Champions League teams chase 10-points tally in poignant week for coaches Amorim, Alonso, Ancelotti

The first Champions League team will reach 10 points this week and likely ensure advancing to the knockout stage as the untested 36-team standings format reaches the midway point.

Either Liverpool or Xabi Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen will have 10 points after they meet at Anfield on Tuesday, when Manchester City also can do it by winning at Sporting Lisbon that is still being coached by Rúben Amorim until he joins Manchester United one week later.

English teams hold the top three places in the table, with recent European champions Man City and Liverpool looking up at surprise leader Aston Villa.

Villa, the 1982 European Cup winner, goes for a fourth straight win Wednesday at Club Brugge.

Much further down the standings, the two teams with the most titles in the competition’s 70-season history — both when coached by Carlo Ancelotti — meet in Spain.

Record 15-time champion Real Madrid hosting AC Milan, with seven titles, is a clash on Tuesday of the 12th and 25th-placed teams after three of the eight rounds.

The new format sends only the top eight teams directly to the round of 16 in January. Teams that finish Nos. 9-16 are seeded in the knockout playoffs round in February against teams ranked 17th to 24th. Winners of those two-leg encounters advance to the round of 16 in March.

UEFA’s pre-season simulations suggested as few as eight points from eight games would be enough to enter the knockout phase.

Still, upset losses so far for Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern showed how predictions can be upended.

All 36 teams got a balanced slate of opponents by drawing two teams from each of four seeding pots based on UEFA competition results over the past five years.

The order of fixtures, however, can be lopsided and Leipzig languishes with zero points after losses against three high-ranked opponents. Leipzig now plays at Celtic, from the lower-ranked No. 3 seeds.

Sporting also is a pot 3 team, giving Man City a third lower-ranked opponent in the first half of its program.

Liverpool has excelled despite a front-loaded fixture list. Leverkusen is its third high-ranked opponent and next comes Real Madrid at Anfield on Nov. 27.

Atletico Madrid has underachieved in 27th place, and goes to Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday, but the three-time beaten finalist has one of the softest schedules to come.

Xabi Alonso could have been in the home team dugout Tuesday. Liverpool offered its former star midfielder, a Champions League winner in the epic 2005 final, the chance to succeed Jürgen Klopp this season.

Alonso opted to stay at Leverkusen and take the unbeaten Bundesliga champion into the Champions League. Liverpool turned to Feyenoord’s Arne Slot who is having a historically good start with the Premier League leader.

Rúben Amorim is working against Manchester City on Tuesday just weeks after he was linked with being the club’s next coach.

Pep Guardiola’s future plans are unclear with his contract expiring next year, and Man City already announced its director of football next season will be Amorim’s current front office boss at Sporting, Hugo Viana.

Played 12, won 10, drawn two, lost none.

The four English teams have not even conceded a goal since the third minute of the opening round, when AC Milan’s Christian Pulisic scored in Liverpool’s 3-1 win at San Siro.

The English Premier League is turning financial power to its advantage and this rate of results will earn a bonus fifth entry in next year’s competition.

Man City and Arsenal return to Europe after weekend losses. Guardiola’s team aims to avoid a rare third straight defeat facing Sporting's in-form Viktor Gyökeres. The Sweden forward played five seasons on loan with lower-tier teams in Germany and England before joining Sporting last year.

Arsenal returns to Italy to face Inter Milan after starting with a 0-0 draw against Atalanta in nearby Bergamo.

Few saw this coming from the four-team French challenge. Monaco and Brest unbeaten in fourth and fifth place, respectively, Lille in the top half of the standings and PSG trailing.

Brest again faces one of its lowest-ranked opponents when it plays at Sparta Prague on Wednesday, with games against Real Madrid and Barcelona to come in the second half.

Monaco already beat Barcelona and now goes to Bologna, which is among four teams that have failed to score so far.

Lille hosts Juventus on Tuesday at Stade Pierre-Mauroy, where Real Madrid was stunned 1-0 a month ago.

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Real Madrid's head coach Carlo Ancelotti sits at the bench prior to the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. Real Madrid won 5-2. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Manchester City's head coach Pep Guardiola applauds his sides fans after the end of the English Premier League soccer match between Bournemouth and Manchester City at the Vitality stadium in Bournemouth, England, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024 Bournemouth won the game 2-1. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Manchester City's Erling Haaland hits a rebound against the post during the English Premier League soccer match between Bournemouth and Manchester City at the Vitality stadium in Bournemouth, England, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, Bournemouth won the game 2-1. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Sporting's head coach Ruben Amorim watches from the touchline during a Portuguese league soccer match between Sporting CP and Estrela da Amadora at the Alvalade stadium in Lisbon, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Leverkusen's head coach Xabi Alonso greets supporters ahead the German Bundesliga soccer match between Bayer Leverkusen and VfB Stuttgart at the BayArena in Leverkusen, Germany, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Champions League teams chase 10-points tally in poignant week for coaches Amorim, Alonso, Ancelotti

Champions League teams chase 10-points tally in poignant week for coaches Amorim, Alonso, Ancelotti

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the English Premier League soccer match between Liverpool and Brighton at the Anfield stadium in Liverpool, England, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street's weak end to last year appears to be carrying into 2025, and U.S. stock indexes are slipping on Thursday.

The S&P 500 was down 0.5% in Thursday afternoon trading and on track to extend the four-day losing streak that dimmed the close of its stellar 2024. The main gauge of Wall Street’s health lost a gain of 0.9% from early in the morning and is heading toward its longest losing streak since April.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 223 points, or 0.5%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, after an early gain of 360 points disappeared. The Nasdaq composite was 0.6% lower.

Tesla helped drag the market lower after disclosing it delivered fewer vehicles in the last three months of 2024 than analysts expected. The electric-vehicle company’s stock slumped 6.7%.

Tesla was one of the big winners of 2024, particularly after Donald Trump’s Election Day victory raised speculation that Elon Musk’s close relationship with the president-elect could help the company. But critics have been warning that prices across the stock market have run too high, too quickly and are at risk of a pullback.

Consider a measure tracked by Bank of America of how heavily Wall Street analysts are recommending stocks, which recently hit its highest level since early 2022, according to strategist Savita Subramanian. She says the measure has been a reliable contrarian indicator in the past, and it’s only a bit shy of triggering a signal to sell for those who are leery when much of Wall Street herds in the same direction.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, H.B. Fuller sank 7.4% after the seller of adhesives, sealants and other specialty chemical products said it’s recently seen a slowdown in sales to a number of its customer categories.

On the winning side of Wall Street were companies tied to the energy industry after prices rose for crude oil and natural gas.

Constellation Energy jumped 6.2% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after announcing it won more than $1 billion in combined contracts with the U.S. General Services Administration to supply power and perform energy savings and conservation measures.

Some Big Tech stocks also helped limit the market's losses. Nvidia, whose chips are powering the world’s move into artificial-intelligence technology, rose 2.1% after following up its nearly 240% surge in 2023 with a better than 170% jump last year.

Some investors and analysts are counting on the AI rush to continue, even though critics say it’s made stock prices too expensive. As the calendar flips to a new year, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says it’s the ”same tech playbook in year 3 of this tech AI driven bull market,” for example.

Some pages of the playbook do seem to be changing. Investors have ratcheted back expectations for how many cuts to interest rates the Federal Reserve may deliver in 2025, for example.

The economy has held up remarkably well despite the high rates brought by the Fed in recent years to stifle inflation. But inflation has recently appeared to become more resistant to slowing the last bit to the Fed's 2% target, and Trump's pushing for tariffs and other policies have raised worries about potentially more upward pressure on prices.

That pushed the Fed to say recently it will likely deliver fewer of the economy-juicing cuts to interest rates in 2025 than it had earlier thought.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.57%, where it was late Tuesday, after a report said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected. It’s the latest signal that the job market remains solid.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell 2.2% in Hong Kong and 2.7% in Shanghai after a survey of factory managers showed Chinese activity expanding at a slower pace in December. New orders, employment and business sentiment weakened.

Upbeat talk by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a New Year’s address did little to raise optimism among investors who are hoping for more aggressive action to support the world’s second-largest economy and boost stock prices.

“We have adopted a full range of policies to make solid gains in pursuing high-quality development. China’s economy has rebounded and is on an upward trajectory,” Xi said in a New Year message, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Stock indexes were mostly higher in Europe, while Japan's market remained closed.

AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed.

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

FILE - The New York Stock Exchange is shown in New York's Financial District on Dec. 31, 2024. American flags flew at half-staff there following the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

FILE - People pass the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 5, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

FILE - Currency traders watch monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE - A sign outside the New York Stock Exchange marks the intersection of Wall and Broad Streets, Dec. 12, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)