Champions League holders Real Madrid face Lille
The Stade Pierre-Mauroy will host the first ever meeting between Lille and Real Madrid in the Champions League today.
Reigning champions Real Madrid made the perfect start, beating Stuttgart on matchday one, while Lille returned to the top table of European football with defeat in Portugal.
In what has been an unbeaten start so far for Real Madrid, they backed up their opening day victory in this competition with two more wins over Espanyol and Alaves.
In one of the biggest games of the season at the weekend though, Los Blancos dropped two points late on in an ill-tempered affair with bitter rivals Atletico Madrid.
Crowd trouble saw the game halted briefly in the second half with Real leading 1-0, but Atletico came back out and found a late leveller, with Angel Correa scoring five minutes into added time.
Attention will now switch to their favourite competition, as the 15-time winners travel to France hoping to end a current two-game losing run in the country, both of which came against Paris Saint-Germain.
Real are unbeaten in 14 Champions League games though winning 10 and they could equal the streak they recorded between April 2016 and May 2017, when they went 15 undefeated under Zinedine Zidane, if they pick up a result here.
Lille will hope they can be the club to halt that run though, and they will be pleased to have ended a recent winless streak at the weekend heading into this huge fixture for the club.
Bruno Genesio’s men were the only French outfit not to win on matchday one, as they fell to a 2-0 defeat away to Sporting Lisbon, and they responded by dropping more points in the league a few days later.
Their most recent encounter with a Spanish side also ended in victory, as they defeated Sevilla 2-1 in this competition in 2021, which at the time ended a run of eight without victory against clubs from the country.
Kylian Mbappe will not be able to make a quick return to France after leaving PSG over the summer, as he has been ruled out until after the international break with a thigh injury.
Lille’s home record in Europe is excellent, but they are the underdogs for good reason, and Les Dogues are set to lose four straight Champions League games for the first time since 2012.
—Sportsmole
