Champions League quarter-final second leg after their 2-1 win in Spain, are within touching distance of the league title on 76 points, with second-placed Borussia Dortmund stuck on 64 after their 1-0 home loss to Bayer Leverkusen.

Two ‘factory’ teams of German football proved that there is plenty at stake in the Bundesliga after a 6-3 win for Leverkusen

They said nobody cared enough for the stakes to be this high. If discussion over the destination of the title (and second place for that matter) has been and gone, there is plenty more in the Bundesliga tank and for Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg, two clubs who will never hold universal approval despite producing teams to thrill us and break the Bayern monopoly in the last two decades, that is truer than for most.

Before RB Leipzig were around to corral all the disapproval of German supporters at large, there was El Plastico. As the two ‘factory’ teams of German football, grown from Bayer and Volkswagen respectively rather than from a fanbase, Leverkusen and Wolfsburg have endured a lifetime of rival fans looking down their noses at them, judging them as not organic or real enough.

Conversely this fixture, if derided by some, has produced a string of memorable games; the 5-4 win for Wolfsburg at the Bay Arena in 2015 during current coach Dieter Hecking’s successful first spell, sealed by Bas Dost’s four goals, or the typically later-than-late Leverkusen 4-3 in September 2024 dusted by Victor Boniface’s stoppage-time winner. So when Bild’s headline called this “the wildest plastico of all time,” they really did mean it was something special.

Tension and huge potential consequences can often make for a stilted, cautious spectacle. Not here. For Wolfsburg, there was an element of predictability in that it was a 20th successive game without a clean sheet – and they didn’t look like keeping one for an instant. Still, the record – the worst defensive run in the club’s history since a previous Hecking side did the same in 2014 – wouldn’t have mattered at all had Die Wölfe held the 3-1 lead with which they approached half-time, having seemingly found some nerve to help their desperate situation at the bottom of the table.

In that first half, Hecking would have been delighted. If there had been a thick volume of hard luck stories over recent weeks, Wolfsburg had no time to listen to them here. After Jonas Wind’s opener, they were unhappy with the penalty awarded to Leverkusen when Joakim Mæhle feathered a slight touch on Ibrahim Maza in the penalty area – converted for the hosts by Alejandro Grimaldo – but literally seconds later Mæhle himself stepped up to blast Wolfsburg back in front with a rocket from long range. When Christian Eriksen converted a Wolfsburg penalty shortly after it was 3-1 and finally the strugglers were showing real fortitude. There was light, at last, at the end of the tunnel.

Instead, the inevitable Grimaldo brought Leverkusen back into the match by finishing a smart move just before half-time, enabling his coach, Kasper Hjulmand, to make the changes at the break to turn the match, and perhaps to change his own fate at the helm. For if we look at Wolfsburg’s moment of crisis, the home side were facing one at 3-1 down. “A change of coach is not a scenario we are considering,” Leverkusen’s sporting director, Simon Rolfes, had said before the game but losing at home to a team in the bottom two – to severely compromise Die Werkself’s chances of a return to the Champions League – would have sorely tested that stance. It wouldn’t have been the first time Rolfes has been forced into an abrupt pivot this season.

That, incidentally, is what Hjulmand used to really change the momentum; taking off Equi Fernández, bringing on Patrik Schick to join Christian Kofane up front and really attacking in a season where Leverkusen have often looked too tentative. Schick equalised from another spot-kick before Edmund Tapsoba put the hosts in front. The excellent Maza added another and substitute Malik Tillman made it six after a brilliant slalom along the byline by Ernest Poku.

Arteta’s side are 16 games from the quadruple, helped by the forward’s devastating strike in this last-16 second leg

And now I am become Springtime Eze, destroyer of netting. At what point does a shot at goal become a health and safety violation? There were 36 minutes gone at the Emirates Stadium when Eberechi Eze did the thing.

How to describe the physical movements that generated Arsenal’s opening goal in this 2-0 defeat of Bayer Leverkusen? The shotgun pirouette. The swivel‑batter. The cage‑ball roundhouse. It was also a pianoforte kind of goal, the power in the finish preceded by a lovely, gentle bit of interplay from Declan Rice and Martín Zubimendi.

Is there anyone who can stop Arsenal in this kind of form? The Bayer Leverkusen goalkeeper, Janis Blaswich, tried his best in a spectacular first-half performance that kept the Premier League leaders at bay until Eberechi Eze smashed in his first Champions League goal and Declan Rice completed a comfortable victory after the break to seal a third successive quarter‑final appearance.

After yet another clinical performance in Europe yielded a ninth victory in 10 games this season, Mikel Arteta will certainly fancy Arsenal’s chances of getting past Sporting in the last eight despite the Portuguese side’s remarkable comeback against Bodø/Glimt that spared them a trip to the Arctic Circle.

Riccardo Calafiori reflects on Max Dowman’s impact as Mikel Arteta’s side bid to reach the Champions League quarter-finals

Even the man who Mikel Arteta has described as his chief “chaos creator” almost found things a bit too much. Riccardo Calafiori was in the thick of the celebrations after Max Dowman’s historic late goal to clinch victory over Everton on Saturday as Arsenal’s players mobbed him by the corner flag at the Emirates after the six touches that changed the 16-year-old’s life forever.

In all the excitement, Kai Havertz borrowed a pair of glasses from a more than willing supporter and waved them in the air before politely returning them in what Calafiori described as the best moment of Arsenal’s season so far. “We were all so happy. We ran towards him and the fans,” the Italy defender said. “It was almost a fight with the fans – in a nice way, obviously. It was amazing.”

• Harry Kane has goal disallowed on return

• Guler scores from own half in Real Madrid victory

Bayern Munich came from behind and finished the match with nine players in a 1-1 draw at Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday, allowing Borussia Dortmund to close to within nine points of the Bundesliga leaders. Luis Díaz, who scored the equaliser after Aleix García’s opener, was sent off in the 84th minute for a second yellow card. Nicolas Jackson had received a red card in the 42nd minute.

Leverkusen took the lead in the sixth minute after Montrell Culbreath stole the ball off Díaz and fed it to Patrik Schick, who set up García on the edge of the box. The midfielder slotted home with a deflected shot. The hosts defended well to contain Bayern, and frustration showed when Jackson was sent off before half-time for a late challenge on Martin Terrier.

All six of the Premier League’s last-16 teams have plenty of work to do in their second legs. Bodø/Glimt, meanwhile, have eyes on a fairytale quarter-final

A rude awakening for the English Premier League, a week when European football reasserted itself; financial dominance need not mean dominance on the field. Real Madrid’s first-half destruction of Manchester City was chastening. This was a Madrid team shorn of Kylian Mbappé, Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham and yet City were soundly beaten 3-0. Arsenal’s drab 1-1 draw with Bayer Leverkusen showed Mikel Arteta’s team will require more than set pieces to prevail in the competition.

Whoever runs Bayer Leverkusen’s social media accounts obviously meant it as a joke. But even they could not have predicted that a cheeky post hours before kick‑off would almost end up being such a good omen for Kasper Hjulmand’s side. “No corners allowed,” it read in a clear dig at Arsenal’s favoured modus operandi this season, before adding. “Worth a try …”

Nonetheless, the plan seemed to be working for almost the entire cagey first half when neither side managed to muster a single corner until injury time. But everything changed at the start of the second half when Leverkusen’s captain, Robert Andrich, headed home their second corner of the evening. “Well, this is awkward,” the Leverkusen social media team piped up.