12 games marked the Group
stage round one kick off in Europe’s second best Club competition; Europa League
on Thursday 20 September 2012 in games that kicked off at 2000 hrs local time.
Title challenge on a high
Of the 12, three particular teams started off with convincing wins; Bordeaux, Napoli and reigning Europa Champions Atletico Madrid.
Bordeaux hammered visiting Belgian side Club Bruge 4-0 as AS Napoli sent a similar number of goals past Swedish side AIK.
Atletico kicked off its title challenge on a high by managing a 0-3 win away Israeli side Hapoel Tel Aviv.
Juhani Ojala
Turkish side Fenerbahce started off with a 2-2 home draw with French Ligue 1 side Olympique Marseille.
One of the highlights of the day was a see saw between Swiss side Young Boys and English Premier League side Liverpool.
Thanks to an own goal from Juhani Ojala, Liverpool were up 0-1 on four minutes. Andre Wisdom scored a second on 17 minutes to send the side 0-2 up.
Great recovery
But the hosts drew level with a 38th minute goal from Raphaël Nuzzolo and a second by Juhani Ojala who scored in the right net on 53 minutes.
Young boys went up 3-2 on 63 minutes through Gonzalo Zarate but Liverpool leveled the tie on 67 minutes with a goal from Sebastian Coates.
A brace from Jonjo Shelvey on 76 and 85 minutes completed Liverpool’s great recovery as the team went on to win the game 3-5


