Sabah were founded in 2017, and on Thursday they play Manchester United in the Champions League
Matchday 1 runs across three nights from Tuesday, six games a night, and four clubs are about to play the first Champions League match in their history.
Sep 7, 2026
Sabah FK were founded on 8 September 2017. On Tuesday they turn nine, which is also the night the Champions League league phase begins, and two nights after that they walk out at Old Trafford to play Manchester United. There is no reasonable way to make that sound normal.
Sabah are one of four clubs playing their first Champions League league-phase match this week. All four are on matchday 1, which runs across Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, six games a night, all 36 teams in action before the weekend.
The four who have never been here
Sabah won their first Azerbaijan Premier League title and the cup in the same season, ending Qarabag’s grip at the top, then beat Hapoel Be’er Sheva 5-2 after extra time in the play-off second leg to get here. Their reward is a fixture list with Arsenal, Barcelona and Manchester United on it.
LASK got here the hard way. The Austrian side lost the first leg of their play-off 3-0 at Celtic, then won the return 5-1 after extra time to go through 5-4 on aggregate, which is the kind of result that gets replayed in Linz for a decade. They open at AEK Athens on Tuesday.
Viking are Norway’s second club in the competition this season, alongside Bodo/Glimt, and they start at Stuttgart on Wednesday. Como make it four Italian clubs in the league phase with Inter, Napoli and Roma, and they host Leipzig on Thursday.
A patch that gets cut off the shirt
UEFA has introduced something new for this season that will matter to a lot of players in Baku, Linz, Stavanger and Como this week. Anyone making a first Champions League appearance, substitutes included, wears a Debut Patch: a blue element built into the starball badge on the sleeve.
After the match the blue piece is removed from the shirt, authenticated, and turned into a one-of-one Topps trading card. The badge underneath stays. A player only ever wears it once, and never again even if he moves clubs. It launches with matchday 1.
When to watch from India
Two kick-off slots each night, and both are late. The early games start at 10:15pm IST and the rest at 12:30am, which means the bigger matches land in the small hours of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning.
Tuesday brings Real Madrid against Inter, Porto against Manchester City, Dortmund against Villarreal and Lille against Real Betis at 12:30am, with AEK Athens versus LASK and Club Brugge versus Aston Villa in the earlier slot. Wednesday has Liverpool versus Atletico Madrid, Napoli versus Arsenal, PSG versus Slovan Bratislava and Sporting versus Galatasaray at 12:30am, after Barcelona versus Feyenoord and Stuttgart versus Viking at 10:15pm. Thursday closes with Bayern versus Bodo/Glimt, Manchester United versus Sabah, Como versus Leipzig and Slavia Prague versus Lens, with Fenerbahce versus Roma and PSV versus Shakhtar Donetsk going first.
The one to lose sleep over
Real Madrid against Inter on Tuesday is the pick, and it is not close. Two clubs with fifteen and three European Cups between them, in the first week, with nothing settled and everything to prove.
Liverpool against Atletico on Wednesday will be nastier and probably tighter. Napoli against Arsenal, the same night, is the one where an early answer might actually mean something. Arsenal lost the final in Budapest in May on penalties to Paris Saint-Germain, and their eight-game list this time also has Real Madrid and Bayern on it. Paris, meanwhile, begin the defence of a trophy they have now won twice in a row against Slovan Bratislava.
And if you only stay up once this week, Thursday has Sabah at Old Trafford, nine years and two days after somebody in Baku filled in the paperwork.