Liverpool beats Lille to reach Champions League round of 16. Barcelona wins 9-goal thriller

Liverpool became the first team to guarantee a place in the last 16 of the new Champions League format by beating Lille 2-1 on Tuesday, while Barcelona fought back from two goals down to stun Benfica 5-4 in a thriller.

Harvey Elliott's bouncing, deflected shot gave Liverpool its seventh win from seven games, just after 10-man Lille had equalized following Mohamed Salah's opening goal.

Liverpool needed a point at Anfield to be sure of reaching the round of 16 as one of the top eight teams in the league stage, skipping the playoff round for teams ranked ninth to 24th.

Salah raced through in the 34th minute to sweep Liverpool ahead with his 22nd goal in all competitions this season. And when Lille’s Aissa Mandi was sent off just before the hour mark, Liverpool looked certain to extend its 100% record in the league phase.

But Anfield was stunned when Canada striker Jonathan David converted from close range to level the score in the 62nd. It didn’t take long for Liverpool to regain the lead through Elliott’s deflected effort five minutes later.

“All my life I’ve dreamt of playing Champions League football, not only for my boyhood club but to play here at Anfield in front of our fans and especially to score, it’s kind of a pinch-me moment,” Elliott said.

It was a night of high drama in the Champions League with 33 goals scored across nine games. Nine of them came in Barcelona's battle with Benfica.

Raphinha scored in stoppage time to complete a rousing comeback as Barcelona won in Lisbon despite having been 4-2 down with less than a quarter of an hour remaining.

Benfica's Vangelis Pavlidis scored the third-fastest hat trick at the start of a Champions League game, with two of his goals coming after errors by Barcelona goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny. Barcelona stays second with 18 points from seven games, and is now unbeaten in six games in all competitions since the new year.

“We came with the mindset that we could turn the game," Raphinha said. "We never gave up and managed to grab a win."

Robert Lewandowski scored two penalties for Barcelona to stay the Champions League's top scorer on nine goals, one ahead of Raphinha, who also scored twice.

Another Spanish club staged a comeback as Julian Alvarez scored a 90th-minute winner to lift Atletico Madrid past Bayer Leverkusen 2-1. Atletico lost Pablo Barrios to a 23rd-minute red card and went into half time 1-0 down to a Piero Hincapie header for Leverkusen.

Alvarez scored in the 52nd and had the momentum when Hincapie was sent off for a second yellow card, before Alvarez struck again to take the win and lift Atletico to third.

With Prince William watching on, Aston Villa’s hopes of automatic qualification for the round of 16 took a blow after a 1-0 loss to Monaco.

Villa led the standings early in the league phase of the competition after winning its first three games. But defeat to Monaco left the Premier League club eighth. Wilfried Singo’s goal at a corner in the eighth minute was enough to secure the win for ninth-place Monaco.

Borussia Dortmund's 2-1 loss at Bologna increased the pressure on coach Nuri Sahin in Dortmund's fourth consecutive loss at the start of the new year in all competitions.

Serhou Guirassy gave Dortmund, last season's runner-up, the lead with a chipped penalty and ran to celebrate with Sahin.

It looked like the Champions League could provide a much-needed boost for a team floundering in the Bundesliga, but two goals in two minutes from Thijs Dallinga and Samuel Iling-Junior changed the game for previously winless Bologna.

Results elsewhere meant Bologna will be heading out of the competition despite its win, since the Italian club can't finish in the top 24. Sturm Graz and Red Star Belgrade are also out after losing Tuesday.

Atalanta beat Graz 5-0, strengthening the Italian club's push to qualify directly for the round of 16. Atalanta finished the evening fourth.

PSV Eindhoven hung on for a 3-2 win at Red Star despite losing defender Flamingo to a red card just after halftime while leading 3-0. Stuttgart eased to a 3-1 win over Slovan Bratislava, which was already eliminated and has lost all seven of its games. Club Brugge and Juventus drew 0-0.

In the only Europa League game of the night, Galatasaray missed a chance to go third in the table, giving up a 3-1 lead to draw 3-3 with last-place Dynamo Kyiv.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Benfica's Nicolas Otamendi jumps for the ball against Barcelona's Ferran Torres during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between SL Benfica and FC Barcelona at the Luz stadium in Lisbon, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Atletico Madrid's Julian Alvarez celebrates after scoring his side's first goal against Bayer 04 Leverkusen during a Champions League opening phase soccer match at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano stadium in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

PSV's Luuk de Jong, centre, celebrates with PSV's Guus Til after scoring his side's second goal during the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Red Star and PSV at the Rajko Mitic Stadium in Belgrade, Serbia, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Atalanta's Charles De Ketelaere, second from let, celebrates with teammates after scoring during the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Atalanta and Sturm Graz at the Gewiss Stadium in Bergamo, Italy, Tuesday, Jan. 21 , 2025. (Stefano Nicoli/LaPresse via AP)

Monaco's Wilfried Singo, right, celebrates after scoring the opening goal of his team during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Monaco and Aston Villa at the Louis II stadium in Monaco, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

Barcelona celebrate their side's fourth goal during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between SL Benfica and FC Barcelona at the Luz stadium in Lisbon, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrates after scoring his side's first goal during the Champions League, opening phase soccer match between Liverpool and Lille at Anfield Stadium, Liverpool, England, Tuesday, Jan.21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street cruised to the finish of its strong week on Friday, as U.S. stocks glided closer to the all-time high they set just a few months earlier, though it may feel like an economic era ago.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% for a fifth straight gain and closed out its third winning week in the last four. It’s rallied back within 3% of its record set in February after briefly dropping roughly 20% below last month, thanks to building hopes that President Donald Trump will lower his tariffs against other countries after reaching trade deals with them.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 331 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5%.

Trump’s trade war had sent financial markets reeling worldwide because of twin dangers. On one hand, tariffs could slow the economy and drive it into a recession. On the other, tariffs could push inflation higher.

This week featured some encouraging news on each of those fronts. The United States and China announced a 90-day stand-down in most of their punishing tariffs against each other, while a couple reports on inflation in the United States came in better than economists expected.

It was “a week to remember,” according to economists at Bank of America led by Claudio Irigoyen and Antonio Gabriel. But they also said they’re not expecting a significant drop in volatility, and they’re not changing big-picture forecasts.

“There is still huge uncertainty regarding the impact of tariffs on economic activity and inflation,” they said in a BofA Global Research report.

That uncertainty has been hitting U.S. households and businesses, raising worries that they may freeze their spending and long-term plans in response, which would hurt the economy. The latest reading in a survey of U.S. consumers by the University of Michigan showed sentiment soured again in May, though the pace of decline wasn’t as bad as in prior months.

Perhaps more worryingly, expectations for coming inflation keep building, and U.S. consumers are now bracing for 7.3% in the next 12 months, according to the University of Michigan’s preliminary survey results. That’s up from a forecast of 6.5% a month before.

When everyone expects inflation to be high, it could kick off a vicious cycle of behavior that only worsens inflation.

To be sure, only some of the University of Michigan’s survey responses for the preliminary May reading came after the United States and China announced their 90-day truce.

On Wall Street, Charter Communications rose 1.8% after it said it agreed to merge with Cox Communications in a deal that would combine two of the country’s largest cable companies. The resulting company will change its name to Cox Communications and keep Charter’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

CoreWeave jumped 22.1% after Nvidia disclosed that it had increased its ownership stake in the company, whose cloud platform helps customers running artificial-intelligence workloads. Nvidia now owns 7% of CoreWeave, up from its nearly 6% stake before CoreWeave’s initial public offering of stock in March.

Novo Nordisk’s stock that trades in the United States fell 2.7% after the Danish company behind the Wegovy drug for weight loss said that Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen will step down as CEO and that the board is looking for his successor. The company cited “recent market challenges” and how the stock has been performing recently.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 41.45 points to 5,958.38. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 331.99 to 42,654.74, and the Nasdaq composite gained 98.78 to 19,211.10.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.44% from 4.45% late Thursday and from more than 4.50% the day before that. Lower bond yields can encourage investors to pay higher prices for stocks and other investments.

The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for action by the Federal Reserve, rose to 3.99% from 3.96%. It had been as low as 3.93% earlier in the morning, before the release of the University of Michigan’s survey.

Hope remains that this week’s better-than-expected signals on inflation could give the Federal Reserve more leeway to cut interest rates later this year if high tariffs drag down the U.S. economy.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose modestly in Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 inched down by less than 0.1% after the government reported that Japan’s economy contracted at a faster rate than expected in the first quarter of the year.

AP Writers Jiang Junzhe and Matt Ott contributed.

Specialist John McNierney, left, and trader Anthony Carannante work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader talks on the phone near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Trader Edward Curran works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Jonathan Corpina works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader William Lawrence works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Traders Jonathan Mueller, right, and Michael Capolino work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)