ISTANBUL – Liverpool twice found a lead and twice lost it before Vedat Muriqi’s header completed Fenerbahce’s comeback on Wednesday. On the same Champions League night, Como turned an away fixture at Lens into a record-breaking rout and Real Madrid escaped Athens with another late winner.
Fenerbahce beat Liverpool 3-2, ending the visitors’ perfect start in Europe. Como won 9-1 in France, the biggest away victory in Champions League history, while Federico Valverde’s stoppage-time strike gave Madrid a 3-2 win against AEK Athens.
The results exposed three very different ways a match can turn. Liverpool failed to protect two advantages, Madrid recovered from two deficits, and Como kept adding goals long after their contest had ceased to be competitive. The distinction matters beyond the spectacle: an eight-goal margin carries the same three points as a last-minute winner.
Liverpool’s official match report traced the defeat to a closing spell in which Fenerbahce punished deliveries into the penalty area. Archie Brown arrived unmarked at the far post to meet an N’Golo Kante cross following a short corner. Muriqi then headed in a deep ball after a short throw-in, finding the bottom corner with a little more than 10 minutes remaining.
Trey Nyoni had given Liverpool their first lead before Mason Greenwood’s deflected free-kick brought Fenerbahce level. Substitute Alexander Isak restored the advantage in the second half, but that lead also disappeared. Liverpool created late half-chances for Cody Gakpo and Isak without finding an equaliser.
Isak acknowledged the performance had fallen below the required standard in an interview with the club. His first Champions League goal for Liverpool became a secondary detail: the evening ended with their first defeat in the competition this season and nine points from four matches.
Como’s result in Lens belonged to a different category. UEFA confirmed that the 9-1 victory equalled the largest winning margin in the modern Champions League and established its biggest away win. Liverpool’s 8-0 home victory against Besiktas in 2007 and Madrid’s 8-0 home win against Malmo in 2015 also produced eight-goal margins.
The record needs that distinction. Como did not establish a larger winning margin than those two teams. They matched it away from home and became only the second side, after Bayern Munich, to score nine goals in a Champions League match.
Tasos Douvikas scored a hat-trick for Cesc Fabregas’s team. Six other Como players also found the net, a distribution that underlined how the damage extended beyond one striker. The competition debutants left France with a result that placed their first European campaign in the record book.
Madrid’s escape at AEK was much narrower. Jude Bellingham’s backheel cancelled out Aboubakary Koita’s opener, but Stavros Pilios restored the home side’s lead with 15 minutes remaining. Kylian Mbappe equalised three minutes later before Valverde decided the match in added time.
UEFA’s match coverage described a dramatic turnaround against an AEK team that had pushed Madrid close. Bellingham provided the inventive finish, but Valverde supplied the goal that turned a draw into a fourth straight league-phase victory.
The results followed another eventful round of Champions League comebacks. This time Liverpool were on the losing side of the reversal. In Istanbul, the final decisive contact belonged to Muriqi, rising to meet a delivery Liverpool had failed to stop.
