Real Madrid needed a Thibaut Courtois miracle and a 2-1 scoreline to get past Inter Milan at the Bernabeu on Tuesday, while Erling Haaland scored twice to sink Porto as Manchester City opened their own campaign in more comfortable fashion. Two results, same message: the Champions League group phase is back, and Europe's superclubs are already treating September fixtures like knockout football, because increasingly, financially, they are.

Here's the number that actually explains the intensity: Liverpool just replaced Standard Chartered with Turkish Airlines on their shirt front, a five-year deal reportedly worth more than $400 million, and that's before a ball is kicked in this competition. Champions League qualification is the mechanism that makes shirt fronts worth that much, because the broadcast windows, the group-stage minimum payouts, and the coefficient rankings all compound off it. Courtois didn't just save a football match on Tuesday. He protected a revenue line that Turkish Airlines is now paying nine figures to sit next to.