Champions League: Salah rescues Liverpool, Mbappé’s Real Madrid rollercoaster continues

Liverpool is on the brink of the Champions League knockout stage after collecting its sixth consecutive first round win by beating Girona 1-0 in Spain on Tuesday.

Mohamed Salah’s torrid form for the Reds continued, with the Egyptian star converting the only goal from the penalty spot in the second half.

Elsewhere in Europe, Real Madrid got a crucial win, Bayern Munich came back to trounce Shakhtar Donetsk and the Cinderella seasons of Aston Villa and Brest continued.

Here are three quick takeaways following Tuesday’s action.

Salah to the rescue again as Reds stay perfect

With six wins from six Champions League games so far, first place Liverpool is a shoo-in for the last 16 with two rounds of preliminaries remaining. The three points earned on Tuesday were hard-won, though. Girona fans will question whether they were earned at all.

This was one of the least convincing performances all season from Arne Slot’s squad. It took video review to send Salah to the spot after a foul on Luis Diaz inside the penalty area that wasn’t whistled originally. 

Salah made no mistake from 12 yards. Liverpool keeper Alisson Becker — playing his first game after missing two months with a hamstring injury — made five saves to preserve the clean sheet and ensure the result, though the Reds did ride their luck in this one.

Not for the first time recently, Liverpool also rode Salah. The goal was the 32-year-old’s 16th in 22 appearances across all competitions in 2024-25 and his third in as many games. No wonder the Reds finally offered the club legend a new contract in recent days. With Slot’s lot eyeing a Champions League-Premier League double this spring, they can hardly afford to leave their best player’s future blowing in the breeze for much longer.

Mbappé scores, injures ankle as Real Madrid tops Atalanta

The last time we saw Kylian Mbappé in the Champions League, the French superstar was dejectedly walking toward the tunnel at Anfield, where he’d just missed a penalty in Real’s 2-0 loss to Liverpool.

It didn’t take long for Mbappé to show that Tuesday would be different. The 25-year-old needed less than 10 minutes to send Los Blancos on their way to victory in Italy with a blistering right-footed strike:  

The goal, combined with second half efforts from Jude Bellingham and Vinícius Jr., gave the visitors a badly needed 3-2 win, as the defending and record 15-time champions entered Matchday 6 with three losses and just six points in their first five outings. 

The night was bittersweet, however, as Mbappé was forced from the match in the 36th minute with an apparent ankle injury. His roller-coaster first season with Madrid shows no sign of slowing down.

Villa, Bayern, Brest and Leverkusen prevail 

Aston Villa squandered a one-goal lead away to RB Leipzig on two separate occasions on Tuesday, yet still left Germany sitting third in the 36-team standings thanks to a fortuitous Ross Barkley goal with five minutes of the match remaining. 

The game winner — which improved Villa’s record in soccer’s marquee club competition to 4-1-1 — took a wicked deflection before beating Leipzig keeper Péter Gulácsi.

Bayern fell behind early against Shakhtar but stormed back with five unanswered goals over the final 85 minutes for a 5-1 win at Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, where the Ukrainian club “hosted” the match because of Russia’s ongoing invasion.  

Meantime, Brest sits three spots ahead of Bayern in fifth place after Tuesday’s 1-0 triumph at PSV Eindhoven. Julien Le Cardinal scored the only goal for the French side just before halftime.

And there was some late drama in Leverkusen, where Nordi Mukiele’s 90th minute strike sent Bayer over 2023’s losing finalist Inter Milan. It was the first goal allowed by Inter during this Champions League campaign.

Doug McIntyre is a soccer reporter for FOX Sports. A staff writer with ESPN and Yahoo Sports before joining FOX Sports in 2021, he has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams at FIFA World Cups on five continents. Follow him @ByDougMcIntyre.

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