Winners and losers of this weeks Champions League ties

With this weeks last 16 first leg ties of the Champions League complete let’s look at the overall winners and losers.

Winners

cavani and di maria

Angle Di Maria & Edinson Cavani. 

Many discredited Di Maria’s return to form as he was “only playing in France.” On Tuesday night the Argentinian pulled the strings as PSG beat Chelsea 2-1 in Paris. The highlight of the night as to be his fantastic lobbed through ball which lead to the eventual winner which came from Cavani. Edinson makes the list as he proved his boss Laurent Blanc wrong coming off the bench to score with great composure. Blanc will surely have to consider starting Cavani in the second leg.

Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo.

Cristiano stole the headlines on Wednesday after he stormed out of Madrid’s pre match press conference when a journalist asked him about his failure to score in an away fixture since the 29th of November. Ronaldo silenced his critics in true CR7 style with a cracking goal from the left hand side of the box which gave Madrid the lead against Roma.

Draxler

Julian Draxler

Admittedly Wolfsburg were favourites heading into their tie against Gent but nobody could have predicted the goals Draxler produced last night. Single- handedly lead his team to a 3-2 victory and showed why the German side paid £25.5 million to bring him from Schalke.

Losers

Costa

Diego Costa

Chelsea can usually rely on Diego to either score or create a controversy in their matches. On Tuesday Costa failed to fulfill his usual duties. He saw a six yard header saved by Kevin Trapp but should easily have scored from that range. Maybe his face mask has affected his goal scoring prowess but Diego was certainly below par this week.

roma

Roma

It’s hard to pick just one player from Roma’s starting 11 who was the ultimate loser last night. Roma’s defence was admirable but their forwards can feel disappointed. Mohamed Salah, Stephan El Shaarawy and Edin Dzeko all had chances to tie the game before Madrid effectively killed the tie scoring a second away goal.

Italian referee Gianluca Rocchi (R) show a red card to Zenit's Italian defender Domenico Criscito (L) during the UEFA Champions League round of 16 football match SL Benfica vs FC Zenith Saint-Petersburg at the Luz stadium in Lisbon on February 16, 2016. / AFP / PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA        (Photo credit should read PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP/Getty Images)

Domenico Criscito

The Italian left back was sent off late into Zenits tie away to Benfica. Receiving his second yellow on the night, Criscito left his side in a tricky position which Benfica took full advantage of with Jonas scoring the winner. The Russian side can blame Criscito for making their lives even more difficult on Tuesday.

So there we have it. Those are my ultimate winners and losers of this weeks Champions League ties.

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