Dortmund 3-2 Villarreal: Serhou Guirassy scores at both ends in a five-goal Champions League opener

Some Champions League openers settle into a rhythm. This one did not. Borussia Dortmund beat Villarreal 3-2 at Signal Iduna Park in a match that swung five times in the last 40 minutes and ended with the same player scoring for both sides.

Renato Veiga turned a Maximilian Beier cross into his own net in the 53rd minute to put Dortmund 1-0 up, and Santiago Mouriño headed in a Georges Mikautadze corner just past the hour to level it. Serhou Guirassy restored the lead in the 80th minute, tapping in from close range after Fabio Silva picked him out, then converted a penalty five minutes later after a tussle with Mouriño inside the box. Three minutes into stoppage time, with the game seemingly settled at 3-1, Guirassy turned the ball into his own net to make it the final 3-2 — a stoppage-time own goal from the man who had scored twice at the other end barely minutes earlier.

A centenary played out of a defensive crisis

The night doubled as Guirassy's 100th appearance for Dortmund, and he marked it with the kind of eventful, chaotic involvement that will stick in the memory longer than a routine brace would have. It came, too, with Niko Kovač's side missing three first-choice defenders: Filippo Mané ruled out with a thigh injury, and Ramy Bensebaini and Nico Schlotterbeck both suspended. A back line patched together conceded twice and still found a way to hang on for the win, which says as much about the makeshift unit's resilience as it does about the finishing at the other end.

Villarreal's pedigree as the format's great leveller

Villarreal are not one of the continent's grandest names, but under Íñigo Pérez they have built a habit of testing bigger sides — a club whose 2021 Europa League triumph under Unai Emery, won on penalties against Manchester United, is still the high point of a modest history, now back in the Champions League fighting for one of the new format's middle places. They matched Dortmund's 17 shots with 13 of their own here and actually landed more on target, eight to seven, with 11 created chances to Dortmund's six. Ayoze Pérez and Gerard Moreno led their line, and Mouriño's header showed exactly the kind of set-piece threat that makes the Yellow Submarine an awkward, physical night for anyone — Dortmund included.

What the 36-team format does with a scare like this

Three points is three points in the single 36-team table now used across the league phase, regardless of how untidy the route to them was. Dortmund's away form in past European campaigns has often been the deciding factor between a top-eight finish with a direct route to the last 16 and a play-off place in the 9th-to-24th bracket, so banking a home win — however scrappy — matters more this season than it might have under the old group format, where an early stumble against a side like Villarreal could be absorbed inside a smaller group of four.

Match facts

• 53' — Renato Veiga own goal (Dortmund)
• 66' — Santiago Mouriño (Villarreal)
• 80' — Serhou Guirassy (Dortmund)
• 85' — Serhou Guirassy, penalty (Dortmund)
• 90+3' — Serhou Guirassy own goal (Villarreal)
• Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund — Champions League league phase, matchday 1, Tuesday 8 September 2026

What's next

Dortmund take three points from a night that could easily have finished level, and Kovač will hope Bensebaini, Schlotterbeck and Mané are all back for the next matchday to settle a defence that shipped two goals to opponents ranked well outside the continent's traditional elite. Villarreal leave Dortmund with nothing to show for a performance that outshot the hosts, a reminder that in the new format even a losing away display against one of the German game's flagship clubs is not necessarily a wasted trip if the underlying numbers travel with them into the rest of the league phase.