<\/p>\n
Barcelona’s Raphinha celebrates after scoring his side’s third goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match between Elche and Barcelona in Elche, Spain, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026.<\/p>\n
Alberto Saiz\/AP Photo\/Alberto Saiz<\/p>\n
Manchester City’s head coach Enzo Maresca reacts during the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester City and Bournemouth in Manchester, England, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026.<\/p>\n
Dave Thompson\/AP Photo\/Dave Thompson<\/p>\n
Juventus’s Bremer celebrates after scoring his team’s first goal during the Serie A soccer match between Frosinone and Juventus at the Benito Stirpe stadium, in Frosinone, Italy, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026. ( Alfredo Falcone\/LaPresse via AP)<\/p>\n
Alfredo Falcone\/Alfredo Falcone\/LaPresse via AP<\/p>\n
Milan’s Alphadjo Cisse, left, fights for the ball with Torino FC’s Marcus Pedersen during to the Serie A soccer match between Torino and Milan at the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino in Turin, Italy, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026 (Marco Alpozzi\/LaPresse via AP)<\/p>\n
Marco Alpozzi\/Marco Alpozzi\/LaPresse via AP<\/p>\n
Barcelona’s Fermin Lopez, left, celebrates after scoring his side’s his fifth goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match between Elche and Barcelona in Elche, Spain, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026.<\/p>\n
Alberto Saiz\/AP Photo\/Alberto Saiz<\/p>\n
MADRID (AP) \u2014 Ferran Torres scored twice in his Paris Saint-Germain debut to help the French defending champion draw 2-2 at Rennes in its league opener on Sunday, while Barcelona began its defense of the Spanish league title in style with a 5-0 rout of Elche.<\/p>\n
Manchester City left it late to win in its first Premier League match under Enzo Maresca and Mohamed Salah scored his first goals for Turkish club Trabzonspor.<\/p>\n
Juli\u00e1n \u00c1lvarez heard boos from the Atletico Madrid crowd in his return to action in the Spanish league after asking to leave the club, and both Juventus and AC Milan won in the Italian league.<\/p>\n
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Feyenoord’s game in the Dutch league was disrupted by fireworks.<\/p>\n
Torres’ dream start with PSG in France<\/p>\n
Torres, who joined PSG from Barcelona after scoring Spain’s World Cup winning goal last month, came off the bench to score in the 71st and 82nd minutes, helping his new club avoid a second consecutive loss after a penalty shootout loss to Lens in the French Super Cup.<\/p>\n
Both goals were assisted by Torres’ Spain teammate Fabian Ruiz.<\/p>\n
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Sebastian Szymanski and Esteban Lepaul had put host Rennes ahead with first-half goals.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Olivier Giroud, who turns 40 next month, scored from about 20 meters (yards) out as Lille won 2-0 at Angers. Midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi was left out of Lille\u2019s squad amid reports of an imminent big-money move to Man City.<\/p>\n
Easy win for Barcelona in La Liga<\/p>\n
Raphinha and Ferm\u00edn L\u00f3pez scored two goals each as Barcelona cruised to a 5-0 victory at Elche.<\/p>\n
Newcomer Karim Adeyemi also scored for Hansi Flick’s team, which is looking to win a third straight La Liga title.<\/p>\n
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It was the biggest win so far in the competition this season.<\/p>\n
Lamine Yamal appeared to be upset when he was replaced in the second half.<\/p>\n
Maresca wins with City in Premier League<\/p>\n
Enzo Maresca enjoyed what he called a \u201cperfect day\u201d as Man City rallied late to defeat Bournemouth 2-1 in its Premier League opener.<\/p>\n
City scored twice in the final 10 minutes to grab the victory at home as Maresca debuted as Pep Guardiola’s successor.<\/p>\n
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Liverpool salvaged a 2-2 draw at Newcastle thanks to Dominik Szoboszlai\u2019s penalty kick in the ninth minute of stoppage time.<\/p>\n
Brighton scored four goals in the opening 31 minutes in a 4-0 trashing of Aston Villa.<\/p>\n
Salah gets his first goals in Turkish league<\/p>\n
Salah scored twice as Trabzonspor beat Ba\u015fak\u015fehir 2-1.<\/p>\n
The Egypt forward scored in the eighth and 48th minutes.<\/p>\n
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Salah signed a two-year contract with the Turkish club after a long and successful stint with Liverpool.<\/p>\n
Fireworks interrupt Dutch league game<\/p>\n
Feyenoord\u2019s 5-2 win at Cambuur had to be interrupted after away fans set off fireworks that reportedly caused minor injuries to some supporters.<\/p>\n
The Dutch soccer federation released a statement condemning the incident and saying it is \u201cdoing everything we can to track down the perpetrators and punish them severely. They can expect, among other things, a nationwide stadium ban for setting off fireworks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00c1lvarez booed by Atletico fans<\/p>\n
\u00c1lvarez was booed by Atletico fans upset with his request to leave the club.<\/p>\n
\u00c1lvarez came off the bench in the 67th minute of Atletico\u2019s 2-2 draw against Villarreal at the Metropolitano stadium.<\/p>\n
\u00c1lvarez had not played in Atletico\u2019s first game. The club said it does not intend to sell the Argentina forward.<\/p>\n
Giuliano Simeone scored an 85th-minute equalizer for Atletico, which played a man down from the 76th because of a red card for Robin Le Normand.<\/p>\n
Villarreal finished third last season, just ahead of Atletico, the perennial challenger to Barcelona and Real Madrid.<\/p>\n
Juve and Milan get off to winning starts in Italy<\/p>\n
AC Milan opened its Serie A campaign with a 2-1 win at Torino with goals three minutes apart from Alphadjo Cisse and Adrien Rabiot in the second half.<\/p>\n
Milan will be trying to improve from a fifth-place finish last season.<\/p>\n
Gleison Bremer scored in the first half to give Juventus \u2014 sixth last season \u2014 an opening 1-0 win at Frosinone.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full soccer coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona’s Raphinha celebrates after scoring his side’s third goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match between Elche…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[23102,28640,3201,92,3120,13056,28638,14718,934,2044,674,22504,3121,28641,1561,1562,1249,1558,1560,1559,2898,28639,28637],"class_list":["post-74768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barcelona","tag-adrien-rabiot","tag-alphadjo-cisse","tag-ayyoub-bouaddi","tag-barcelona","tag-dominik-szoboszlai","tag-enzo-maresca","tag-esteban-lepaul","tag-fabian-ruiz","tag-ferran-torres","tag-giuliano-simeone","tag-julian-alvarez","tag-karim-adeyemi","tag-mohamed-salah","tag-olivier-giroud","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-pep-guardiola","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32554-ap-online-soccer-game-stories","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-robin-le-normand","tag-sebastian-szymanski","tag-torres-psg-barcelona-man-city-salah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}