- - Champions League sends Real Madrid, Bayern to new places and returns Mourinho to old home Chelsea

GRAHAM DUNBARSeptember 29, 2025 at 6:56 AM

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1 / 5APTOPIX Spain Soccer La LigaBarcelona's Robert Lewandowski, top, celebrates with Lamine Yamal scoring his side's 2nd goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match between FC Barcelona and Real Sociedad at the Lluis Companys Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, Spain, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Joan Monfort)

GENEVA (AP) — The Champions League sends its top-ranked teams to new places this week and revisits the Barcelona-Paris Saint-Germain rivalry that is among the more storied in its modern era.

José Mourinho also returns to Stamford Bridge, his home in two spells coaching Chelsea, for his first Champions League game coaching Benfica.

In 71 seasons of the European Cup and Champions League, record 15-time title winner Real Madrid never went to Kazakhstan where it plays Kairat Almaty on Tuesday.

That’s a meeting of No. 151 vs. No. 1 in the UEFA club rankings on the same day No. 2 Bayern Munich has a rare trip to Cyprus to face No. 91 Pafos, another competition newcomer.

Tottenham already went inside the Arctic Circle to face Bodo/Glimt — winning in the Europa League semifinals in May — and returns for the Norwegian champion’s first home game in the main stage of the Champions League.

The standout game Wednesday is Barcelona hosting PSG in a matchup immortalized by “La Remontada” in 2017.

Barcelona superstar Lamine Yamal seems fit after a groin injury to start his first game since placing second in the Ballon d’Or voting to Ousmane Dembélé, who is still out for PSG after being injured on France duty this month.

While Dembélé skips this reunion in the city where he spent six years before coming to Paris, PSG coach Luis Enrique goes back to the club he led to his first Champions League title, in 2015.

Barcelona vs PSG

A heavyweight clash that will always conjure memories of Barcelona’s epic 6-1 win in March 2017, to overturn a 4-0 first-leg loss in Paris and advance to the quarterfinals.

That was the last season of the stellar Barcelona forward line of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar, who after that season would join PSG for a world record transfer fee — money Barcelona invested in buying Dembélé from Borussia Dortmund.

Less well remembered is that PSG has since been back twice for knockout rounds games — and won 4-1 each time after trailing to eliminate Barcelona.

In 2021, Kylian Mbappe scored a hat trick in a Round of 16 game played in an empty Camp Nou because of health restrictions in the COVID-19 pandemic. In the quarterfinals in ’24, Mbappe scored just twice in a game that swung on an early red card for Barcelona defender Ronald Araújo.

Wild weekend

A game to watch should be Atletico Madrid hosting Eintracht Frankfurt judging by their freewheeling wins in domestic league games Saturday.

Atletico humbled Real Madrid 5-2 in the city derby after trailing 2-1 in the first half.

Eintracht led 5-0 at half time at Borussia Mönchengladbach, and quickly added a sixth for what looked a cruise to the finish. Gladbach started its fightback in the 72nd and kept adding goals into stoppage time of what ended as a wild 6-4 win for the visitors.

Belgium’s breakout

The fourth newcomer in this season’s edition, Belgian champion Union Saint-Gilloise, impressed in a 3-1 opening win at PSV Eindhoven.

That’s how it has been for Belgium this season. Club Brugge won four straight games in the qualifying rounds than started the league phase easing past Monaco 4-1.

Union hosts Newcastle in an early kickoff Wednesday in what should be a special game for its captain Christian Burgess, now in his sixth season with the unheralded club from Brussels.

In his home country England, Burgess played all but one game in his career with teams in the third and fourth tiers. That one game in the second-tier Championship was with Middlesbrough, a rival of Newcastle in the northeast.

Brugge plays Tuesday at Atalanta.

Borrowed stadiums

Barcelona, Pafos, Qarabag and Union Saint-Gilloise all host games away from their usual stadiums.

For Barcelona fans, hosting PSG in the city’s Olympic Stadium means finally going in big numbers to see their team play its highest-profile home game in the first half of the season.

The long-running, $1.75-billion Camp Nou renovation is still not resolved, so Barcelona played its first two La Liga home games in front of a combined attendance of fewer than 12,000 at the club’s training ground.

When PSG visits, Barcelona will be back in the city’s 50,000-seat Olympic Stadium it used for the past two seasons and for a 2-1 win Sunday against Real Sociedad.

Camp Nou should have its safety permissions from local authorities before the Oct. 21 visit of Olympiakos.

Still, Barcelona will need a UEFA exemption from the Champions League rule requiring teams to use only one home stadium in the league phase.

Pafos, Qarabag and Union all have small stadiums that do not meet UEFA standards for the Champions League. Pafos will host Bayern in Limassol and Union is staying in Brussels to use Anderlecht’s stadium in the Champions League.

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