Winners and losers: Real Madrid get back on track, but shame about the shirts

Far be it for me to impose any semblance of musical taste on the dubstep-and-Phil-Collins world of football, but it would be a shame if “Even the Bad Times are Good,” by the Tremeloes did not come to soundtrack at least one compilation of Cristiano Ronaldo career highlights.

There had been rumblings since the beginning of the year that all was not well with the Portuguese: the end of his relationship with Irina Shayk had apparently hit him hard and there were signs of discord with Gareth Bale during a win over Espanyol in January.

And then there was the goal drought: Ronaldo had not scored for three games ahead of Wednesday’s game against Schalke. It is of course testament to the numbing genius of the man that such a dry spell – so brief by the standards applied to mere mortals – should be newsworthy. Other forwards go months without a goal during barren spells but Ronaldo going four weeks without one seemed like a harbinger of the endtimes.

We all know what happened next, of course: goal Ronaldo, apocalypse postponed. That’s just the five goals and three assists in nine games in 2015, then. Real may not be quite firing on all cylinders but all they gotta do is run to you know who.

The odds looked stacked against Shakhtar ahead of the first leg of their tie with Bayern Munich. First, there was the inconvenience of a stadium switch: with the Donbass Arena having been damaged by shelling by pro-Russian separatists, the Miners were forced to play the home leg 750 miles away, in Lviv. Then there was the ominous form of their opponents, who had put eight goals past hapless Hamburg at the weekend.

Mainly, though, there was the fact that Mircea Lucescu’s men had not played a competitive game since early December. Since then they had enjoyed a jaunt around Brazil (which, judging by the number of training sessions conducted on beaches, had the air of a holiday camp) and faced Dinamo Zagreb and Aalborg – not exactly heavyweight sparring partners.

Yet Shakhtar managed to frustrate Bayern on Tuesday, restricting them to just one shot on target in a goalless draw. The game won’t live long in the memory as a spectacle, but the Ukrainian giants will know that they are an away goal away from making life very tricky indeed for Pep Guardiola and co.

The Swiss side’s greatest weapon is arguably the hallucinogenic quality of their line-up, which reads like someone making up cool player names on the spot… while on LSD.

I mean, seriously: Xhaka, Suchy, Safari, Gashi and Zuffi sound more like discarded Pokemon ideas than they do actual footballers. One look at the team sheet leaves opposition managers so wide eyed that they forget to tell their defenders to mark at corners.

Basel were not brilliant against Porto but did score one of the goals of the week, Derlis Gonzalez taking Fabian Frei’s deft clipped pass in his stride before bravely prodding into the corner. Really, though, Basel are winners here simply because they probably ought to have lost: Mark Clattenburg controversially ruled out a strike by Casemiro that would have put Porto well in command ahead of the second leg.

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Laurent Blanc’s side are within their rights to feel pleased with their display against Chelsea at the Parc des Princes. Deprived of Lucas Moura, Thiago Motta and Yohan Cabaye through injury, PSG gave a good account of themselves, especially after falling behind to Branislav Ivanovic’s well-taken header.

Indeed, the best individual performances on the night came from players in dark blue: David Luiz slotted into the midfield impressively against his former employers; Blaise Matuidi hustled and harried; both Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Edinson Cavani – who netted the equaliser – prowled around with menace in the final third.

But there must be a sense of opportunity missed, with PSG unable to manage a second goal when Chelsea sank back in the closing stages. Blanc will surely be ruing Cavani’s decision to toe-poke a late chance rather than strike the ball in a more conventional manner.

Given that a 3-1 home win was not enough against Chelsea last time around, you can’t help but feel that Les Parisiens have left themselves with a mountain to climb. Jose Mourinho doesn’t make a habit of handing out second chances, after all.

There was a time, in the early part of this century, when kit designers seemed to nominate Ligue 1 as a testing ground for their more outrageous flights of fantasy. It was a time for experimentation, trial and error: “Does this shirt need a third neon lightning strike on the sleeve, Pierre?” “Yeah – and hand me another beer!”

Recently, we have seen a boom in classy, understated jerseys: see the instant classic PSV Eindhoven kit unveiled by Umbro earlier this week. But the Champions League bucked that trend with two absolute horror shows this week: Porto’s striped-artic-midnight-camouflage concoction and the repellent Pepto-Bismol pink of Real Madrid. Now excuse me while I go and bathe my eyes in sulphuric acid.