It was a night of Champions League football when not too many will look back and say: "Man, you remember that day, when all those goals went in and so many crazy results were produced?" Real Madrid saved their blushes with a late goal, Leicester moved a step closer to qualification into the last 16, Tottenham disappointed at Wembley again, Juventus were made to wait by Lyon and Borussia Dortmund entered the knockout rounds with a close victory on Wednesday.
Apart from the Real Madrid match in Warsaw, none of the others really inspired, and will definitely not be in anybody's DVD collection of "let's go back and watch that match again and again."
Real Madrid had Mateo Kovacic to thank for helping them avoid a defeat to Legia Warsaw, after the home team, playing without their own crowd owing to a ban imposed by Fifa for crowd trouble during a previous match against Dortmund, came back from two goals down to take a 3-2 lead.
Gareth Bale opened the scoring for Real in just 57 seconds – the fastest for the club in the Champions League – with the Welshman celebrating that record contract by setting Karim Benzema up for the second goal.
Legia, though, pulled one back through the brilliance of Vadis Odidja just before halftime, before Miroslav Radovic levelled the match up in the 58th minute.
Warsaw thought they had completed a fantastic comeback when Thibault Moulin, off a pass from Aleksandar Prijovic, hit the back of the net off the post, but Kovavcic, five minutes from time, equalised to rescue a point for Real Madrid.
In the other Group F match, a 12th minute strike from Adrian Ramos was enough for Dortmund to see off Sporting Lisbon and with it qualify for the round of 16.
Group E does not look too good to Tottenham at the moment, after Mauricio Pochettino's men struggled to find their attacking rhythm at Wembley. In a match that saw Spurs stifled by the pressing tactics of Bayer Leverkusen, the German club walked away with all three points after Kevin Kampl took advantage of the ball falling to him off a deflection from two Spurs defenders to give his team a 1-0 win.
Spurs are two points behind Leverkusen and four adrift of Monaco, who were comfortable 3-0 winners over CSKA Moscow.
Group G remains in the control of Leicester City, who played out a could-have-been-better-but-we'll-take-it 0-0 draw with FC Copenhagen. A point in their next two matches will give Leicester a place in the knockout stages, with Porto looking like the team likely to join them after the Portuguese club's 1-0 win over Club Brugge, courtesy Andre Silva's winning goal.
Sevilla jumped to first place in Group H after an authoritative win over Dinamo Zagreb, while Juventus could not seal their place in the next round owing to a 1-1 draw with Lyon. Gonzalo Higuain's 13th minute opener from the penalty spot looked to be the only goal of the game only for Corentin Tolisso to score late and salvage a point for the French side.
Results:
Group E: Monaco 3-0; Tottenham 0-1 Bayer Leverkusen.
Group F: Borussia Dortmund 1-0 Sporting Lisbon; Legia Warsaw 3-3 Real Madrid.
Group G: FC Copenhagen 0-0 Leicester City; FC Porto 1-0 Club Brugge.
Group H: Sevilla 4-0 Dinamo Zagreb; Juventus 1-1 Lyon.
