UEFA Champions League PREVIEW 8 Sep 2026: Mourinho meets Chivu at the Bernabeu as the league phase opens, with suspensions decided by 'the algorithm'

The league phase opens on Tuesday with a reunion at the top of the bill: Real Madrid against Inter Milan, Jose Mourinho against Cristian Chivu. Madrid go in short-handed — Football Italia reports they "will be without summer signing Bernardo Silva plus Edoardo Camavinga and Arda Guler through suspension" — and Mourinho would not say how he covers it: "I'm not going to comment on it. Sorry... The three [Bernardo, Camavinga, and Guler] won't be there. The algorithm has decided." His side are smarting from "a 1-0 away defeat to Real Betis in La Liga", while Chivu's Inter arrive "brimming with confidence after pulling off a dramatic 3-2 victory over SSC Napoli at the San Siro." Porto host Manchester City on the back of what Sports Mole calls "a five-game winning streak, scoring 11 goals and conceding just one" — but without Jan Bednarek, "who serves a one-game ban for the red card he received in last season's Europa League quarter-final second-leg loss to Nottingham Forest", and without Victor Froholdt, who "was knocked unconscious against Moreirense and had to be rushed to hospital." Enzo Maresca hinted Erling Haaland may sit: "we need to protect Erling because, again, the season is very long."

Club Brugge against Aston Villa is a meeting of opposite moods. Villa are, per Football Whispers, "winless in their first three games of the league season", and the same source frames Unai Emery's counterweight: he "has often excelled in Europe, with his five Europa League medals standing as evidence of his abilities" — with Amadou Onana out long-term and "ex-PSG winger Ibrahim Mbaye pushing for a start." Ivan Leko's Brugge lean on Nicolo Tresoldi, "looking to score for the fourth time this campaign." At Dortmund, Niko Kovac "will be without at least eight of his first-team stars" against a Villarreal side that has "lost back-to-back games and are winless in four competitive fixtures this season" — and Arsenal loanee Ethan Nwaneri is expected to be held back as "a big weapon off the bench." Dortmund's warm-up act was a comeback: "despite trailing by two goals with only 30 minutes left on the clock, BVB were able to engineer a comeback by scoring three times in 25 minutes."

Two debuts round out the night. Lille's new head coach Davide Ancelotti gets his first Champions League match in charge anywhere — "Now I hope to write my own story in this competition, under my own name" — against a Real Betis side back at this level "for the first time since suffering a group stage exit in the 2005-06 edition", with Dani Ceballos possibly in a matchday squad again but "only fit enough for a place on the bench", and Diego Llorente and Abde Ezzalzouli staying home. And AEK Athens against LASK is, per The Football Faithful, "a genuinely novel encounter" — the clubs "have no documented history of competitive meetings" — with AEK "returning to the competition after eight years" under Marko Nikolic, and LASK striker Christoph Lang setting the visitors' terms in his own words: "Wir treten in der Champions League nicht nur an, um einfach mitzuspielen, sondern, um etwas Zahlbares mitzunehmen" — we are not here just to take part, but to take something countable home.