I know we’re late, but I’ve been enjoying myself…or rather not at work. And recovering. It was quite a big weekend around the world so I’ve been waiting for the dust to settle. One of my favourite leagues resumed, so you can welcome Japan to the review, and China get underway this week – there’s already been a bit of Asian Champions League action to get us all in the mood. You are already, aren’t you? I can tell.
Anyway, there’s nowhere we can really start apart from with Europe’s darlings Red Bull Salzburg. Having battered once-great Ajax again in the week, they faced once-great Rapid Wien on Sunday afternoon. Rapid started the weekend in third, albeit 23 points off Red Bull. They kept it pretty tight, too, with Jonatan Soriano scoring in the 10th minute. Soriano’s on great form at the moment, and still Europa League top scorer. Stefan Ilsanker made it two just before half time and it looked over, like Disco or Chris Waddle’s penalty. It wasn’t though, as Rapid roared back to 2-2 with just under an hour gone. Even when Red Bull nicked another one a couple of minutes later, they came back, and it was 3-3 with 66 minutes gone. So it stayed, then, until the 84th minute, when Red Bull and Soriano turned on the afterburners and scored three goals before full-time, ending 6-3, and leaving Red Bull on 61 points. Of all the leagues I cover that aren’t Japan, Red Bull’s 3.4 goals per game is the highest of any team (85 in 25 games).
I have never in my life seen a team look AS resigned as this en masse.
They actually pulled three points further clear at the weekend after Grödig could only lose 1-2 at home to Wiener Neustadt, who lifted themselves above Sturm Graz as a result of their victory. Graz lost 1-4 to Pellets, with Rene Seebacker scoring (his name seems to mean ‘Sea Baker’, but there you go. Austrians are crazy). Excitingly, Austria and Rapid Vienna are joint in third with a P25 W9 D8 L8 F41 A34 Pts 35 record. Joint! Imagine what will happen next week.
Across the border in Germany, things are a little more clear-cut. European whipping-boys Schalke went to Bavaria to take a kicking and were most obliging, losing 5-1, and relying on a Rafinha own goal for their troubling of their scoresheet. Worth mentioning that Schalke are fourth in the Bundesliga, despite that easy swatting aside. Arjen Robben got a hat-trick, completing with a penalty. A good week for Bayern, then. Decent week for Dortmund, too, who seem to have negotiated their injury decimation to be almost in form again. The hipster darlings of Europe rose back up to second spot this week after their 3-0 victory over Nurnberg propelled them over Sami Hyypia’s Leverkusen who have now lost five in a row, most recently at home to Mainz; a real fingers-in-the-socket moment, that was.
Hoffenheim surprised me this weekend, getting their sechs up against Wolfsburg. Two of them came after Christian Trasch gave away a rubbish penalty, capping a garbage performance. Hoffenheim were anything BUT wasteful, though, Sejad Salihovic converting to make it 5-2, before Sven Schipplock completed an exciting couple of minutes for those who talk like snakes by completing the sssssssscoring.
Anthony Modessssssssssste; scorer for Hoffenheim.
Hamburg’s revival was cut off in its infancy, bang-average Werder Bremen winning a low-scoring affair 1-0, while bottom side Braunschweig earned a point after Barcelona-goalkeeper-in-waiting Marc-Andre Ter Stegen scored an own goal while doing his business between the sticks for Borussia Moenchengladbach. Frankfurt, happily, bounced back from their crushing Europa League draw-defeat (away goals 2-2, 3-3) against Porto to continue their mini-revival and are pulling away from the triumvirate of teams of 19 points which include Hamburg, Freiburg (drew 0-0 at Hertha Berlin) and Stuttgart, who lost at Frankfurt.
I’m not sure where the biggest game was in Europe this weekend. There’s a fair chance it was in Milan, where AC Milan took on Juventus. It was typical Juventus. They managed to repel the Rossoneri for the first half, when the Adel Taraabt inspired Milan looked far more the likely scorers only to see Tevez and Llorente to combine to give the visitors a half-time lead. Knowing the drill from thereon in, Tevez added a rather glorious second during the second spell to give them a 0-2 victory and ensure that Juve’s lead extended to 11 points over Roma.
Juventus love winning football matches. Their midfield is well-tightly packed. Five men. You can't pick your way through
It’s the draws that kill you in Serie A now, and Roma’s seven (another this weekend 0-0 with Inter) means their title challenge is effectively over. At the other end of the table, it’s the draws that keep you alive, as Bologna have used to their benefit, as their 10 keeps them above the relegation zone. Rolando Bianchi saw a penalty saved for the Rossoblu as they drew 0-0 at a Luca Toni-lite Hellas Verona.
Their next game is against Sassuolo, who greeted their defeat to Parma – Domenico Berardi was sent off, so will miss the Bologna game – by sacking Alberto Malesani and rehiring floating-brain-in-a-jar-alike Eusebio Di Francesco. He looks like Jonathan Wilson and was fired as coach of Sassuolo only 34 days beforehand, though their football had become a dredging festival of awfulness in his absence.
They sit bottom of Serie A below Catania – 2-0 losers at Averagenoa and Livorno, who continued the theme of potential Barcelona goalkeepers scoring own-goals for relegation threatened sides in a 1-1 draw with Napoli, Pepe Reina the man in question in this instance. Bologna are just ahead of them all. Torino have really gone off the boil since the derby defeat; losing 0-2 at Sampdoria was hard to take, though I suspect European football might be a bit beyond them, both in terms of league position and actual performance. Toro have been impressive in a really poor quality of Serie A this year.
There’s a possibility that there was a bigger game in Spain, though, as it was the Madrid derby. This was important outside of Madrid for a change this season, and it was a belter of a game. Karim Benzema to you scored after just three minutes to give the visiting Real the lead. Atleti were tremendous, though, pressing, harrying and hurrying their guests into mistakes, into trouble and eventually got their rewards, with both Koke and Gabi scoring to give them the lead. Koke is an absolutely tremendously footballer – he’s the real thing. They visibly tired towards the end, though, allowing Cristiano Ronaldo the chance to equalise, and sho’ nuff, he did.
Gabi. Better than both Roslin and Logan.
Pepe produced his usual antics, throwing himself to the ground after being contacted very lightly by Godin’s hair, both managers had a bit of a war of words afterwards, and it was a thoroughly exciting affair. 2-2 it ended.
That allowed Barcelona the chance to steal a bit of a march on them, and they did and now sit only one point behind Real; a 4-1 victory against Almeria looked easier than it was, Puyol and Xavi giving it a bit of gloss late on. Puyol is leaving at the end of the season, even with two years left on his contract. Its time, I think. He missed too much through injury, and Barcelona need a player to rely on in that role to really get back to their best.
Below that, Bilbao swept aside Granada 4-0 at San Mames to go six points ahead of Villarreal who only drew with bottom club Betis who are slightly better nowadays, but still eight points back of everyone else; that else being Vallecano, who beat Valencia 1-0, and Valladolid who drew 1-1 at Malaga, for whom the Ghost of Christmas Past, Roque Santa Cruz, scored.
Equally, there’s a possibility that there was a bigger game in France. I’m not sure I particularly want to discuss Le Classique, though. It was 0-0 at half-time, which was nice, but in the end, PSG won 2-0 against Marseille. At least Zlatan didn’t score, though. Some crumb of comfort there. Hmmm.
The better action was in St Etienne, however. Les Verts Resurgantes faced Monaco, and managed to squeak past them 2-0 courtesy of Fabien Lemoine and Romain Hamouma and sit only one point behind Lille after Les Dogues managed to get the better of Ajaccio, Junior Tallo and Saloman Kalou trading blows, with the latter winning 2-3, and ensuring his team triumphed by the same scoreline. A genuinely thrilling affair, which is rare for France.
Phillippe Merle, goalscorer for The Greens against the Monagasques
I forgot where Jordan Ayew had gone on loan, but it turns out it was Sochaux – he scored this weekend, helping them to a 2-0 win over Bordeaux; its still a long way back to Evian for both Sochaux and Valenciennes (lost 3-1 at Reims) but five points isn’t insurmountable at this stage. A nice headwind and they might be alright – either one.
No such problems in Portugal, though, where three teams sit on 16 points at the foot of the Liga Sagres. Pacos Ferreira are bottom. Remember THEY WERE IN CHAMPIONS LEAGUE QUALIFYING THIS SEASON!!!! They beat Maritimo this weekend to bring them back into that group, but still, it’s an impressive fall from grace. I worry a little about Estoril in this regard. Although they scored four goals against another of those 16-pointers Olhanense, there’s that feeling that this decent run will evaporate and this plucky Canarinhos outfit (only in their second top-flight season since 2005) will fall again. That would be a shame.
The third part of the triumvirate is Belenenses, who lost 0-1 at home to top of the table Benfica, still five points clear of Sporting, 2-1 victors over Braga. The drama is with Porto, who drew Vitoria de Guimaraes, losing a 0-2 lead after half time. The gap from Porto to Estoril is only four points now. Its still a mountain, because you expect Porto to recover, but there’s a chance there. Isn’t there? There is.
Big game in Holland, too, with their Klassieker seeing Feyenoord taking on Ajax. The Rotterdam side have picked up to fourth recently, so it was quite a big affair, with Ajax top of the table. When Graziano Pelle scored (I might just put that in my signature) to give Feyenoord the lead, it seemed possible that Ajax would be defeated but they came back through Kolbein Sigthorsson and Joel Veltmann to win 1-2 and sit 9 points clear of the rest of the Eredivisie.
Second placed Twente (it’s the draws that’s killed them, too – 17-6-3 v. 13-10-3) drew at Utrecht, with Tommy Oar (great name) cancelling out Quincy Promes (another great name) goal. That allowed a Mike Havenaar-inspired Vitesse to join them on 49 points.
If you’ve been getting lulled into a false sense of security by all these title races being practically settled, then sharpen up, because we’re going to Belgium, where it is more alive than Um Bongo. Club Bruges hosted top of the table Standard Liege and Jesper Jorgensen’s second half winner was enough to earn them the win, and reduce the gap to just four points. That’s make-upable, I would reckon, though it might require a bit of a help from Anderlecht, in third, and 2-1 conquerors over 10-man Genk over the weekend.
Bottom side Mons are five points adrift after a handy 3-0 win over Oostende; their pursuit may be helped by Oud-Heverlee’s 0-0 draw seeing them see two of their players dismissed – they host Anderlecht next weekend while Mons go to Genk. That said, its another five points up to Beveren, so maybe I’m building it up into something it isn’t.
That’s Western Europe dealt with, so let’s go east.
We need to stop in Greece. There is BIG, BIG news. It was the Derby of the Eternal Enemies on Sunday evening. The biggest showpiece game in Greek football. Unbeaten Olimpiacos welcomed Panathinaikos down to Piraeus to give them the same shoeing they dealt to Manchester United. Except it didn’t go to plan.
PANATHINAIKOS! Madness! Still not over it.
Daniel Pranjic gave Pana the lead, and when Marcus Berg made it 0-2, the unthinkable was thinkable, and Olimpiacos looked like they were staring defeat in the face. They were. It ended when Mehdi Abeid scored a third for Pana in the 89th minute and dealt a devastating blow to Olimpiacos’ title aspirations.
Their lead is now only 19 points over Atromitos, 1-3 winners at Panatolikos, and PAOK, 2-2 drawers at Ergotelis. AEK were back to winning ways this week, too – their 6-1 was a welcome tonic, even if it was against bottom-dwellers Agios Nikolaos. They host second-placed Irodotos next weekend, so that might be a bit of a test. AEK are second to Salzburg, by the way in that goals-for table averaging 3.33 in their 18 games to date.
A quick look at Turkey shows Fenebahce looking untroubled at the top, another win this week pulling ahead of Galatasaray who could only draw with Rizespor, while Besiktas did the same against Antalyaspor. Nothing particularly to report there.
Good week for Pamplemousses in Mauritius, though. Their 1-0 win against Petite Riviere Noire keeps them one point behind Circle Joachim with a game in hand.
This is a picture from the Mauritian Express. I assume it is Mauritian football.
Curepipe continue with their title hangover, only managing a draw against Port-Louis 2000 and are very definitely mid-table.
And now for the Japan bit. Only to mention the huge opening day wins for Sagan Tosu (5-0) against newly-promoted Tokushima Vortis, and Kashiwa Antlers (0-4) at Ventforet Kofu. Meanwhile, it was a tough opening fixture for newly promoted Cerezo Osaka, with added Diego Forlan, as they lost 0-1 to Sanfrecce Hiroshima (last year’s champions) on a game that was on Eurosport if you cared to watch. Other promoted sides Gamba Osaka were dealt a tough game against Urawa Red Diamonds – they lost 0-1 as well.
Diego Forlan, no more or no less, failed to score on his J-League debut for Cerezo.
I quite fancy Urawa this season. Ought to mention Oita, my favourite team from last year’s J-League because of their abject futility. They lost 2-1 at Mito Hollyhock in J-League 2. You can’t have too much of a good thing.