Real Betis waited more than two decades for another Champions League campaign. Then Lille made them chase the game twice. Two goals from Marc Bartra and a winner from Troy Parrott turned their return into a 3–2 away victory.
Betis’s last Champions League campaign ended in the group stage in 2005–06. They now have an eight-match league phase to navigate, and their first three points came through persistence rather than defensive security. Manuel Pellegrini’s side had problems defending its own penalty area, but a center-back proved decisive inside Lille’s.
Ayase Ueda put Lille ahead before Bartra met Pablo Fornals’ delivery to equalize in the 33rd minute. Alexsandro restored the home side’s lead three minutes later. Bartra headed in again from Isco’s delivery shortly after halftime. Both equalizers came from a defender who kept finding room among Lille’s markers.
Parrott completed the turnaround in the 53rd minute. Ethan Mbappé’s dismissal followed three minutes later, leaving Lille to pursue an equalizer with 10 players. Betis had already done the work of overturning the deficit before gaining that numerical advantage. Parrott had also scored the only goal against Real Madrid four days earlier, making this his second winning contribution in two very different matches.
Pellegrini has been in charge since 2020, overseeing a European progression that brought Betis to the Conference League final in 2025 and the Europa League quarterfinals the following season. The Champions League is a further step up, but this isn’t a team discovering European football from scratch.
Madrid and City find different ways through
Real Madrid’s 2–1 victory over Inter carried a different kind of return. José Mourinho began the European campaign of his second Madrid spell against the club he led to the 2010 treble. Kylian Mbappé scored in the 14th minute and Federico Valverde added another nine minutes later, punishing Inter’s errors and giving Madrid an early two-goal lead at the Bernabéu.
Inter didn’t disappear at 2–0. Both teams created chances after halftime, and Carlos Augusto’s 77th-minute goal left Madrid protecting a much narrower advantage. The win answered the defeat at Betis, but the closing stages were a better guide to the contest’s balance than Madrid’s early lead. Mourinho had his three points without a performance that made Inter look out of place.
Manchester City had to wait until after halftime to break through at Porto. Erling Haaland headed in Enzo Fernández’s cross in the 47th minute, then scored again in stoppage time to complete a 2–0 win. City were the only one of the night’s six winners to finish with a two-goal margin, and even that separation came late.
Enzo Maresca gave midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi his first City start, while Haaland reached another scoring milestone. His double moved him to third on City’s all-time scoring list, behind Sergio Agüero and Eric Brook.
Aston Villa’s 3–2 win at Club Brugge supplied a breakthrough of its own: their first victory of the season. John McGinn, Emiliano Buendía and Nicolas Jackson all scored before halftime, with Jackson opening his account for the club. Pau Torres assisted both McGinn and Jackson, making a defender central to another winning attack.
Villa still had to protect what they’d built. Hugo Vetlesen had briefly brought Brugge level in the first half, and Nicolò Tresoldi’s penalty after the break reduced Villa’s lead to one. Unai Emery’s team left with three points, but without the comfortable second half its three-goal opening had offered.
Borussia Dortmund also won 3–2, against Villarreal. After Renato Veiga’s own goal and Santiago Mouriño’s equalizer, Serhou Guirassy scored twice late on, including a penalty. He then put through his own net in stoppage time, narrowing the margin without changing the result.
Dortmund’s evening also included a medical concern. The club said Konstantinos Karetsas was being taken to the hospital for further examinations after leaving the field in the first half, and that he was doing well in the circumstances.
AEK Athens beat LASK 1–0 through Răzvan Marin’s first-half free kick. Five matches finished with a single goal separating the teams. For Betis, more than two decades separated Champions League campaigns. Eight second-half minutes separated a losing position from a winning one.
