Three Perfect Starts Go on the Road on the Same Day

The Champions League league phase started with 36 teams. Four rounds in, a perfect record is almost extinct — and Tuesday night did most of the killing. Barcelona beat Aston Villa 3-0 to end the last perfect start in England, while Paris Saint-Germain ran their own record to 4-0-0 with a 6-0 win at Villarreal. By UEFA's official count, three clubs are still standing at 3-0-0 — and LiveScore's table agrees. Today, every one of them plays on the road.

Real Madrid go first, at AEK Athens (9:45 AM PT, Paramount+). Their three wins have come three different ways: a tight one over Inter, a shootout with Roma, and a handling of Leipzig. Ten goals scored, five given back — Madrid's perfect start has not been a quiet one, and Athens is not a quiet place to protect it.

Liverpool kick off in the same window, at Fenerbahçe. If Madrid's run has been loud, Liverpool's has been louder: wins over Atlético Madrid, LASK and Villarreal, none of them calm — twelve scored, seven conceded. Nobody in this competition has kept a perfect record while giving up goals like that, and Istanbul is exactly the kind of away day that punishes a team living on the edge.

The third one is the quietest story of the three, which is probably why it's the best one. Real Betis have beaten Lille, Porto and Feyenoord — seven scored, four conceded, the steadiest numbers of the group — and today they walk into Borussia Dortmund's building (12:00 PM PT, Paramount+). Betis were never supposed to be in this sentence. Three games in, they're the only reason it's a sentence about three teams instead of two.

None of the three hosts is a soft landing, either. AEK Athens have already won at home in this league phase, beating LASK 1-0 in September, and they held their shape for long stretches even in defeats to Shakhtar Donetsk and Manchester City. Fenerbahçe have not lost at home yet — draws with Roma and Slavia Praha in Istanbul — and the one team that did beat them, Aston Villa, had to do it in Birmingham. Dortmund's home win over Villarreal came in a 3-2 game that swung until late. A perfect record does not get protected in places like these; it gets tested in them.

That is what makes the day worth marking. The league phase is long enough that a single bad night in October is usually just a line in the table by January. But perfection compounds: every one of these wins is also points banked toward the top eight and the bye that comes with it, and every one makes the next test a little heavier. Madrid and Liverpool have been here before, carrying a record into a hostile ground and knowing the whole continent is watching for the slip. Betis have not — which is why, of the three, theirs might be the most honest test of all.

By tonight the count is smaller. Whoever wins joins PSG at 4-0-0. Whoever slips joins Villa, perfect no more. The league phase gives a team eight games to lose its shine; these three have kept theirs through three, and all of them have to defend it in somebody else's stadium on the same day.