Another great soccer weekend is in the books and as always, it gave us plenty to talk about! In Spain‘s huge El Derbi, it was Atletico Madrid who came out firmly on top of rivals Real Madrid with a 5-2 victory. In the Premier League, it was all about drama after the 90th minute: Arsenal enjoyed a little late magic to defeat Newcastle at St. James’ Park, while Crystal Palace also scored deep in second-half injury time to defeat league-leading Liverpool and stand alone as the only unbeaten team left in England‘s top division.
Elsewhere, we have talking points galore for Milan (who picked up a huge win over Napoli), Manchester United (who lost again), Manchester City (who thrashed Burnley thanks to Jérémy Doku‘s electric dribbling), Chelsea (seriously, which version of them is going to show up every week?) and much, much more from around Europe’s big leagues.
It’s Monday morning, so what better time for Gab Marcotti’s musings? Let’s get into it.
The last time Atletico put five past Real Madrid, they had won zero European Cups
That was in 1950. Man had not yet been to space, Alfredo Di Stefano was still playing soccer in South America, Elvis Presley was a junior in high school and Donald Trump was four. That’s how long ago it was.
So yeah, it’s logical to expect fallout on the white side of the capital. Manager Xabi Alonso talked about how he’s still building his team, how it was a deserved beatdown they can would learn from, and how he hoped to turn a negative into a positive in the long-term. In other words, it’s exactly what you expect an intelligent manager like him to say. The question is what he learned from this horror.
First, you have to credit Diego Simeone. His team went into the season having made wholesale changes — though, perhaps tellingly, just two newcomers started — and winning just one of their first five outings in LaLiga. There were rumblings that his star striker, Julián Álvarez, was unhappy at his chop-and-change substitutions. And, just as you’d expect in your 15th season in the job, some were wondering whether “El Cholo” had gone a little stale.
So much for all that. They roared back to win 5-2 after going 2-1 down in the first half. Alvarez bagged two goals (one a gorgeous free kick), served up an assist and hit the woodwork, after producing a hat-trick in midweek. And watching the bundle of nervous energy and intensity otherwise known as Simeone — especially in contrast with the dejected Xabi Alonso — there was no doubt there’s plenty of fight left in this dog.
– Kirkland: Atletico’s derby win can kickstart their season
Simeone also got all his tactical calls right, whether Dávid Hancko at left-back, Nico González (instantly regenerated from his pallid Juve days) out wide or Alvarez with Alexander Sorloth up front, something we hadn’t seen since August.
As for Real Madrid, both goals (their only shots on target) were the result of individual genius — Kylian Mbappé doing his thing, Vinícius‘ magic to set up the second — so there’s not much to shout about in terms of patterns of play. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but this version of Jude Bellingham did not look fit to start.
The lineup was odd too, a 4-2-3-1 on paper that too often turned into a narrow 4-2-2-2, leaving the flanks way too exposed for the rampaging Gonzalez and Giuliano Simeone. At the back, things were very ropey, especially after Éder Militão came off and Aurélien Tchouaméni — also possibly not fully fit — was overwhelmed, turning into a revolving door.
You can second-guess Alonso’s substitutions too, while you’re at it. Taking off Arda Güler with half an hour to go when he was probably your best player felt odd, especially when you were leaving Bellingham and Fede Valverde out there. And was it really necessary to wait until the 89th minutes to chuck on Gonzalo García?
There are all questions Xabi Alonso no doubt has answers for. All queries that, you hope, will make him a better coach and a better team. Was he let down by his players? Sure. But he didn’t help either. And now they get to travel to Kazakhstan, across six time zones, to take on Kairat Almaty in the Champions League…
Arsenal copy to follow…
1:31
Why Arsenal’s late win vs. Newcastle is ‘huge’ for Arteta’s side
Beth Lindop reacts to Arsenal’s late 2-1 victory over Newcastle in the Premier League.
– Ogden: Arsenal’s attitude proves they belong in title race
Beating Napoli to make it five wins in a row is nice, but I’m not joining the Allegri bandwagon in Milan just yet
You beat the defending champions (and table-toppers) 2-1 and, sure, you should be happy. Especially given where Milan were last season. But let’s not get carried away regarding the Max Allegri effect. Christian Pulisic, in phenomenal form, delivered a brilliant assist for Alexis Saelmakers and was on the receiving end of another wonderful moment (this time from Youssouf Fofana) to make it 2-0, all inside 31 minutes.
At that stage, you expect a team to take control and be comfortable on the break. But they managed just one shot between Pulisic’s 2-0 and Pervis Estupiñán‘s red card 26 minutes later. That’s what Allegri needs to focus on, as I see it. And by the way, in that time frame, André-Frank Zambo-Anguissa spurned a great chance and Fikayo Tomori was fortunate not to give up a penalty.
Estupinan giving up the penalty and getting himself sent off was foolish, and what happened next wasn’t surprising. Down to 10 men, Milan went into lockdown, David Neres took pot-shots (one hit the post, one forced another superb save from “Magic” Mike Maignan), and the Rossoneri hung on for dear life (and managed 0.00 xG in the second half). But to me, it was those 26 minutes that marked the game. We can talk about grit and toughness all we like, but this was still a reminder that Napoli are a better side right now.
As for Napoli, this wasn’t a great performance at all. The defensive lapses for the first two goals (Luca Marianucci had a rough ride) weren’t great, Rasmus Hojlund looked like the Old Trafford version of himself and taking off Scott McTominay and Kevin De Bruyne when you’re chasing the game felt like a curious choice. But at 11 vs. 11, they put together an xG of 1.64 to Milan’s 0.75. That’s not nothing. It underscores how even when not firing the way Antonio Conte would like, they’re still a very dangerous side.
Wake-up call for Liverpool as chickens come home to roost in Crystal Palace defeat
1:10
Why Arne Slot still has questions to answer about his Liverpool team
Steve Nicol explains the problems Arne Slot’s Liverpool are facing, as their unbeaten start to the season ends vs. Crystal Palace.
It’s the cosmic rule of the universe. If you win seven games in a row, six of them with very late goals while not playing particularly well, you may get lulled into a false sense of security.
Now I’m not talking about Arne Slot here. He clearly saw the way the wind was blowing and made tweaks to the side against Palace to try to address this. He sacrificed Cody Gakpo, shifted Florian Wirtz wide, put Dominik Szoboszlai back in midfield and started with a legitimate right back in Conor Bradley. It’s just that it wasn’t enough — not against a Palace side that are playing some of the most effective football in the Premier League.
– Lindop: Liverpool better learn from dramatic late loss
– As it happened: How the Reds lost
– Breaking down a record PL weekend for late goals
As Slot himself noted, Palace could have been three or four up at half-time. Alisson made a couple superb saves, Jean Philippe Mateta hit the post, and Liverpool gave up 2.07 expected goals in the first half alone. The fightback came, as you’d expect, after the break but even then Palace had several opportunities to score on the break, something they do extremely well. Federico Chiesa notched the equalizer, but Eddie Nketiah‘s late, late, late strike condemned them.
So what’s wrong? There were evident individual lapses. Alexander Isak is not yet fit, Ibrahima Konaté shouldn’t be bullied like that, Mohamed Salah was M.I.A. (again), Alexis Mac Allister was a turnstile. And then there was Jeremie Frimpong, who lost Nketiah for Palace’s winner and appeared to be called out post-match by Slot.
1:17
Burley slams Ekitike for missing Liverpool’s first defeat
Craig Burley blasts Hugo Ekitike for being suspended for Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat to Crystal Palace after receiving a red card vs. Southampton in the Carabao Cup.
From this vantage point, given their early performances it’s obvious this team isn’t where Slot wants them to be. Whatever happened with the botched Marc Guéhi deal (and the lack of a Plan B) was a serious blunder (especially with Giovanni Leoni‘s season-ending injury). Two new attacking fullbacks at one time may have been too ambitious. Shifting Wirtz to the No.10 looks like another step too far in this set-up, and it may make more sense for his home to be out wide, at least for now.
It’s not that the recruitment was poor — these are mostly very good players with an upside — it’s that maybe it was too much, too soon. And perhaps some underestimated how long it would take for this side to click.
QUICK HITS
10. Jeremy Doku gives Manchester City another dimension on the dribble: Last season, you get the sense Pep Guardiola wasn’t fully sold on Jeremy Doku. He started just 18 league games, coming off the bench another 13 times, for at total of 1,516 minutes. (Most full-time starters play twice as many.) But it’s what he did when he was on the pitch that soon out. Doku attempted 12 dribbles a game (Lamine Yamal was second, with 9.97) and completing more than half of them, the top mark in Europe. It’s pretty evident what a weapon a player like that can be and we saw it in the 5-1 rout of Burnley, when Doku was successful on eight of 13 dribbling attempts. Against an opponent who sits and clogs the box, a forward who can beat an opponent forces the defence to realign and creates space.
1:28
Guardiola reacts to Haaland’s double vs. Burnley: ‘It’s his job’
Pep Guardiola reflects on Manchester City’s comfortable 5-1 win over Burnley in the Premier League.
As often happens to Burnley’s opponents, it took City a while to break them down — it was 1-1 with half an hour left. But once they did, the floodgates opened and Doku was a huge part of that. A quick note on Erling Haaland too. He bagged two goals, bringing his seasonal total to nine in seven. Throw in internationals and, going back to last season, he has scored in 14 of the last 16 games, notching 21 overall. Yeah, he’s back.
9. Bold Hansi Flick plays the kids ahead of PSG game and Barcelona go top: Say this for Hansi Flick: he’s not lacking for stones. Real Sociedad have had a bumpy start to the season, but starting without Dani Olmo, Pau Cubarsí, Ferran Torres and, above all, Lamine Yamal was a big call, especially with a chance to leapfrog Real Madrid at the top of LaLiga. Especially when the replacements included 19-year-old Roony Bardghji (making only his second start) and 17-year-old Dro Fernández (who only had a single fourth tier appearance under his belt).
No matter. Barcelona controlled much of the game (witness the absurd 75% possession) and Álex Remiro had to make a string of exceptional saves in the Real Sociedad goal. Sure, Takefusa Kubo did hit the bar late, and there were the usual defensive wobbles (hey, it’s Barca, it’s Ronald Araújo and Andres Christensen) and the game might have taken a different turn. But it didn’t. Barca showed their superiority and depth and some regulars got a much needed breather.
1:58
Garcia hails Yamal’s ‘fantastic’ impact on return from injury
Luis Garcia loves what he saw from Lamine Yamal, as the young star set up Barcleona’s winning goal on his return from injury.
8. One old, and one new as strikers fire Inter to victory: Not that Lautaro Martínez is old (he turned 28 last month) but rather that this is his eighth season at the club. And Francesco Pio Esposito isn’t exactly new: he joined Inter in 2014 as a nine-year-old, but this is the first year he hasn’t been farmed out on loan. Lautaro scored early, Esposito scored late (and off the bench) in the 2-0 win over Cagliari that was convincing at both ends of the pitch: the opposition was limited to zero shots on target and an xG of 0.18, while Inter could easily have scored four or five.
Christian Chivu is a de facto rookie coach who has been criticised for aping his predecessor Simone Inzaghi without having his tactical nous or charisma. That’s unfair: there’s nothing wrong with sticking to a plan that works (lest we forget, Inzaghi walked out to go to Saudi Arabia, he wasn’t fired). And with a fully fit and firing Lautaro and the reliable Marcus Thuram, plus the strength and size of Esposito, he actually has a range of mix-and-match attacking options. Now it’s up to him to add to the House Inzaghi Built.
7. Paris Saint-Germain beat Auxerre, but more injuries loom… Already facing a rash of injuries (João Neves, Marquinhos, Fabián Ruiz, Désiré Doué and newly crowned Ballon d’Or, Ousmane Dembélé), manager Luis Enrique reckoned he too, like Flick, would conserve energy for the Champions League when Auxerre came to visit on Saturday. William Pacho, Nuno Mendes, Achraf Hakimi and Bradley Barcola all started on the bench. Murphy’s Law appeared, though, as two starters who did play — Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Vitinha — had to come off early. Talk about best-laid plans…
The good news for PSG is that goals from their centerbacks, Lucas Beraldo and Ilya Zabarnyi, either side of half-time sent them on their way to a 2-0 win that sent them joint-top. Still, like Flick, it was a big call, especially coming off the heels of that defeat to Marseille last week.
6. Roma may be top of Serie A after Verona win, but Gasperini has yet to make his mark: This bit is understandable. Gian Piero Gasperini spent nine years at Atalanta and wowed the world, but even his early sides didn’t look like the latter versions of his team. It takes time to metabolize his view of football; still, Roma were far from convincing despite the 2-0 victory and this doesn’t feel like a Gasperini side.
They were out-shot (how often does that happen to him?), lost the xG battle (0.95 to 1.38) and only some huge saves from Mile Svilar (who is probably a top 10 keeper in the world right now) and some questionable finishing kept the visitors out. Give him time: at least the results are coming for now and that’s critical, especially in Rome.
0:57
Are Spurs still ‘finding their identity’ under Thomas Frank?
Craig Burley reacts to Tottenham’s last-minute draw vs. Wolves in the Premier League.
5. Thomas Frank has work to do as João Palhinha rescues chaotic Tottenham: At home, against an opponent that had lost five games in a row, you expected Spurs to step up. Instead, we got a lot of disorder and empty running. Part of it is that Vitor Pereira and Wolves are a better opponent than their zero points going in suggest. Part of it is that Spurs’ directness really works best when it’s accompanied by quality, and that was in short supply on Saturday night.
Wolves took the lead, somewhat fortuitously, early in the second half and instead of a Spurs reaction, you got a bunch of misplaced passes. If anything, it felt as if the visitors would score another. Maybe it’s a legacy of Frank’s time at Brentford, when the squad was more technically limited than this one. It almost felt appropriate that the equalizer should come from the no-frills Palhinha deep in injury time and after a cluster mess in the box.
4. Are Juventus paying the price for being weirdly top-heavy? I don’t want to get carried away here, because they weren’t horrible in the 1-1 draw with Atalanta, even though Juan Cabal‘s equaliser came late (and courtesy of an Odilon Kossounou error). But you can’t help but wonder how these pieces fit together and how Igor Tudor sees them. He has three pricey top-shelf centerforward options — Loïs Openda, who started, Dusan Vlahovic, who came on, and Jonathan David, who stayed on the bench — yet seems determined to play only one at a time. That’s because he’s a 3-4-2-1 man and with Kenan Yildiz untouchable as one of the two attacking midfielders, there’s only one other slot up for grabs. Here, whichever one of David or Openda could end up there has to fight off competition from Edon Zhegrova, Vasilije Adzic and, when he returns, Chico Conceicao. That’s a lot of bodies for not many spots in the lineup.
Having options is a feature, not a bug for a coach like Tudor — provided you can keep them all happy — and will come in handy if they go deep in the Champions League or there are injuries. From a resource-allocation perspective, for a club that’s still hamstrung financially, it’s at best sub-optimal.
1:06
How Chelsea can push for top 4 in the Prem
Steve Nicol believes Chelsea needs to fix their defensive problems to get in the top 4 of the Premier League.
3. Brighton collapse show how fragile Chelsea can be right now: It feels like a cop-out to blame the absence of Cole Palmer and Chelsea’s inexperience/lack of veteran leadership after games like these, but hey, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and conventional wisdom is correct. When Palmer isn’t there, Chelsea generally stutter at the attacking end. And even down to 10 men, following Trevoh Chalobah‘s red card early in the second half, you’d expect a side like Chelsea to defend the lead and avoid unraveling.
At 11 vs. 11, Chelsea were a goal up and the xG count read 1.33 to 0.12 in their favour. At 10 vs. 11, Brighton could have scored five instead of the three they did score — chuck in the penalty that wasn’t given after Malo Gusto kicked Yankuba Minteh in the head, or the Minteh chance he put wide. Injuries are a mitigating factor — not just Palmer but Liam Delap, Tosin Adarabioyo and, of course, Levi Colwill — as are individual errors –Chalobah and Andrey Santos, in this case — but there’s clearly an underlying recruitment issue too. Robert Sánchez, back from suspension, still looks like an accident waiting to happen between the posts. Chelsea spent close to €100m on Jamie Gittens and Alejandro Garnacho, but they were kept rooted to the bench because you just knew they weren’t going to contribute more than what was out there. And Enzo Fernández is still punching below the weight of his fee. When it works, it’s fine, especially if Palmer is there; when it doesn’t, the wheels come off way too quickly.
2. Winning 6-0 but conceding four in the last 20 minutes? Eintracht Frankfurt‘s Toppmoller is right to be angry: You probably won’t see another game like this for a long, long time. By the second minute of the second half, Eintracht Frankfurt were 6-0 up away to Borussia Moenchengladbach. Yes: 6-0. Game over and a statement from the players, after they conceded four at home in a 4-3 defeat to Union Berlin a week ago.
Except the bottom fell out late. Gladbach clawed it back to 6-4 and while the final result was never really in doubt, Toppmoeller’s expression at the final whistle left no doubt what he was feeling. This is a team that finished third last year and despite losing some big pieces — like Kevin Trapp, Omar Marmoush and Hugo Ekitike — over the past two transfer windows, was hoping to make a run this season. But can you really be taken seriously as a contender when you concede four goals in consecutive games?
1:27
Nicol: The Man United team is just not good enough
Steve Nicol questions the level of Manchester United’s players as he believes the squad needs an ‘overhaul’.
1. Defeat at Brentford means Man United are nearing a mark of futility: Losing at Brentford means the earliest — and this is best-case scenario here, since their next games are Sunderland at home and Liverpool away — Manchester United can win back-to-back Premier League games is Oct. 19. Which is only 17 months since they last won consecutive league games, at the end of of the 2024-25 season under Erik Ten Hag.
Momentum is a thing in this sport, mainly because it builds confidence and gets the coach buy-in from his players. Right now, it’s nowhere in sight and based on Saturday’s 3-1 defeat to Brentford, it’s not hard to see why. The way Harry Maguire got duped by Igor Thiago copying the sort of move Thierry Henry was making 25 years ago, except he was Henry and Thiago is no Henry; the way Diogo Dalot was pulled this way and that; the way Casemiro (!) left a massive void in midfield; none of it was good. And sure, there’s a parallel universe where Bruno Fernandes converts his penalty, Nathan Collins gets sent off and United go on to score the winner against 10 men. But that’s not the world Ruben Amorim inhabits right now.
(Oh, and don’t let the gaudy 2.03 xG fool you either. Take out the missed penalty, and the fact that Benjamin Sesko had to shoot three times from close range to poke in his goal, and United managed just 0.24 the rest of the way.)
