Goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin scored an astonishing 98th-minute header as Benfica beat Real Madrid 4-2 to keep themselves in the Champions League and deny their illustrious opponents an automatic spot in the last 16.
In an extraordinary finale on Wednesday, the Portuguese side were heading out despite leading 3-2 with seconds of stoppage time remaining before Trubin came forward for a free kick to score the goal needed to sneak into the playoff round on goal difference.
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That sparked wild celebrations from Benfica players, fans and their charismatic coach Jose Mourinho – a former manager of Real Madrid – at the Stadium of Light in Lisbon.
The Spaniards had hoped to finish in the top eight and go straight into the last 16, but their 15 points from eight games were not enough, and they finished the match with nine men as Raul Asencio and Rodrygo were sent off.
Andreas Schjelderup scored two goals for Benfica and Vangelis Pavlidis netted from the penalty spot, while Kylian Mbappe netted twice for Real in a hugely entertaining, end-to-end contest.
Benfica advance at the expense of Marseille, who lost 3-0 at Club Brugge. The giant screen in the stadium in Belgium congratulated both teams for advancing to the next stage, but that proved premature as Trubin turned the tables.
Both Benfica and Real needed a goal for different reasons going into the final minutes, and it is a vindication of the competition’s format that a single goal could have such a dramatic effect on the table.
Goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin of Benfica scores his team’s fourth goal with a header [Jose Manuel Alvarez Rey/Getty Images]
Benfica were denied two strong early penalty shots, and Real took the lead on 30 minutes against the run of play when Asencio’s cross to the back post was headed in by Mbappe.
The home side drew level six minutes later when Asencio’s slip in the wet conditions allowed Pavlidis to provide a perfect cross for Schjelderup to head into the net.
Benfica were awarded a penalty in first-half added time when Aurelien Tchouameni was adjudged to have hauled Nicolas Otamendi to the floor, and Pavlidis buried his spot-kick.
Schjelderup scored his second of the game from Pavlidis’s perfect pass to make it 3-1, before Mbappe swept home his second, too – his 36th goal of the season in all competitions.
Barcelona stormed back in the second half to claim a 4-1 victory over Copenhagen at the Camp Nou, sealing a top-eight finish and direct qualification for the last 16 of the Champions League.
Goals from Robert Lewandowski, Lamine Yamal, Raphinha and Marcus Rashford on Wednesday ensured the Catalans finished fifth in the standings on 16 points, level with Manchester City, Chelsea and Sporting but ahead on goal difference.
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Copenhagen shocked the hosts early when 17-year-old Viktor Dadason slotted the opener past Joan Garcia in the fourth minute, but the second half began with a Barcelona fightback.
Yamal set up Lewandowski to equalise in the 48th minute, before scoring himself in the 60th with a deflected effort that left Copenhagen keeper Dominik Kotarski helpless. Raphinha made it 3-1 from the penalty spot after Lewandowski was fouled, and Rashford added a fourth with a free kick in the 85th minute.
“We all came here tonight thinking about getting into the top eight. We’re very happy with the win,” 18-year-old Yamal told Movistar Plus.
“When you concede a goal in the Champions League, it’s very difficult to come back, but the team was very resilient and managed to turn it around. With the number of matches we play in a season, having two fewer matches leaves you feeling much better.”
Despite the comfortable final result, Barcelona endured a frustrating first half, during which Copenhagen took a shock lead.
Dadason stunned the home crowd after Mohamed Elyounoussi delivered a defence-splitting pass, allowing Dadason to outrun Barca’s high defensive line before rifling a low shot past keeper Garcia.
Clearly unsettled, Barcelona were wasteful in attack during the opening 45 minutes. Raphinha and Lewandowski spurned opportunities to equalise, while Eric Garcia came closest to levelling when his driven effort struck the crossbar in the 33rd minute.
The second half, however, saw a completely transformed Barcelona.
Barely three minutes after the restart, Yamal burst forward on a counterattack, darting past Copenhagen defenders before unselfishly squaring the ball for Lewandowski to slot into an empty net.
The hosts seized control and upped the tempo, pinning Copenhagen deep inside their own half, and Barca took the lead on the hour mark through Yamal, whose deflected shot from inside the box looped over a stranded Kotarski and nestled into the far corner.
Raphinha made it 3-1 from the penalty spot in the 69th minute after Lewandowski was brought down inside the area while attempting to shoot, and substitute Rashford wrapped up the scoring.
Although Barcelona delivered a clinical attacking display, questions remain about their defensive organisation. They completed the league phase without a clean sheet and finished with the worst defence among the top 13 teams.
Paris Saint-Germain’s Ousmane Dembele has his penalty saved by Newcastle United’s Nick Pope [Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters]
Dembele’s penalty miss costs PSG in 1-1 draw with Newcastle
Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembele had a night to forget, missing an early penalty and a golden chance from close range as defending champion Paris Saint-Germain drew 1-1 with Newcastle in the Champions League.
The draw meant both sides finished out of the top eight places in the league table and failed to qualify automatically for the last 16. They will enter the playoffs instead.
PSG was awarded an early penalty when Bradley Barcola got behind the defence down the left wing with less than one minute played. The ball hit Barcola’s arm following a tackle from a defender coming across, and then flew onto the arm of Lewis Miley right behind him.
Miley seemed unsighted, and the handball appeared accidental, but referee Slavko Vincic awarded the spot kick following a short video review.
Dembele aimed for the bottom right corner, but goalkeeper Nick Pope made a brilliant save. Pope was beaten in the eighth minute when Vitinha curled a shot into the same corner after being set up by Khvicha Kvaratskhelia on the edge of the penalty area.
Dembele, who scored 35 goals overall last season, scooped the ball well over the crossbar from 10 metres out in the 40th minute when meeting a cross from the left.
Joe Willock equalised for the visitors in first-half stoppage time, and substitute Harvey Barnes missed a chance to win it for the visitors with moments left.
Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah celebrates scoring their third goal against Qarabag [Phil Noble/Reuters]
Liverpool, Arsenal, Bayern, Sporting, Man City and Chelsea also finish UCL stage in style
Liverpool thrashed Qarabag 6-0 to end their group campaign in style and finish in third place – Alexis Mac Allister scoring twice and Mohamed Salah also among the goals.
Chelsea trailed 2-1 at Napoli but two goals by Joao Pedro earned them a 3-2 win to clinch sixth spot while defeat left Napoli down and out in 30th place.
That meant five of the six English clubs are in the last 16 and could yet be joined by Newcastle.
Portugal’s Sporting grabbed a last-gasp 3-2 win at Athletic Bilbao thanks to a goal by Alisson Santos to snatch a top-eight spot and effectively relegate Real Madrid to the playoffs.
Manchester City beat Galatasaray 2-0 at home to jump from 11th to eighth and spare themselves a repeat of last season when they failed to reach the last-16 after losing to Real Madrid in the playoffs.
Arsenal, who like Bayern Munich were already assured of a top-eight finish, became the first club in the new 36-team group format to finish with a 100% record, beating bottom club Kairat Almaty 3-2. Runners-up Bayern ended with a 2-1 victory at PSV Eindhoven that left the Dutch club eliminated.
Just like last season, UEFA’s expanded Champions League group stage has proved a masterstroke with the suspense lasting to the final seconds of the eighth round of fixtures.
Before the 18 matches kicked off only four of the 36 clubs were definitely eliminated and only Arsenal and Bayern Munich were guaranteed to be in the last 16.
Several who started outside the top eight needed wins and other results to go in their favour with Barcelona, Manchester City and Sporting seizing their chance.
Erling Haaland and Rayan Cherki were on target for City.
Inter Milan got the win they required, beating Borussia Dortmund 2-0 away but, like fellow Italians Juventus, will have to take their chances in the playoffs.
Juventus could only draw 0-0 at Monaco. Dortmund missed out on being seeded for the playoffs, ending 17th.
Nowhere was the drama more compelling than at Atletico Madrid’s Metropolitano Stadium where Diego Simeone’s side hosted Norway’s Bodo/Glimt. Atletico led through Alexander Sorloth’s goal and at one point were into the top eight but Bodo, who stunned Manchester City last week, hit back with goals by Fredrik Sjovold and Kasper Hogh for a remarkable 2-1 win to put the Arctic Circle debutants in 23rd and into the playoffs.
Atletico ended 14th and will have to be content with being one of the seeded teams in the two-legged playoffs.
Napoli and PSV Eindhoven were not the only illustrious clubs to finish below the elimination trapdoor.
Marseille had eyes on a top-16 place and a seeded playoff berth, but a 3-0 hammering at Club Brugge meant they finished 25th with Brugge grabbing a playoff spot at their expense.
Montreal, Quebec, Canada – Canadian Muslim leaders are calling for an end to Islamophobic rhetoric and fearmongering, as the country prepares to mark the nine-year anniversary of a deadly attack on a mosque in the province of Quebec.
Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said Thursday’s anniversary is a reminder that Islamophobia in Canada “is not benign”.
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“It’s something that unfortunately kills people,” Brown told Al Jazeera. “[The anniversary] forces us to remember that there’s real consequences to hatred.”
Six Muslim men were killed when a gunman opened fire at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, marking the deadliest attack on a house of worship in Canadian history.
The assault left Quebec City’s tight-knit Muslim community deeply shaken, spurred vigils and condemnation across Canada, and shone a spotlight on a global rise in anti-Muslim hate and radicalisation.
The Canadian government denounced the shooting as a “terrorist attack” against Muslims and pledged to tackle the underlying issues.
In 2021, it announced it was designating January 29 as the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action against Islamophobia.
But Brown said he was not sure whether the lessons learned after what happened in Quebec City were being fully remembered today, nearly a decade later.
“Right after the Quebec City mosque massacre, there really was a desire in society to try to mend some of the wounds and build some bridges,” he said.
“Unfortunately, what a lot of people are seeing [now] – and especially for Muslims that live in Quebec – … is a massive return to using Islamophobia and spreading fear of Muslims for political gain.”
[Al Jazeera]
Laws and rhetoric
Brown pointed to a series of measures put forward by Quebec’s right-wing Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government that human rights groups say target Muslim Quebecers.
In power since 2018, the CAQ passed a law in 2019 to bar some public servants from wearing religious symbols on the job, including headscarves worn by Muslim women, Sikh turbans and Jewish yarmulkes.
The government justified the law, known as Bill 21, as being part of its push to protect secularism in the province, which in the 1960s underwent a so-called “Quiet Revolution” to break the Catholic Church’s influence over state institutions.
But rights advocates said Bill 21 discriminated against religious minorities and would have a disproportionately harmful effect on Muslim women, in particular.
As the CAQ’s popularity has plummeted in recent months, it has passed and put forward more legislation to strengthen its so-called “state secularism” model in advance of a looming provincial election later this year.
Most recently, in late November, the CAQ introduced a bill that would extend the religious symbols prohibition to daycares and private schools, among other places.
Bill 9 also bars schools from offering meals based exclusively on religious dietary requirements – such as kosher or halal lunches – and outlaws “collective religious practices, notably prayer” in public.
The attack on Quebec City’s largest mosque lasted less than two minutes [File: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]
“Quebec has adopted its own model of state secularism,” said the provincial minister responsible for secularism, Jean-Francois Roberge.
Roberge has rejected the idea that the bill was targeting Muslim or Jewish Quebecers, telling reporters during a news conference on November 27 that the “same rules apply to everybody”.
But the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) – which is involved in a lawsuit against Bill 21 that will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada later this year – said Bill 9 “masks discrimination as secularism”.
“These harmful bans disproportionately target and marginalize religious and racialized minorities, especially Muslim women,” Harini Sivalingam, director of the CCLA’s equality programme, said in a statement.
According to Brown at NCCM, the Quebec government’s moves have sent “the message to society that there’s something inherently dangerous or wrong with being a visible, practising Muslim”.
He warned that, when people in positions of authority use anti-Muslim rhetoric to try to score political points, “it gives licence to those who already hold a lot of these Islamophobic views or hateful views to actually take it out on people”.
‘Hate continues to threaten’
At the federal level, Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, said the Canadian government has shown a continued commitment to tackling the problem.
That includes through an Action Plan on Combatting Hate, launched in 2024, which has devoted millions of dollars to community groups, antifascism programmes and other initiatives.
But Elghawaby told Al Jazeera that Islamophobia has nevertheless been rising in Canada, “whether it’s through police-reported hate crimes [or] whether it’s Canadians sharing that they’re experiencing discrimination at work [and] at school”.
Three black stone plinths stand in a memorial to the victims of the attack, outside the Quebec City mosque, in 2022 [File: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]
According to Statistics Canada, 211 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported to police in 2023 – a 102-percent jump compared with the previous year. There was a slight increase in 2024 – the most recent year for which the data is available – with 229 incidents reported.
Elghawaby, whose office was established after another anti-Muslim attack killed four members of a single family in London, Ontario, in 2021, said the figures underscore “that hate continues to threaten Canadians”.
“Canada, despite a global reputation of being a country that welcomes people from around the world, does struggle with division, with polarisation, with the rise of extremist narratives,” she said, adding that remembering the Quebec City mosque attack remains critical.
“[The families of the men killed] don’t want the loss of their loved ones to be in vain. They want Canadians to continue to stand with them, to continue to stand against Islamophobia, and to do their part in their own circles to help promote understanding,” Elghawaby said.
The ‘mother of all trade deals’ comes months after the United States slapped tariffs on India and the European Union.
One of the biggest trade deals in history has been struck by India and the European Union, months after United States President Donald Trump hit both with tariffs.
What’s in the agreement – and how much is driven by Washington’s unpredictable measures?
Presenter: Tom McRae
Guests:
Brahma Chellaney – Professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi
Remi Bourgeot – Associate fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs in Paris
Israel’s Supreme Court has postponed a decision on whether to allow foreign journalists independent access to Gaza, in the latest delay of a legal battle that has stretched over a year.
The court granted the government until March 31 to respond to the petition filed by the Foreign Press Association, despite state attorneys failing to provide detailed justifications beyond citing security risks.
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The decision extends a policy that has barred foreign correspondents from entering Gaza to report on conditions there, unless reporters are prepared to embed with the Israeli army.
At the hearing on Wednesday, justices appeared frustrated with the government’s explanations for maintaining the blanket ban on independent press access, which has remained in place since Israel launched its genocidal war against the Palestinian people of Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.
A ceasefire took effect in October 2025, though Israel has continued carrying out attacks, which have killed more than 400 people.
Justice Ruth Ronen rejected the state’s arguments, insisting that “it is not enough to cite ‘security risks’ without providing details” and noting there had been “a very significant change on the ground” since the ceasefire.
The FPA’s legal team was barred from attending or accessing the material presented to the judges.
The FPA, which represents 370 journalists from 130 media outlets, said it was “deeply disappointed that the Israeli Supreme Court has once again postponed ruling on our petition for free, independent press access to Gaza.”
“All the more concerning is that the court appears to have been swayed by the state’s classified security arguments,” the FPA added, calling the closed-door process one that “offers no opportunity for us to rebut these arguments and clears the way for the continued arbitrary and open-ended closure of Gaza to foreign journalists.”
This marks the ninth extension granted to the government since the petition was filed in September 2024.
Just days earlier, on January 25, Israel extended its shutdown of Al Jazeera’s operations for another 90 days, citing national security threats the network denies.
US plan for Gaza demilitarisation
The postponement comes as mediators continue to press for progress in the US-backed plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza.
At the UN Security Council, the United States said it had unveiled plans for an “internationally funded buyback” programme to disarm Hamas as part of Gaza’s demilitarisation, which is a key element in the second phase of the US-backed plan.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told the Security Council on Wednesday that “international, independent monitors will supervise a process of demilitarisation of Gaza to include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning”, supported by the buyback scheme.
Hamas still controls just under half of the territory in Gaza beyond the Yellow Line, where Israeli forces remain present.
The second phase of the US plan will also require the Israeli army to withdraw, though Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said demilitarisation would have to come before any further progress on the ceasefire.
France has said it supports the European Union’s push to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “terrorist organisation”, reversing earlier opposition to the move.
In a statement shared on social media on Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot appeared to link the planned designation to the Iranian authorities’ recent crackdown on antigovernment protests across the country.
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“The unbearable repression of the Iranian people’s peaceful uprising cannot go unanswered. Their extraordinary courage in the face of the violence that has been unleashed upon them cannot be in vain,” Barrot wrote on X.
“With our European partners, we will take action tomorrow in Brussels against those responsible for these atrocities. They will be banned from European territory and their assets will be frozen,” he said.
“France will support the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the European list of terrorist organisations.”
EU foreign ministers are meeting on Thursday in Brussels, where they are expected to sign off on the new sanctions against the IRGC.
The move, being led by Italy, is likely to be approved politically, although it needs unanimity among the bloc’s 27 member-states.
Established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the IRGC is a branch of the country’s military that answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It oversees the Iranian missile and nuclear programmes and plays a central role in Iran’s defence as well as its foreign operations and influence in the wider region.
While some EU member countries have previously pushed for the IRGC to be added to the EU’s “terrorist” list, others, led by France, have been more cautious.
They feared such a move could lead to a complete break in ties with Iran, impacting diplomatic missions, and also hurting negotiations to release European citizens held in Iranian prisons.
Paris has been especially worried about the fate of two of its citizens currently living at the embassy in Tehran after being released from prison last year.
The push by the EU to sanction the IRGC comes amid global criticism of a crackdown on a wave of demonstrations in Iran, which broke out last month in response to soaring inflation and an economic crisis.
The United States-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said it confirmed at least 6,221 deaths, including at least 5,858 protesters, linked to the weeks-long protest movement while it is investigating 12,904 others.
Iran’s government has put the death toll at 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and members of the country’s security forces and labelling the rest as “terrorists”.
Al Jazeera has been unable to independently verify these figures.
The protests also spurred renewed tensions between Iran and the US, as US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to launch an attack against the country in recent weeks.
Trump designated the IRGC as a “terrorist” group in 2019 during his first term in office.
Canada and Australia did the same in 2024 and in November of last year, respectively.
