It had been 20 years since Borussia Dortmund won a Uefa Champions League fixture in Italy. The visits have been frequent enough, the outcomes always frustrating. Just when they really needed a victory, along comes a fearless winger not even born the last time Dortmund returned home triumphant from the land of stubborn defending.
Jamie Bynoe-Gittens is the latest precocious Englishman to accelerate his development at Dortmund – Jadon Sancho and Jude Bellingham being his pathfinders – and on Tuesday he was making his first start in Europe’s leading club competition.
San Siro is hardly the gentlest venue for such a milestone, yet within nine minutes of kick off against AC Milan, he was duelling fearlessly. A burst of pace and a featherlight prod of the ball past his marker Davide Calabria put the Milan captain into a panic, Bynoe-Gittens fouled and a penalty awarded. Marco Reus converted.
This being the utterly gripping Group F of this season’s Champions League, there was still drama to play out before the youngster completed his fairy-tale. Milan equalised before half-time, and the hierarchy of the group kept shifting. Newcastle United, who started the night bottom but still with the possibility of rising two places, were leading 1-0 in a raucous Parc des Princes against Paris Saint-Germain.
Through its five matchdays so far, Group F has been everything it was billed as: a tight matrix of former European champions – Milan and Dortmund – with superwealthy risers in Qatar-funded PSG and Newcastle, back in Uefa’s elite tournament for the first time in two decades less than two years after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund took a majority stake in the club.
There has been suspense – nowhere more than in Paris late on Tuesday, when PSG snatched an equaliser through a late, controversial penalty, awarded via a referee’s surprising interpretation of VAR replays of the ball hitting the arm of Newcastle’s Tino Livramento having come off the same player’s chest.
Kylian Mbappe converted, for this third goal in a group where Newcastle had previously beaten PSG 4-1, lost twice to Dortmund, and held Milan, who in turn have beaten PSG in Italy.
That Mbappe would be a central figure in the group’s ebb-and-flow was predictable. What nobody would have foreseen in August was the impact on it of several very young tyros. With one fixture left, only Dortmund are guaranteed progress and it was 19-year-old Bynoe-Gittens who did more than anybody to push them over that line.
At 1-1 in San Siro, Dortmund were facing a treacherous final game next month, up against a hungry, needy PSG. Bynoe-Gittens spared them, with a cool, mature finish, set up by Marcel Sabitzer, for 2-1 on the way to a 3-1 Dortmund win.
“This was only the start from him, the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his skills,” beamed Dortmund’s manager Edin Terzic of the young winger, who, like Sancho, came to Germany after developing at Manchester City’s academy.
“There is specific, further developing to come,” noted Niclas Fullkrug, the experienced Dortmund centre-forward, giving advice on how Bynoe-Gittens can improve on the volume of crosses he provides to the likes of himself.
“When he plays with his head up more often, to see where his teammates are, he will become even more effective,” said Fullkrug. “But he’s been great for the team.”
Over in Paris, Newcastle gave a first Champions League start to a 17-year-old, Lewis Miley. And boy, did the local lad put in the miles, through 90 minutes of diligent blocking and tracking in the defensive aspects of his midfield role and glimpses of the creative instincts that, only three days earlier, had been put on show during a 4-1 Premier League win over Chelsea.
But 17 no longer seems so precocious in the European Cup. If an injury crisis at Newcastle has accelerated Miley’s promotion to the first team, PSG’s biggest injury issue is the calf problem that has ruled out midfielder Warren Zaire-Emery until well into the new year.
Zaire-Emery only turns 18 in March, made his first start in the Champions League a mere nine months ago. Yet across the first four matchdays of this season’s competition, nobody at any club has provided more assists than he has.
As for Milan, they responded to Dortmund’s third goal, a scoreline that has plunged them to the foot of Group F, by giving a senior debut, off the bench and into a hectic last quarter hour, to their 18-year-old winger Chaka Traore.
By Milan’s recent standards, he’s a veteran. At the weekend, they gave the prodigy Francesc Camarda his first-team bow in Serie A.
Camarda only turns 16 in the spring and is too young, under Uefa rules on minors without a senior contract, to be eligible for next month’s trip to Newcastle. There, a victory could still catapult Milan up to second place in a group that keeps giving – and keeps blessing fresh young talent.
PSG v Newcastle – player ratings
