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⚽️ Champions League news from the 5. 45pm GMT kick-off

⚽️ Live scores | Today’s Football Daily | Follow on Bluesky 58 min Arsenal have curbed Leverkusen’s enthusiasm and are starting to dominate possession again. Martinelli is fouled just outside the area on the left by Poku, who has his name taken. 56 min “That didn’t seem like a particularly tricksy corner from Leverkusen, and yet they scored, ” writes Kári Tulinius. “It half makes me wonder if the meat chess that is the modern Premier League dead-ball situation has left English defences unused to dealing with a normal set piece. ” MEAT CHESS! That’s the football phrase of the year. Might be the phrase of the year full stop. 54 min Scott Murray has the team news ahead of Real Madrid v Manchester City. 53 min No response yet from Arsenal. In fact Leverkusen are the busier, more purposeful side just now. 49 min That goal led to a (friendly) exchange between Leverkusen head coach Kasper Hjulmand and Arsenal’s set-piece coach, I forget his name. 48 min Well that’s changed the mood. It was a temporary reprieve for Arsenal. The resulting corner, on the right, was curled extravagantly beyond the far post by Grimaldo. Andrich arrived late, peculiarly unmarked, and headed decisively past Raya. Leverkusen almost take the lead inside 10 seconds. Kofane finds Grimaldo, whose early cross is headed towards goal by the leaping Terrier and pawed over the bar by Raya. That’s a fabulous save. 46 min The second half is under way. Half-time reading Heard the one about the game that produced 36 red cards? Lots of probing, not much penetration. Gabriel Martinelli came closest to scoring when he hit the bar after a crisp Arsenal move. At the other end, Leverkusen’s teenage striker Christian Kofane caught the eye without creating anything of note. 45+1 min Nowt comes of the corner. There will be two minutes of added time. 45 min Kofane has a 20-yard shot blocked by Saliba after a quick Leverkusen break. Maza backs up the play and wins a corner. 43 min “Bayer’s almost invincible team feels like it came and went so fast, ” writes Zach Neeley. “Their manager has already left and been fired from that new job*, Ange was fired by Forest a while ago and he started mid-season! Compared to all that, Arsenal slowly building for a few years before winning the league would be positively old-fashioned. ”* Possibly to next take over Liverpool, where Klopp’s replacement has already won the league and lost his way(ish) 41 min Gyokeres turns smartly and finds Eze. He feeds Martinelli, whose nothing cross is booted clear. Gyokeres has looked sharp tonight. 39 min Both teams continue to play with their guard up. You can understand why. Leverkusen are wary of Arsenal’s quality; Arsenal know they have home advantage in the second leg. 38 min “I was sad to see that Chris the Sheep passed away in 2019, while Arsenal were still languishing under Unai Emery, ” writes Russel E. “I must sheepishly report that I’m not watching the match, since it’s the middle of the workday over here in the US. I usually flock to the local pub with one of my fellow Arsenal fans to watch the Champions League matches, but it’s a busy day, and I’d be in baaad shape at work if I did so today. So thank ewe for the match updates, and apologises for ramming in so many puns! ” That’s a pretty good innings, to be fair, given he was in that Father Ted episode with Fargo Boyle and Hud Hastings in spring 1998. 36 min No corners at either end so far. I never thought I’d type that in an MBM but it’s relevant given Arsenal’s set-piece magnificence. 32 min Leverkusen are having their best spell of the game and seeing lots of the ball. 30 min Kofane wins the ball off Rice 25 yards from the Arsenal goal, sparking an attack that ends with a whipped cross-shot from Garcia (I think) that flashes wide of the far post. Raya knew it was going wide and pulled his hand away. 29 min Christian Kofane, the young Cameroon international, continues to stand out a mile in a fairly scruffy game. His movement, awareness and link play are so mature for a 19-year-old. And he’s not hardly against a bunch of clowns. 26 min Martinelli is booked for a cynical foul on Palacios. 25 min “If there is one thing that Mikel Arteta (anagram: A Title Maker) has instilled as a philosophy, it is if you want to win you should start by not losing, ” writes Krishnamoorthy V. “Score if you can, but do not concede. ” The evolution of this team, from the intrepid optimists of 2022-23 to the grizzled winners of 2025-26, is fascinating. I suspect the 4-1 spanking at Man City changed Arteta in the same way the 3-1 defeat to Benfica in 1991 changed George Graham. 23 min Gabriel, like Chris the Sheep, is fine. 21 min The impressive Kofane, just 19 years old, drops deep and finds the roaming Quansah, who moves inside and whacks a shot from 25 yards with his left foot. It’s blocked by the neck of the stooping Gabriel, who stays down and needs treatment. Timber arrows a low cross that is neatly dummied by Eze and reaches Gyokeres just inside the area. He moves it across to Martinelli, who splatters a rising drive against the crossbar with his left foot. That would have been a really nice goal. 18 min No attempts on goal yet for Arsenal. They’re a patient side so I doubt they’ll be losing any sleep over that particular statistic. 15 min The lively Kofane makes a good channel run and lays the ball back to Maza, who spanks high and wide from the left edge of the area. 14 min The last man Gabriel farts around and is dispossessed by Kofane, but he has a long way to travel to goal and there’s plenty of time for Rice to get back and intercept. 12 min Saka beats his man* with ease on the right, only to deliver a cutback straight to the feet of Palacios. * Yes, this is short for ‘I don’t know who it was’ 10 min It’s been a fairly quiet start. The brighest spark so far has been Gyokeres, who drew those two fouls from Andrich and has had some nice build-up touches. 8 min “It’s strange that some players and teams make a weirdly strong impression on us, ” writes Matt Dony. “Bayer Leverkusen are, to me, forever frozen in the 2001-02 season, upsetting odds at every stage. “Michael Ballack is forever selling the world’s biggest dummy to Steven Gerrard, who is still sliding in a vain attempt to block the shot that didn’t come (rather than the one that did). Gary Neville eternally watching his World Cup disappear with a broken metatarsal (paging Danny Mills). “Hans-Jorg Butt perpetually watching Zidane score the third-best volley in a Champions League final. (Mc Manaman and Bale, since you asked. ) no one’s expecting them to get to the final now, but no one was expecting them to do it back then, either. Hoping for a good game, with something we can still talk about in 24 years’ time. ” Perhaps even some cigarettes and booze. 7 min An efficient Leverkusen counter-attack ends with a long-range drive from Kofane that is too close to Raya. Comfortable save. 5 min Andrich gets a final warning from the referee after another foul on Gyokeres. A more officious referee might have sent him off there. 4 min Saka shoots into the crowd and well wide of the far post. Replays show it took a touch off a Leverkusen defender but a goalkick was given. 2 min Nice play from Gyokeres, who rolls Andrich just outside the area and is rugby tackled. Yellow card and a free-kick in a good position for Arsenal. It might be slightly too wide for a shot. 1 min Peep peep. Arsenal kick off from right to left as we watch. Read today’s Football Daily Mikel Arteta on the possibility of a quadruple double quotation mark No, I don’t use that phrase, don’t talk about it. I don’t know what the players talk about when I’m not there. We all know the difficulty of every competition. We are changing from competition to competition every three days. We’ve done so well, and we need to continue to do that. The players on a yellow card Bayer Leverkusen Aleix Garcia and Christian Kofane. Arsenal Christian Norgaard. Competitive balance across Europe’s leagues would be transformed with the adoption of a new model for distributing revenue from the Champions League and other Uefa club competitions, according to a proposal by the Union of European Clubs (UEC). Clubs competing in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League benefit this season from a bumper €3. 317bn (£2. 87bn) prize pot, culled from annual €4. 4bn revenue primarily generated by media rights sales. Only €308m of the latter figure is divided among clubs who did not reach those competitions, in the form of solidarity payments. Kai Havertz has said the knee injury that forced him to miss the first half of the season was the most painful experience of his life but that it has given him “new hunger” to win trophies with Arsenal. The Germany forward missed more than 20 games after having surgery on the injury he picked up on the opening day of the season in the victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford. Havertz, who will face his former club Bayer Leverkusen for the first time since leaving for Chelsea in 2020 in the first leg of the Champions League last-16 tie on Wednesday, was also absent for a significant portion of last season because of a hamstring problem. The 26-year-old’s return has been managed carefully by Mikel Arteta in recent weeks but Havertz is confident that his fitness difficulties are behind him after a testing 12 months. “For me it was just tough because I never felt that pain before in my life and it just came randomly, ” he said. Arsenal’s XI is as expected. There’s one change from their last Premier League game, a 1-0 win at Brighton a week ago. The fit-again William Saliba replaces Cristhian Mosquera in defence. Kai Havertz is on the bench against his old club. Leverkusen’s side includes the England international Jarell Quansah. They make one change from the 3-3 draw with Freiburg at the weekend: Exequiel Palacios comes into the midfield in place of Equi Fernandez. Bayer Leverkusen (3-4-2-1) Blaswich; Quansah, Andrich, Tapsoba; Poku, Palacios, Garcia, Grimaldo; Terriera, Maza; Kofane. Subs: Omlin, Lomb, Fernandez, Hofmann, Tilmann, Schick, Oermann, Tape, Culbreath. Arsenal (4-3-3) Raya; Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie; Eze, Zubimendi, Rice; Saka, Gyokeres, Martinelli. Subs: Arrizabalaga, Ranson, Mosquera, White, Jesus, Norgaard, Madueke, Havertz, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Dowman, Salmon. Referee Umut Meler (Turkey). Cruyff’s Ajax, Messi’s Barcelona, Rice’s Arsenal. Stein, Michels, Ferguson, Arteta. The Dark Side of the Moon, The Very Best of The Beatles, Arsenal 2025-26 highlights DVD. Total Football, tiki-taka, hugging the goalie at corners. Get ready. Make room among the greats. It may just be coming. And yes, you can laugh at this on the internet. You can pull-quote excerpts with mocking emojis. Throw in some Niles from Frasier has really lost it stuff. You can point, with justification, to the fact these other people, the actual greats, did it for a long time, not just one year. But the fact is we are now very close to a reckoning up. And should this happen, it will be impossible on the basic numbers to exclude the current Arsenal team from a list of the greatest to have played the game. The head-to-head These teams have met only twice, both times during the second group stage of the 2001-02 Champions League. A swaggering Arsenal side battered Leverkusen 4-1 at home, then conceded a very late equaliser in a 1-1 draw in Germany. It proved crucial: Leverkusen ultimately went through and reached the final; Arsenal, imperious domestically, failed to reach the knockout stage. Hello and welcome to live, minute-by-minute coverage of the first leg of the Champions League clash between Bayer Leverkusen and Arsenal in Germany. Arsenal, runawayish leaders in the Premier League, are strong favourites to reach their third consecutive Champions League quarter-final. That’s happened only once before, between 2007-08 and 2009-10, and would be another marker of their undeniable progress under Mikel Arteta. While Arsenal topped the league stage with a perfect record of eight wins from eight, Leverkusen finished 16th and had to go into the playoffs. They won that pretty comfortably, beating Olympiacos 2-0 on aggregate, but they are a long way from the glories of two seasons ago. Tonight is a chance to hit the heights again. Kick off 5. 45pm GMT.