The best action to follow this weekend
Saturday
🏴 In truth, you might want to scroll to Sunday for this weekend’s truly massive games but there is – of course – plenty to get your teeth stuck in to on your match feed for Saturday!
In the Premier League, there’s a chance for Spurs to close the gap to the leaders when they play Everton. We’ll see who’ll come out on top in the battle of the high-achieving promoted sides, Fulham or Bournemouth. Plus there’s a relegation six-pointer at Wolves and a survival mission for Brendon Rogers as Leicester face Palace at a restless King Power Stadium.
Fans of lower league English football might be pleased to find this weekend’s FA Cup matches listed in the app as our coverage of this season’s tournament begins with the final qualifying round.
🇪🇸 In LaLiga, with all the attention going on Sunday’s Clásico, you might be interested in the warm-up – the clash between the sides currently billed as the ‘best of the rest’ – Athletic Club and Atlético Madrid. Diego Simeone’s side travel to the Basque Country to take on a side who have only lost once, and conceded just three goals at home, this season.
🇫🇷 Similarly, with France’s big two set to clash later in the weekend, your attention should be on proud Breton club Lorient. Riding a historic high to sit second in the table, the relative minnows will go top of Ligue 1 – should they beat Stade Reims at home. This is a side who had to cancel their first home game of the season due to the damage caused by hosting a traditional local festival on their pitch in the summer!
🇺🇸 Saturday also marks the start of the MLS Play-Offs in the US and Canada. New York Red Bulls play post-season debutants FC Cincinnati to kick-off proceedings, before LA Galaxy, who finished fourth in the West, host Nashville, who ended the regular season in fifth.
🇮🇹 There is a truly massive game in Serie A on Saturday with the Derby della Mole – the Turin Derby – pitting Torino against their more successful, but currently in crisis mode neighbours, Juventus. Despite winning just one of their last six games, the hosts only sit two points down on Juve, with nine games played. And with coach Max Allegri under serious pressure after a run of poor performances that has included league defeats to Monza, and this week’s Champions League humiliation at Maccabi Haifa – this could be Torino’s best opportunity to end a seven-year wait for a win against their city rivals.
Elsewhere, Atalanta can go top of the table, should they maintain their unbeaten start to the season, with a win over ninth placed Sassuolo.
Sunday
🇪🇸 The biggest club game in the world shouldn’t need any introduction, nor much of a build-up in this preview but here we go anyway, because this particular edition of El Clásico should be a cracker. Both defending champions Madrid, and Xavi’s resurgent Barça (domestically at least), go in to the game unbeaten and locked together on points.
Barcelona’s superior defence – they’ve conceded just once so far – means they currently lead the table but that could all be set to change as the league’s best two attacking outfits go head-to-head.
For the record – the all-time list of results reads 100 Madrid wins to Barcelona’s 97, with 52 games resulting in draws.
🇫🇷 The fixture gods continue to bless us on Sunday with the latest edition of France’s biggest game – Le Classique between PSG, and polar opposites, Marseille.
The Southern side have impressed so far this season, although did suffer the first defeat of their season, at home to AC Ajaccio last weekend. PSG also dropped points – at Reims – and are now on a run of three draws after their back-to-back 1-1s with Benfica in the Champions League.
Those results have left a three point gap between the rivals and the potential peculiarity that both sides could be chasing a win to take them back above the un-fancied Lorient come kick-off.
🏴 There’s five Premier League games lined up – four with simultaneous kick-offs. So you might want to check your alerts are working for the games involving leaders Arsenal – who travel to Leeds, fourth placed Chelsea – who go to Villa, and the game between fourth and fifth – Manchester United vs. Newcastle United.
Later in the day, there’s the heavyweight clash between Liverpool and Manchester City, the two sides who’ve shared the last five titles (and more often than not, finished second to the other). Can City inflict further misery on a side currently sitting well off the pace in 10th with just 10 points from their first nine games? Or can Liverpool use their huge 7-1 Champions League win at Rangers – featuring Mo Salah’s record breaking hat-trick – to inspire a change in fortunes? And as if they need further motivation, the Reds are unbeaten in their last four meetings with City.
🇩🇪 This Bundesliga season has been out of the ordinary in a number of ways but this weekend, there’s a chance for the country’s most dominant sides to reassert their authority – albeit, neither can overtake current leaders Union Berlin.
Union face fourth placed Dortmund, with the side from the capital possibly still celebrating their midweek win in the Europa League that ensures the club will be playing continental football post-Christmas, for the first time in their history.
Bayern, who ensured their progression in the Champions League with the win over Viktoria Plzeň, must now refocus on perhaps the trickier task of a taking on second placed Freiburg.
And if both results go the way of the big two, we could see the league’s top four separated by just two points come Sunday evening.
🇮🇹 Back in Serie A, there’s five games on the slate – with action for four of the sides sitting in the top six as we head in to the weekend. Leaders Napoli take on Bologna, a side they’ve not lost to in five meetings and who’ve not kept a clean sheet so far this season.
Defending champions Milan could lift themselves up the table – but only if they can inflict what would be a fifth straight defeat on the out-of-form Hellas Verona. But perhaps the biggest game of the day sees Lazio (third) face Udinese (fourth). Both sides sit on the same number of points – three down on Napoli and both feature some of the season’s best performers in the league. Lazio’s Sergej Milinković-Savić leads Udinese’s Gerard Deulofeu by seven to six in the assist charts while Ciro Immobile has one more goal than Udinese’s Beto at the top of the scoring charts (6 to 5).
🇺🇦 Among a litany of national-clasicos and regional derbies around Europe over the weekend (Sunday also features big clashes in Copenhagen and Stockholm, for example) – there is possibly a more significant game taking place in the Ukrainian Premier League. The besieged nation’s two biggest sides – Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kyiv are set to play each other in a competitive game for the first time since the Russian invasion.
And this week – we published a special feature looking at the Ukrainian League and just what it’s taken to bring football back to the country. You can read that piece by clicking here.
🇯🇵 And finally, keep your eye out for the result of the Final in Japan’s Emperor’s Cup where second division side Ventforet Kofu take on Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who currently sit third in the J.League. For further context, Ventforet Kofu still need a point from their remaining two league games to ensure they don’t slip down to the third tier! Could we see a fairytale #Cupset?
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Cover Image from IMAGO