Champions League: Five things you might have missed on Tuesday, including Zack Steffen’s UCL debut

On a Champions League night that saw Atletico Madrid progress to the knockout stages and Ajax and Liverpool make history, let’s take a look at some stories you might have missed.

Steffen launches UCL

Pep Guardiola hands American goalkeeper Zack Steffen his Champions League debut during Manchester City’s 2-1 loss to RB Leipzig.

The 26-year-old, who has 26 USMNT caps, made some great saves, including diving low on the left to deny Konrad Laimer a shot on goal.

Steffen is the 9th American player to feature in the UCL group stage this season. And that number could be 10 if Club Brugge’s Owen Otasowie comes on from the bench in the 4-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain.

Mbappe earns another record

Kylian Mbappe became the youngest player to reach 30 goals in the Champions League, beating the record set by teammate Lionel Messi.

Mbappe scored twice in just seven minutes in PSG’s comfortable win over Brugge at the Parc des Princes.

The French striker scored 30 goals at UCL aged 22 years and 352 days, while Messi was 23 years and 131 days old when he reached the same milestone in 2010.

Messi also scored twice in the match on either side to Brugge’s consolation. His first goal was a delicate left-footed finish, while the second was a penalty he chose to take rather than give Mbappe a chance to complete his hat-trick.

Haller scores a first Champions League

It’s been an incredible debut season in the UCL for Sebastien Haller. The Ivorian scored the opening goal in Ajax’s 4-2 win over Sporting to become the fastest player to reach 10 goals at UCL.

Haller, who also scored four goals against Sporting in his first game, is now the top scorer in the Champions League and has scored in every game weekly. He is the second player to do this after Cristiano Ronaldo in the 2017/18 season.

Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski plays against Barcelona on Wednesday – a match you can watch on Paramount+ at 3 p.m. ET. The German player has nine goals so far. If he scores twice, he will equal Ronaldo’s record for most goals in the group stage set in 2015-16 with Real Madrid.

As for Ajax, they became the first Dutch team to win all six group stage matches at UCL. And on a historic night, Liverpool also finished with a perfect record after a 2-1 victory over Milan and were the first English team to achieve this feat.

Red cards a lot

There were six red cards handed out on Tuesday – the most ever in a game day at UCL.

You have to go back to October 21, 2009, to find another day of equally poor discipline, when Bayern lost nine men to Bordeaux.

Three of those sent-offs were during Atletico Madrid’s 3-0 win over Porto. Yannick Carrasco saw red for Diego Simeone’s side before Wendell and Agustin Marchesin were dropped for the home side. Pepe was also involved in a brawl with 42 men that will no doubt be mentioned in the UEFA report.

Elsewhere, Kyle Walker (Manchester City), Welinton (Besiktas) and Nicolo Barella (Inter) also witnessed red in a tense and heated evening.

Real Madrid reach 1,000 UCL goals

Real Madrid are the first club to score 1,000 goals in the Champions League and Champions League, excluding qualifying.

Toni Kroos brought home an important milestone when the 13-time championship team defeated Inter with a score of 2-0 at the Bernabeu. Real took only 455 matches to achieve an impressive record with an average of 2.2 goals / game.

Meanwhile, Luka Modric was named MVP of the match in his 100th appearance at UCL.