Como Thrash Manchester United 4-1 Behind Nico Paz as Galatasaray Win 4-2 at Lille

COMO, ITALY · WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2026

The early window of Champions League matchday 3 was supposed to be the soft part of Wednesday's schedule. It produced a humiliation and a six-goal thriller. At Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia, Como — playing their first Champions League season — beat Manchester United 4-1, with Nico Paz scoring twice, making a third goal and generally running the evening. At Stade Pierre-Mauroy, Galatasaray fell behind twice to Lille, levelled twice, and then scored twice in nine second-half minutes to win 4-2 and take their first points of the league phase. Reuters carried both results in a single report, Sky Sports' live record of the Como match agrees with the queue snapshot on every scorer and minute, and UEFA's own fixture list records the same two full-time scores. The details underneath them are where the night really lived.

Paz tells United what kind of night this is, inside two minutes

Como needed one attack. Diogo Dalot had just tried his luck at one end when Lucas da Cunha found Paz on the edge of the area, nobody in a United shirt stepped out to meet him, and the 22-year-old Argentine opened his body and curled the ball into the top corner. Reuters described a curling effort from the edge of the box that set the tone for a miserable United night in northern Italy, and Football Italia's account adds the uncomfortable detail: Paz gathered just inside the area, took a touch while Harry Maguire backed off, and bent his finish into the far top corner for his first Champions League goal. Football Italia also noted that Paz is the second-youngest South American player to score against Manchester United in the Champions League, behind only Lionel Messi — company that tells you what sort of talent Cesc Fàbregas has on his hands.

What followed before half-time was a first half of Como possession and United pursuit. Senne Lammens kept the deficit at one, beating away a Douvikas effort at his near post, and Douvikas later shinned a finish after Yan Couto had cut the defence open with a single pass. Approaching 40 minutes, United still had not managed a shot on target. Andrey Santos was booked for a lunge on Paz, which read less like a tactical foul than an admission: the only answer United's midfield had found for the best player on the pitch was to kick him. On a night when Matthijs de Ligt made his first start since last November following back surgery, the defence around him rarely looked like a unit that had played together — because, mostly, it had not.

The early goal also carried a record United will not want. Eight days earlier at Atlético Madrid, United had conceded inside the opening minute of a 2-0 defeat. Conceding inside two minutes at Como made them, as theScore recorded, the first English club in major European competition history to concede inside the opening two minutes in consecutive matches. TNT Sports put the same point more broadly still: the first team in history to do it in back-to-back major European matches. A team can survive one freak start. Two in eight days is a habit, and habits like that follow a manager around.

Three goals in 27 minutes turn a win into a rout

Michael Carrick changed things at the break, sending on Amad Diallo and Carlos Baleba for Santos and Matheus Cunha, and United did begin the second half with more intent. The plan lasted barely three minutes. Martín Baturina found Paz, Paz slipped a slide-rule pass through for Anastasios Douvikas, and the Greek striker swept a first-time finish past the advancing Lammens on 49 minutes — his third goal in as many Champions League games, per Football Italia. Eight minutes later, Paz made the game his own property. Reuters described how he robbed Baleba near the right touchline, surged diagonally for more than 30 metres and steered a left-footed finish inside the far post. It was 3-0, and the Sinigaglia was no longer watching a contest; it was watching a coming-out party.

Como's fourth came from the unlikeliest source available. Substitute Kaiki Bruno raced down the left on 76 minutes and crossed for centre-back Jacobo Ramón to head past Lammens. That made it the first time United had trailed by four goals in a Champions League match since a 4-0 defeat at Barcelona in November 1994. Paz left to a standing ovation with ten minutes to play. Zirkzee, on for Bruno Fernandes midway through the half, took down Amad's cross and finished smartly in the first minute of stoppage time, and the goal survived a VAR check for offside. There were, understandably, no celebrations. USA Today's live report framed the wider wreckage plainly: United arrived in Italy already amid their worst start in 40 years, Sunday's game against Bournemouth now looks decisive for Carrick, and this may have been the worst performance of a season that already appears to be going off the rails. Como, beaten 3-2 at Feyenoord a week earlier, move to six points from three games. United stay on three, with a second consecutive European defeat.

In Lille, the lead changes hands four times in an hour

If Como's win was a procession, Lille against Galatasaray was a bar fight. Yunus Akgün fired the visitors in front after two minutes, and Lille were level five minutes later through Soriba Diaoune. The young forward struck again on 39 minutes, this time from a Hákon Arnar Haraldsson assist, curling what Footballrover's report called a superb finish into the top corner, and at 2-1 the hosts had turned the night completely around. Galatasaray's escape route arrived at the last possible moment of the half: Roland Sallai crossed and Aleksey Batrakov rose unmarked to head home on 44 minutes for 2-2. VAVEL's live account of the match records the same sequence goal for goal, and the Bundesliga's liveticker agrees on every scorer and minute.

There had been another twist before half-time that the scoreline never showed. Galatasaray were awarded a penalty when Victor Osimhen went down under a challenge from Lille goalkeeper Berke Özer, only for referee Rade Obrenović to overturn his own decision after a look at the pitchside monitor, with VAR judging that Özer had played the ball first. Osimhen's reckoning with his former club would have to wait until the second half. It did not wait long. Seven minutes after the restart, Lucas Torreira turned Gabriel Sara's corner goalwards and the decisive touch was credited, as Reuters reported, as an own goal for Nabil Bentaleb — one detail where the published record corrects the queue snapshot, which had logged the own goal against Özer. On 61 minutes, Osimhen combined with Barış Alper Yılmaz and fired past Özer to make it 4-2, completing the scoring with what Reuters called a powerful strike from the edge of the box.

Osimhen's apology, and what the night leaves behind

The goal was Osimhen's first in the Champions League this season, scored against the French club that launched his European career, and his reaction was the image of the match alongside Paz's opener: Pulse Sports Nigeria reported that he immediately raised his hands in apology to the home fans and refused to celebrate, and that when he came off late in the game he was given a standing ovation by both sets of supporters. Class, in defeat's own house. For Galatasaray, the arithmetic matters as much as the sentiment. UEFA's fixture list shows why the three points were overdue: they had lost 3-1 at Sporting CP and 4-1 at home to Barcelona in their first two league-phase matches, so a 4-2 away win, after twice falling behind, is the night their European season actually started.

Wednesday's early window, then, leaves two very different weeks in its wake. Como have six points, a 4-1 win over Manchester United in the club's first Champions League season, and a 22-year-old playmaker whom the whole continent will now be pricing. United have three points, seven games without a win in all competitions on one published count, a European record for early concessions that no club wants, and a manager whose job security was the first question asked at full time — with Bournemouth at Old Trafford on Sunday. And in Lille, two scorers' braces cancelled each other into a footnote, because Galatasaray scored the last two goals. That is the league phase at its best: famous names are worth nothing by themselves, and on Wednesday night, in Como and in Lille, the teams with the clearer idea won going away.