Sport / Football

Forty goals in one night as Paris end Barcelona's perfect start

Matchday 3 delivered 40 goals in nine games: Paris Saint-Germain beat Barcelona 4-2 in a six-goal classic, Liverpool came back from 2-0 down at Anfield, and Phil Foden scored a hat trick as Manchester City hit five.

Paris, France · October 20, 2026

Forty goals in nine games, and somehow the loudest of them still came from Paris. Paris Saint-Germain beat Barcelona 4-2 at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday night, ending the last perfect start in this season's Champions League and protecting their own, on an evening when the competition seemed determined to outdo itself in every stadium at once.

The headline game behaved like one. Desire Doue put PSG in front on 38 minutes, pouncing after Lamine Yamal had given the ball away, and for long stretches Barcelona's goalkeeper Joan Garcia was the story, saving almost everything a dominant home side sent his way. The injuries piled up on both sides: Ousmane Dembele off with a hamstring problem on 20 minutes for PSG, Dani Olmo off before the half hour for Barcelona, and still the quality never dipped.

Xavi Espart, on his first Champions League start, levelled on 55 minutes, running onto Fermin Lopez's pass and finishing at the near post. Then the last twenty minutes turned into a shootout. Lucas Hernandez headed PSG back in front from Doue's corner on 72 minutes. Yamal answered on 79, toe-poking in from an angle that had no right to produce a goal. Two minutes later Vitinha chested down a clearance and volleyed PSG ahead again, and on 86 minutes Fabian Ruiz tapped in Achraf Hakimi's cross to end it. PSG had lost Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and their captain Marquinhos to injury along the way, which may yet prove the most consequential part of their night.

Anfield ran Paris close. Liverpool beat Villarreal 4-3 after trailing 2-0 inside half an hour, Georges Mikautadze scoring on four minutes and Sergi Cardona, who had never scored in this competition, adding the second on 29. Alexis Mac Allister headed one back from a corner, Ronald Araujo, on loan from Barcelona, levelled it with the last action of the first half, and after the break Mac Allister scored again and Florian Wirtz made it 4-2 before Tani Oluwaseyi's late finish at the back post made the home crowd live through a nervous finish. Liverpool's last two games in this competition have produced 16 goals, and the loudest cheer of their night was for 18-year-old Rio Ngumoha, whose running tormented Villarreal from start to finish.

Manchester City had the calmer version of the same evening. Without Erling Haaland, they beat AEK Athens 5-1 at the Etihad and Phil Foden took the night for himself. Elliot Anderson opened the scoring with his first goal for the club on 12 minutes, Foden made it 2-0 on 34, and after Stavros Pilios pulled one back for AEK early in the second half, Rayan Cherki restored the gap and Foden added two more to complete his first hat trick since April 2024. Foden had waited ten months for a goal before scoring at the weekend. He now has four in four days, and City, beaten in Paris last week, have their second win of the campaign and look like themselves again.

Naples supplied the night's second seven-goal game. Napoli beat Bodo/Glimt 4-3 for their first win of the campaign: Matteo Politano volleyed them in front inside a minute, Jens Petter Hauge equalised, and Scott McTominay restored the lead before half time. The Norwegians kept coming back, Andreas Helmersen levelling again, but McTominay headed Napoli in front once more, an Odin Bjortuft own goal gave them breathing room, and Sondre Fet's stoppage time header set up a frantic finish. In Rome it was all far straighter, Roma beating Slovan Bratislava 4-0 through Mario Hermoso and Nahuel Molina before half time, captain Niccolo Pisilli early in the second half and Donyell Malen before the hour.

The early kickoffs had their own drama. In Istanbul, Fenerbahce were 2-0 up inside 11 minutes through Oguz Aydin and Mason Greenwood and still did not win: Lukas Provod pulled one back after Matteo Guendouzi gave the ball away in his own area, and substitute Pavel Kacor equalised in the 90th minute to give Slavia Prague a 2-2 draw, their first point of the campaign, leaving both clubs winless. In Baku, Serhou Guirassy scored twice as Borussia Dortmund won 2-1 at Sabah, Aden McCarthy heading the Azerbaijani side level in between. Stuttgart drew 1-1 with Atletico Madrid, Jamie Leweling's opener cancelled out by Julian Alvarez, his first goal since his summer stand-off with the club, on a night when Atletico also had Morten Hjulmand sent off. And in Porto came the quietest scoreline of a very loud night, Guus Til scoring the only goal as PSV won 1-0 away.

Tuesday's results in full: Sabah 1-2 Borussia Dortmund, Fenerbahce 2-2 Slavia Prague, Liverpool 4-3 Villarreal, Manchester City 5-1 AEK Athens, Napoli 4-3 Bodo/Glimt, Paris Saint-Germain 4-2 Barcelona, Porto 0-1 PSV Eindhoven, Roma 4-0 Slovan Bratislava, Stuttgart 1-1 Atletico Madrid.

Three rounds in, the league phase has a shape. PSG and Liverpool sit on nine points from three games, the perfect starts, and they have arrived there by opposite routes, Paris by overpowering the form team in Spain, Liverpool by surviving games that keep threatening to run away from them. Barcelona's defeat, their first in any competition after eleven straight wins, leaves them on six points, level with a Manchester City side that suddenly looks deep enough to win heavily without its number nine. Our call is that the injuries are the result inside the result. PSG won the night's biggest game and lost Dembele, Kvaratskhelia and Marquinhos during it, while Barcelona have now gone 18 Champions League games without a clean sheet. If those two trends hold into the winter, the favourite for this competition may not be the team that won on Tuesday. It may be the one that got through the night intact.