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A Fermin López hat-trick and two goals from Marcus Rashford powered Barcelona to a commanding 6-1 Champions League victory over Olympiakos, while Ousmane Dembélé scored on his return to the Paris Saint-Germain side as they won 7-2 away to Bayer Leverkusen in a battle of two 10-man teams.
The match got off to a flying start when the 22-year-old López opened the scoring from a rebound in the seventh minute and he doubled his tally in the 39th, finishing off a lightning-quick counterattack.
Olympiakos had a glimmer of hope early in the second half when Ayoub El Kaabi cut the deficit to 2-1 with a penalty, but the visiting side’s momentum was short-lived as Santiago Hezze was controversially sent off in the 57th minute for a second yellow card.
The decision incensed Olympiakos but gave Barcelona a numerical advantage they made the most of, as Lamine Yamal fired home their third from the penalty spot after Rashford was fouled in the box in the 68th minute, with the Englishman adding his own name to the scoresheet in the 74th from inside the area.
López completed his hat-trick three minutes later before Rashford then wrapped up the rout with his second goal in the 79th minute following a swift counterattack.
“We needed a win like this ahead of Saturday’s el clásico against Real Madrid,” López told Movistar Plus. “My first hat-trick with Barca is just a dream come true. We’re going into to el clásico feeling very positive. It’s a very important game for the club, for us and for the Barça fans.”
Paris Saint-Germain scored three times in seven minutes at the end of a rollercoaster first half on the way to crushing Bayer Leverkusen, after both teams played with 10 men for almost an hour.
PSG took a seventh-minute lead through Willian Pacho’s far-post header. Leverkusen had the chance to level with Alejandro Grimaldo’s 25th-minute penalty but the Spaniard hit the post and it got worse for the hosts when their captain, Robert Andrich, was sent off for elbowing Désiré Doué in the 32nd minute. However, PSG went down to 10 men when Illia Zabarnyi felled Christian Kofane to give the hosts another spot-kick.
Aleix García equalised but Leverkusen’s joy only lasted three minutes, with Doué putting the visitors back in front before Khvicha Kvaratskhelia made it 3-1 with a shot off a post and Doué struck again.
Nuno Mendes slotted home to make it 5-1 in the 50th minute before García pulled a goal back four minutes later, but Dembélé, the Ballon D’Or winner, scored in the 66th minute with an easy tap-in and Vitinha completed the rout.
PSV Eindhoven’s Dennis Man scored twice as the home side handed Napoli a 6-2 thrashing after coming from a goal down to get their first win in this season’s Champions League.
Scott McTominay put the Italians ahead in the 31st minute but the Dutch champions swept into a 2-1 lead within seven minutes as Alessandro Buongiorno put the ball into his own net and then Ismael Saibari scored on the counterattack.
After half-time Man netted twice as PSV took advantage of a frenzied atmosphere at the Philips Stadion to advance to four points from three games, one more than the Serie A champions.
Napoli’s Lorenzo Lucca was sent off 14 minutes from time for protesting to add to the visitors’ woes, although McTominay scored their second five minutes from time from a corner.
But straight from the restart Couhaib Driouech set up the substitute Ricardo Pepi to score with his first kick of the game and within a minute Driouech got one himself with a thumping strike at the end of a series of swift one-touch passes.
Felix Nmecha scored in each half as Borussia Dortmund overcame conceding an own goal to comfortably beat FC Copenhagen 4-2. Nmecha pulled off a superb dummy on the edge of the area before rifling home the opener in the 20th minute, but Dortmund were pegged back when the defender Ramy Bensebaini’s attempted clearance ricocheted off Waldemar Anton and into the visitors’ net 13 minutes later.
Dortmund regained the lead through a Bensebaini penalty in the 61st minute before Nmecha grabbed his second, and Fábio Silva scored his first goal for Dortmund to give them a 4-1 lead. Viktor Dadason, 17, came off the bench to score his first senior goal with a header for Copenhagen in the 90th minute but it was too little, too late.
Francesco Esposito made up for an earlier horror miss to score his first Champions League goal as Inter thumped Union Saint-Gilloise 4-0 in Brussels to make it three wins from three in the competition this season.
Denzel Dumfries fired in the first goal for Inter from close range after he was left unmarked in the box, before the prolific Lautaro Martínez swept the ball into the top corner from 15 yards just before half-time.
Kevin Mac Allister, brother of the Liverpool midfielder Alexis, handled the ball in the box and Hakan Calhanoglu easily slotted the spot-kick into the bottom-left corner.
It should have been 4-0 when Dumfries set up Esposito for a tap-in from five yards but the 20-year-old striker somehow missed the target for what will go down as one of the misses of the season in the Champions League. But Esposito did net his third goal for the club, and first in the Champions League, as he slid in and connected with Ange-Yoan Bonny’s low cross to spare his earlier blushes.
The early game between Kairat Almaty and the Cypriot team Pafos finished 0-0, despite the visitors’ João Correia being sent off after only four minutes in Kazakhstan. Pafos had an own goal by Kairat’s goalkeeper, Temirlan Anarbekov, ruled out because of an offside in the buildup.
In the games involving English sides, Arsenal won 4-0 at home to Atlético Madrid, Newcastle beat Benfica 3-0 at St James’ Park, and Erling Haaland scored for the ninth straight club game as Manchester City won 2-0 at Villarreal.
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