Another European soccer weekend is in the books and, once again, there are narratives aplenty to dissect. Liverpool defeated Arsenal in Sunday’s presumed “clash of title contenders,” though it’s clear based on the 90 minutes that both teams are far from the finished product. (Don’t worry: It’s the same for the rest of the Premier League after just three games, and with deadline day still ongoing.) VAR dominated the headlines after cancelling out a perfectly valid Fulham goal in the Cottagers’ 2-0 loss to Chelsea, while Manchester United also had the folks at Stockley Park to thank for their late, late 3-2 win over newly promoted Burnley.
Elsewhere, there are talking points galore as Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich and Napoli all secured three points to send title warnings, with Luis Enrique’s charges looking the most ominous. And don’t forget about Real Madrid either, as they picked up a third win from three games to take an early lead atop LaLiga — Xabi Alonso’s side still look a work in progress, but results are good right now.
It’s Monday before the international break kicks in, so what better time for Gab Marcotti’s musings?
Sunday’s clash of title favorites at Anfield turned into what tactics nerds like to call a “chess match,” but which others might describe as simply two sides unable to execute. Liverpool, defending champions playing at home, ended the first half with an xG of 0.09 and didn’t actually record their first shot on target until the hour mark. Arsenal, already without Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard (slowed by a shoulder injury, he came on in the second half), also lost defensive stalwart William Saliba after just five minutes and clearly opted for the risk-averse route.
Situations like these usually get resolved by one of two things: either a mistake (whether by the referee or an individual player), or a moment of brilliance. Dominik Szoboszlai’s long-range free kick screamer that decided the match fits in the latter category.
– Szoboszlai, Liverpool make statement by beating Arsenal
– Emotional turmoil for Amorim, but a key win for Man United
– The VAR Review: Fulham fume while Man United get late penalty
Liverpool boss Arne Slot will be pleased with three wins in three games and already a two-point gap at the top of the table, but it’s pretty evident that what we’re seeing on the pitch isn’t the side he hopes to field later in the season. It can’t be. In each of their first three games they needed late goals to turn draws into wins, and while the schedule (they faced Bournemouth and Newcastle before this) has been tough, we haven’t seen what we saw from them last season — hence the pursuits of Alexander Isak and Marc Guéhi, though while more and better personnel makes you better, there is a fair amount to sort through tactically as well.
Florian Wirtz in the No. 10 hole remains a long-term project. Against Arsenal, it felt like he had to navigate deeper to get the ball and escape the Martín Zubimendi-Declan Rice gorgons in front of Arsenal’s back four, though it remains to be seen whether that’s the best use of his talents. Szoboszlai didn’t just score the winner; he also had more touches than any outfield player bar Virgil van Dijk, and he did a fair Trent Alexander-Arnold impression with some of his long-range passing. Is he keeping the right-back position warm for Jeremie Frimpong’s return, or is this something we’ll see again on a regular basis, in which case Liverpool will have three right-back solutions (if you count Conor Bradley too) who are totally different from each other? Alexis Mac Allister and Mohamed Salah, for different reasons, have had slow starts to the season too.
As for Arsenal, manager Mikel Arteta insists they played to win, though on Monday morning he got plenty of stick for being too negative. Results change narratives and, had they escaped with a point (or nicked a goal to win it, which they could have done) we’d be talking about his tactical master class. What’s pretty evident is that the drop from Odegaard, Saka and Saliba to Mikel Merino, Noni Madueke and Cristhian Mosquera is pretty sharp. Throw in the absence of Kai Havertz — probably a better fit in a game like this than Viktor Gyökeres — and you can give Arteta a pass for Sunday.
What’s clear is that he has pushed the club to go all-in this season, adding a ton of depth that simply wasn’t there last season. Arsenal’s reserve front four — Eberechi Eze, Madueke, Havertz and Ethan Nwaneri (or Merino) — is as good as all but a handful of team’s first-choice quartets. The pursuit of Piero Hincapié adds further options to the back line (and central midfield, too). Getting the newcomers to mesh and ensuring the drop-off is limited when your starters are unavailable will take time in his case, too. They have the defensive side of the game down pat — dialing up what they do on the attacking end, particularly when the understudies are in, will be a journey.
So if you were a little disappointed with Sunday, don’t fret. Both these teams are nowhere near their ceiling. They can get a lot better.
Last week I wrote about how Barcelona’s defense lacked depth without the departed Iñigo Martínez and that maybe, rather than spending what precious few resources the club has on another winger/forward type like Marcus Rashford (when you already have Gavi, Fermín López, etc., off the bench), the priority should have been bolstering the heart of the back four and finding a partner for Pau Cubarsí. Judging from Flick’s team selection — dropping Ronald Araújo and Cubarsi for Andreas Christensen and Eric García — you wonder if he figures it makes sense to hold open auditions. If so, what he saw wasn’t pretty.
Barca simply fell apart after the break (zero shots on target) as the high line got caught out time and again. Isi Palazón, Oscar De Frutos, Sergio Camello all scythed through the Barca back line as if it wasn’t there. Had it not been for Joan García having a monster game between the sticks, Rayo would easily have scored three or four.
To be fair to the back line (Jules Koundé was poor too, by the way), they didn’t get much help from the guys further up the pitch, especially in the second half. If you get caught in transition it’s often because somebody has lost the ball and isn’t working terribly hard to win it back. Barca started the game OK on a questionable pitch and for a minute, given how open Rayo play, it looked like this might turn into a shootout. But the only goal came thanks to a dubious penalty won and converted by Lamine Yamal. (VAR malfunctioned and wasn’t working.)
Some like to pick on Yamal for his goal celebration where he places an imaginary crown on his head: that’s a big call to make when you’re 18. Then again, if he’s the designated penalty taker at that age, it means he’s ready to take responsibility on the pitch. And, frankly, other than Pedri and Frenkie de Jong, there wasn’t much in the way of accountability out there.
Flick will have to reach deep into his box of tricks to solve this. There’s enough talent in midfield and attack (and enough pride in terms of realizing that Sunday was an embarrassment) that they can find a fix at the front end. It’s at the back where things look grim. Joan García can’t be counted on to perform miracles every single week.
The headlines are all about video assistant referee Michael Salisbury, who disallowed Josh King’s counterattacking goal for an imaginary Rodrigo Muniz foul on Trevoh Chalobah. (Hint: When you have possession of the ball and in regaining your balance you step on the foot of the opponent behind you — an opponent you can’t see since you don’t have eyes on the back of your head — it’s not a foul.)
The Premier League’s refereeing body, the PGMOL, admitted the error and took him off VAR duty for Sunday’s game between Liverpool and Arsenal. Admitting errors is a grown-up thing to do; it would be good if they also explained why referee Robert Jones didn’t overrule VAR when he watched the incident on the screen.
Fulham were furious, and rightly so. Not only should the goal have stood, but the interminable review also caused the first half to run over an additional nine minutes, with Chelsea taking the lead at the very end of it. VAR also stepped in for Chelsea’s second goal, punishing a handball with a penalty, but that was more understandable.
However, all this referee/VAR talk shouldn’t distract from a poor Chelsea performance, especially in the first half. Until the final minute of first-half injury time, their xG stood at a paltry 0.11. Cole Palmer’s absence — and Liam Delap’s injury — alone don’t explain it. Blues head coach Enzo Maresca needs his leaders to step up, starting with Enzo Fernández. It’s one thing to beat up a horrible West Ham United like they did last week, quite another to deal with a well-drilled, organized side like Fulham.
Judging from the reaction to Inter’s 2-1 home defeat to Udinese, it seems as if folks have very short memories. Like maybe they forgot that Cristian Chivu is a de facto rookie coach: He had 13 games in charge at Parma last year, winning just three. Or that Inter pummeled Torino 5-0 in the opening match of the season. Or, for that matter, that the guy Chivu replaced, Inzaghi, is a heck of a coach and it’s not easy to replace him.
What’s more, this is still very much Inzaghi’s Inter, which means Chivu has a conundrum. Does he implement his playing style? Does he try to keep Inzaghi’s concepts? Or, more likely, how does he blend the two? Inzaghi’s tactical mastery allowed him to carry a midfield with no defensive midfielders, though I’m not sure Chivu can do that. It’s fine: There’s more than one way to play the game.
What’s not going to help him is talk about needing to install “motivation” and “enthusiasm” into his players. Appreciate the honesty, Cristian, but that’s your job and if you say it’s missing, you’re basically saying you’re not motivating your troops.
That said, it’s early and he doesn’t deserve some of the criticism he got postgame. Especially getting ridiculed for ending the game with four strikers when chasing the game. (He sent on Ange-Yoan Bonny and Francesco Pio Esposito while keeping Lautaro Martínez and Marcus Thuram on the pitch.) Yeah, Inzaghi rarely did that — he’d find other ways to tweak — but that’s the point. He’s not Inzaghi, he’s his own man and that can be perfectly reasonable way to try to find the equalizer when you’re down a goal. Save the Chicken Little act and give him time to work.
10. PSG go next level at Toulouse: There are different ways to win 6-3. It’s still a three-goal margin of victory, but sometimes it can be a tight, exciting game with one side pulling ahead at the end. Not here. Paris Saint-Germain were 3-0 up inside of 15 minutes and 5-1 up before the hour mark. Game over. The rest is garbage time, which is when — after Luis Enrique duly made his substitutions — the home team pulled a couple of goals back. PSG ended up with a whopping 76% possession and weirdly got outshot by Toulouse (14-13), but only because by that stage the game was over. João Neves took the headlines with a stunning hat trick (two of them overhead kicks), while Lucas Chevalier saved a penalty (two, actually, given the first one was retaken). A lot will have to go wrong this season for PSG to drop points in Ligue 1.
9. Zambo Anguissa’s buzzer-beater saves Napoli, but this year feels different: Sometimes you deliver a stinker, somehow manage to score and eke out a 1-0 win. And sometimes you need the final kick of the game to break the impasse when really, you deserved to score earlier. Thanks to André-Frank Zambo Anguissa, Napoli’s 1-0 win over Cagliari belongs to the latter category, unlike many of the 1-0 wins they got last season. Cagliari parked the proverbial bus, star signing Kevin De Bruyne was a notch below his best, and Napoli were a bit languid in their play — but the chances still came, albeit after the break. Antonio Conte, however, still has the tactical chops to give himself the edge, like he did when he sent on a genuine winger like Noa Lang. This feels like a team pacing itself, knowing it’s ready to reap what it sows. That wasn’t the sense last season, when they won the title.
8. Real Madrid getting results, but still waiting on performances: The good news is Real Madrid are three for three, Barcelona are three points back and Atlético Madrid a whopping seven points back. On the flip side, Saturday’s 2-1 win over Mallorca underscored how this doesn’t yet feel like a Xabi Alonso side. There’s little value-add from the coach (which may be understandable, given it’s still very early in his tenure) and it’s still about talented individuals doing what talented individuals do. Consider Kylian Mbappé’s disallowed goals (correct, but close) or, for that matter, Vinícius Júnior’s strike that made it 2-1. This isn’t about patterns of play; it’s about having exceptional players. Which isn’t a bad thing … just that when great players have off days, you can get stuck. It feels as if Xabi is still holding auditions for his starting XI (and, in any case, he’ll have to rewrite the script when Jude Bellingham returns). Don’t expect to see Xabi’s vision of Real Madrid to come together until the new year … which is why it’s good they’re getting results under their belts in the meantime.
7. With horrible finishing and defensive lapses, Bayern nearly chuck Bavarian Derby away: I’ll start with Luis Díaz, because I’m a huge fan. He did score in Bayern Munich’s nervy 3-2 win at FC Augsburg, but he also missed a couple of sitters, including an early “miss of the season” contender after just 20 seconds. He wasn’t the only culprit, though, as Bayern somehow contrived to put together an xG of 4.24 while scoring just three times. At the other end, there were more defensive mishaps than you’d expect (Sacha Boey, again), suggesting simply dropping Jonathan Tah into the back four isn’t going to fix the defense. It’s not what Bayern fans want to see, coming after the shaky midweek performance against third-flight Wehen Wiesbaden. The club have been quite open about their difficulties in the transfer window this summer, but these sorts of flaws can generally be attributed to focus and concentration (after all, they’re still creating the chances). That’s something Die Roten coach Vincent Kompany needs to sort out.
6. Dusan Vlahovic does it again for Juventus … so much for those who wanted him gone: I don’t want to say “I told you so” but … OK, sample size is tiny (two goals in two games) but the big man staying is, all told, a blessing in disguise. He seems fine with his role off the bench and he’ll be a free agent at the end of the season: What’s not to like? With the leverage he had, a move was always going to be unlikely and with Lois Openda now reportedly on his way — a better complement in Igor Tudor’s system than Randal Kolo Muani — Juve have viable and productive front four options when you add in Kenan Yildiz, Jonathan David and Chico Conceicao. Genoa away are a prickly opponent, and Juve don’t necessarily have the fluidity they need yet. Things should get better once the window closes and there is a bit more clarity over the bloated squad as more players exit.
5. VAR rescued Man United, but Ruben Amorim is right to not call it a ‘turning point’: Why should he? Manchester United have had more turning points turn into false dawns than you can shake a stick at. The winner came all the way in the seventh minute of injury time against Burnley — with Bruno Fernandes making it 3-2 from the spot thanks to VAR — but the result was deserved and the decision was correct (if you’re going to pull a jersey, be sure to let go well before your opponent enters the penalty area). You can highlight the negatives — the sheer luck on the Josh Cullen own-goal, goalkeeper Altay Bayindir screwing up (again), Matheus Cunha coming off injured, Amorim refusing to look on as Bruno took the penalty (again), the general chaotic nerviness after Burnley made it 2-2 — but they don’t change the fact that United created plenty of chances. Managing games clearly is not (yet?) their forte, but given how fragile Manchester United are mentally and how prone to psychodrama, at least they offered a reaction to the League Cup embarrassment in front of their own fans. Lest we forget, this team lost nine of 19 league games at Old Trafford last season.
4. Erik Ten Hag sacked by Bayer Leverkusen after 62 days, but he can’t be the only one responsible: OK, so it’s open season on the former Manchester United boss. Appointed July 1, dismissed September 1. Nice one, Erik. It happened after another embarrassing outing: leading 3-1 against Werder Bremen, who are down to 10 men with 26 minutes to go, and Bayer Leverkusen contrive to draw 3-3. Several things seem pretty clear here. Ten Hag wasn’t fired for the first two Bundesliga outings, however insipid. Clearly, some key relationships broke down very quickly, because it’s never a good look for a club to sack a guy two games into his tenure. He was likely never a good fit for a club needing to rebuild on a budget after losing half its starting XI, but that means whoever hired him has to take accountability, too.
3. Manchester City’s collapse at Brighton is more mental than technical: Two defeats on the bounce for Pep Guardiola’s City used to be noteworthy … until last season. But this is supposed to be the rebuilding year, which makes the collapse away to Brighton all the more noteworthy. Things were fine for an hour, right up until Oscar Bobb missed the chance to make it 2-0 — and then, the bottom fell out. Matheus Nunes gave up a foolish penalty, the back four went all over the place for Brajan Gruda’s winner and they ended up conceding 2.19 xG in the last half hour while taking just three shots, all of them off target. Had it not been for James Trafford’s standout performance, it was Brighton who could have four or even five and again, that has to be on the manager because for most of the game, City were significantly better and, indeed, Erling Haaland could have had a first half hat trick. Guardiola was dismissive, saying that compared to last season his team is “in a good moment.” I’m more on board with the words of Rodri, who blamed lack of concentration, children’s mistakes and admitted they haven’t been at the level they should be at “for a long, long time.” Guardiola needs to take this break to think things through and sort things out. He should not compare this to last year’s aberration.
2. Atletico Madrid still winless after (lucky) draw at Alaves: Lucky because Giuliano Simeone’s goal shouldn’t have stood. The handball was accidental, but it led directly to him being able to shoot on goal (which is why the VAR was replaced). So it really should be one point from three games, eight behind Real Madrid. It’s “El Cholo” Simeone’s worst-ever start at Atletico and rarely, in his 13 years in charge, have they looked this confused. On paper, this team should be more attacking than last season’s iteration, but they take fewer shots and have lower expected goals per shot. Antoine Griezmann started slowly, Alexander Sorloth still hasn’t found the right chemistry with Julián Álvarez, Koke isn’t getting any younger and the entire new flank with Thiago Almada and Matteo Ruggeri (who was dropped for a center back like Dávid Hancko, maybe the only bright spot among the new signings) isn’t working. Teething problems? Sure. And given his track record, you wouldn’t bet against Simeone figuring things out. But right now, it’s hard to see how these bits fit together.
1. Frank hails Spurs’ ‘heart’ after Bournemouth humiliation: And, make no mistake about it, it was a humiliation. Tottenham Hotspur boss Thomas Frank got plenty of praise for some of the early performances (including the 2-0 win at Manchester City) but all of that disappeared against AFC Bournemouth. Sure, they went down to a deflected goal early, but what happened next was hard to stomach. Their first shot on goal came in minute 55 and their first (and only) shot on target in minute 68. Cherries head coach Andoni Iraola is a phenomenal tactician and Bournemouth are a tough out, but Spurs’ inability to create chances was evident. Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison being injured doesn’t help, although newly signed Xavi Simons should brighten things up.
It’s interesting to note that Frank is opting for the carrot, instead of the stick after this horrid performance. He praised his team’s “heart” and “effort” while conceding his attacking players “did not hit a high level.”
“I don’t want to say it’s OK,” he said. “But it’s natural.” Different coach, different motivational techniques I guess…