Barcelona, Inter and upstart Brest win again in Champions League. Bizarre penalty dooms Aston Villa

Inter Milan stifled Arsenal in a 1-0 win at San Siro sealed by Hakan Çalhanoğlu’s penalty in first-half stoppage time.

Inter is unbeaten on 10 points and in fifth place, one below Brest which won 2-1 at Sparta Prague. The French debutant looks sure to advance to the knockout phase starting in February.

Atalanta won 2-0 at Stuttgart to stay unbeaten on eight points and Salzburg got its first goals and points in a 3-1 win at Feyenoord.

Bayern Munich won 1-0 at home to Benfica in a game that was delayed 15 minutes by crowd congestion and then was played in a muted atmosphere because of a medical incident for a fan.

Shakhtar Donetsk playmaker Heorhiy Sudakov had a fine assist and an even better goal in a 2-1 win for the Ukrainian champion against Young Boys. Shakhtar’s No. 10 showed why he is expected to be the club’s next big-money sale.

Liverpool, which on Tuesday routed Bayer Leverkusen 4-0, leads the standings at the midway point of the eight-round program.

Liverpool is the only team with four straight wins, while five teams have four losses. They are Leipzig, Sturm Graz, Young Boys, Red Star and Slovan Bratislava.

Two Italian teams – Inter Milan and Atalanta – have yet to concede a goal in four games. Another Italian side, Bologna, is the only team with no goals scored.

Villa had led the standings in the new league-phase format after three straight wins without conceding a goal — and it took a bizarre incident before goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez was eventually beaten.

Mings was punished for picking up the ball when Martínez seemed to restart play with a goal kick passed forward to his teammate. Mings walked a couple steps to gather the ball with his left hand and returned to place it in the six-yard box.

"It’s the biggest mistake I witnessed in my career,” Villa coach Unai Emery said. “It has only happened one time in all my life. Today.”

Brugge captain Hans Vanaken placed the 52nd-minute spot-kick to Martínez's left as the World Cup-winning Argentina goalkeeper dived to his right.

It was the standout result of the inaugural week of the new Champions League in September: Bayern Munich 9, Dinamo Zagreb 2.

It was the first time a team had scored nine times in a game in the 32-year Champions League era, and Dinamo fired its coach two days later.

Since then? Bayern lost twice, including a 4-1 rout at Barcelona, and Dinamo won twice. At the end of play Wednesday, Bayern was 17th on six points, one place below Dinamo on seven. If those placings hold until January, they meet again twice more in the knockout playoffs round.

The fifth round in three weeks' time has perhaps the stellar attraction of 144 games in the league phase: Liverpool vs. Real Madrid.

That game on Nov. 27 is a rematch of the 2022 and 2018 finals, both won by Madrid, and the 1981 European Cup title match that Liverpool won.

There is another final rematch: Bayern Munich hosts PSG on Nov. 26 in a repeat of the pandemic-season final played in August 2020 without fans in Lisbon. Also, sixth-place Barcelona hosts Brest, a fixture which might have been overlooked when the draw was made in August yet the French team is currently fourth.

Only the top eight teams in January advance directly to the round of 16 in March.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer