LONDON: Manchester City will look to bounce back from an opening defeat at Bayern Munich when they host AS Roma in the Champions League on Tuesday, as Chelsea’s charismatic coach Jose Mourinho returns to his native Portugal for a tie with Sporting Lisbon.

City face a formidable test with the visit of Roma who have made a perfect start to the season at home and in Europe. It’s been a patchy beginning to the campaign for City, who opened Group ‘E’ with a 1-0 loss at Bayern Munich.

The English champions now need to improve on a poor home record in previous Champions League campaigns and have not beaten Italian opponents since a 3-0 victory over AC Milan in the UEFA Cup in 1978-79.

“All the pressure is on them,” Roma coach Rudi Garcia, whose side have won all five Serie A games so far and thumped CSKA Moscow 5-1 two weeks ago, said. “They need to get a result at their home ground.”

Bayern, who beat City with a late goal by defender Jerome Boateng, visit CSKA in the other group game with the match being played behind closed doors after the Russians were punished by UEFA for racist conduct by supporters last season.

Chelsea’s reliance on Diego Costa for goals seemed clear when the striker sat out the 1-1 draw against Schalke 04 in the Group ‘G’ opener.

And ongoing problems with Costa’s left thigh are likely to force him to miss Tuesday’s game at Sporting.

“He’s doing almost nothing [in training],” Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho said. “He’s just resting and recovering from the tight muscle he has every time he accumulates fatigue.”

Mourinho, who worked at Sporting as assistant to Bobby Robson between 1992 and 1993, is out to end Sporting’s 16-match unbeaten home run in Europe.

Schalke should fancy their chances of reaching the last 16 from Group ‘G’ as they prepare to host Slovenian champions Maribor who needed a late goal from Luka Zahovic to draw with Sporting in their opening group game.

The Parc des Princes will be the scene for the heavyweight showdown of French champions Paris St Germain and Luis Enrique’s Barcelona.

The clubs clashed in the quarter-finals 18 months ago, when Paris held their more illustrious opponents in both legs but lost on away goals.

PSG — although unbeaten in Ligue 1, have won only three of their eight games —are deprived of Zlatan Ibrahimovic with the Swede having also missed their last two games because of a left heel injury.

When Ibrahimovic has been sidelined, the team has won only 40 percent of their matches and PSG coach Laurent Blanc admitted his team’s frailty.

“We’ll be against our masters, almost, tomorrow,” Blanc told a news conference on Monday.

Barcelona remain La Liga leaders with a remarkable record going into the Group ‘F’ tie. They have scored 17 goals and conceded none after a 6-0 success at home to Granada, in which Neymar and Lionel Messi scored five between them.

Barca were less impressive in defeating APOEL of Nicosia only 1-0 a fortnight ago but will be in more confident mood this week.

Cypriot champions APOEL earned plenty of plaudits for their performance in losing to Barca at the Nou Camp in their group opener, but if they are to stand any prospect of progressing they will need to beat Ajax in Nicosia on Tuesday.

Porto, surprise European champions in 2004, top Group ‘H’ ahead of their clash with Shakhtar Donetsk following their 6-0 trouncing of BATE Borisov in their opening match.

Athletic Bilbao, who kicked off in Group ‘H’ by drawing 0-0 with Shakhtar Donetsk two weeks ago, become the first visitors to BATE’s new Borisov Arena in the other group game.

Published in Dawn, September 30th , 2014