European club soccer returned with plenty of drama and excitement after the September international break, so let's review. In the Premier League, we got a Manchester City rout of their rivals Manchester United in the derby, as well as a 93rd-minute penalty for Liverpool to lift them to victory at Burnley and maintain their 100% record to open the season. Phew.
Elsewhere, Juventus racked up an impressive 4-3 win over Inter Milan to take charge of Serie A in the early going, and Real Madrid's win over Real Sociedad was dominated postgame by frustration (from Los Blancos) over the refereeing ... again. We also had talking points galore for Barcelona (who are thankful they didn't let Fermín López leave this summer), Arsenal (who stomped Nottingham Forest with a new-look attack), Milan (and a star turn by the ageless Luka Modric), and Chelsea (whose Cole Palmer dependency is a problem).
It's Monday morning, so what better time for Gab Marcotti's musings?
Big men come up big as City dominate Manchester derby, but there is room for improvement
Erling Haaland scored twice, could have had another two, and these days looks like the devastating unbeatable player we saw two years ago.
Newly arrived 6-foot-5 Gianluigi Donnarumma (greeted by Pep Guardiola stating the obvious that "he's just so big ... Really, really big") made just two saves, but one -- off Bryan Mbeumo in the second half -- was the sort that turns games. Or, rather it prevents games from turning, because City were 2-0 up at the time and anything else than his instant reflex one-hander might have reopened the match.
Mark Ogden looks ahead to the announcement of Manchester United's annual accounts.
It's obviously an exaggeration to say that Guardiola has simply gone full-on brawn in his 10th season at City, but the team that spanked Manchester United are undeniably on the heftier, athletic side. And this is only further proof of how Guardiola isn't stuck to his orthodoxies, but is willing to evolve to the times. That's why I'm not sure folks should be overly worried by the footballing reasons PSG cited for moving on from Donnarumma -- namely that he's not great with his feet and thus isn't ideal for building from the back. Not everybody is going to be an Éderson type and there is more than one way to play: trust Pep to find it.
- Ogden, Dawson: How Man City thrashed Man United
- Lindop: Liverpool lean on more late-game heroics
- VAR Weekend Review: Why Brentford's goal wasn't ruled out
It's true that City were without John Stones, Rayan Aït-Nouri, Omar Marmoush and Rayan Cherki and, perhaps, the emphasis on athleticism and energy over technique and creativity was by necessity (not that the team he put out there was lacking in quality, far from it). But it simply shows, I think, that City are as well-rounded as they have been in years and more dynamic too. Throw in a rejuvenated Phil Foden and again, it feels as if Guardiola has an embarrassment of options and riches. It's a question of making the right choices.
That said, City were far from perfect, especially in transition. When your back four changes as often as it does, you will be vulnerable (as we saw with a couple of close offsides). United's gaudy expected goals of 1.52 were inflated by late Casemiro and Mbeumo chances that you would really rather not give up.
And what to make of Ruben Amorim? I'm not sure they were as bad as the scoreline -- and City's missed chances -- made them look. The baby steps of progress we've seen in previous outings are still there, it's just that Matheus Cunha wasn't and City are a really, really good side.
Still, there's a ton on which to work. Benjamin Sesko is still very raw up front, and it's evident he's accustomed to playing with a strike partner rather than toiling on his own. He took just one shot and had zero touches in the opposition box. Altay Bayindir still has his issues in goal, and it's by no means clear that Senne Lammens -- who has one top flight season under his belt in the Belgian league -- is an immediate short-term upgrade.
Julien Laurens believes Ruben Amorim could be sacked if they lose to Chelsea after a poor run of form.
And then there's Amorim's insistence on playing Bruno Fernandes in midfield. He's still United's most productive player on the attacking end, but saddling him with extra defensive responsibilities seems needlessly counterintuitive.
Amorim has said he won't change his system and he clearly cherishes the dynamism of Cunha, Mbuemo and Amad Diallo in the "10" role, which Bruno can't provide. But there's a price to pay for this and I'm not sure it's worth paying.
Long-range heroics decide a seven-goal thriller as Juventus beat Inter Milan
It was a game that left you breathless, and you can decide which ballistic effort was most impressive: Kenan Yildiz's, either of Hakan Calhanoglu's or Vesilije Adzic's three-pointer at the end. (Me? I'll go with Calhanoglu's second).
The upshot is that the 4-3 win leaves Juventus top of the Serie A table on nine points -- the last time they began the season three for three was seven years ago. As for Inter, the Christian Chivu era starts with two defeats in three and that hasn't happened since 2011-12, when they finished sixth and made two coaching changes. No wonder some are questioning how long Chivu -- who, lest we forget, had just 13 games as a top-flight manager under his belt when he was appointed to replace Simone Inzaghi -- can survive.
Other than the result, Juve can take comfort from having an absolute world-class gem in Yildiz and at the back, they have a defensive leader in Gleison Bremer, who picked up where he left off before his injury. There's plenty of help up front, too: Jonathan David and Loïs Openda came off the bench, but they're penciled in for big roles this season and Dusan Vlahovic sticking around is a feature, not a bug. The question is how much Igor Tudor can extract form the rest of the pieces.
Juventus ultimately scored four goals from four shots on target, two of them with the help of major defensive blunders from Yann Sommer and Manuel Akanji. Treat this as a confidence-building win, sure, but also as a marker for how much more work is required to beat a top side.
As for Inter, there's too much Chicken Little freaking out for my liking. Ultimately, Inter scored three times on the road, had the higher expected goals and were undone by two craven individual errors from veterans who, you imagine, won't let it happen again. They controlled the game for long stretches (despite a leggy Lautaro Martínez) and frankly, a draw away to Juve going into the Champions League would not have been a bad result.
This notion that the side is suddenly too old or too complacent seems premature. Which is why blaming Chivu for not making a clean break with the Inzaghi era, and introducing some sort of different approach, is misguided. We can all second-guess but suddenly blowing up a team that reached the Champions League final last year and should have won the title because you're new would have been silly.
Defensive error rescues Liverpool at Burnley
Steve Nicol defends Mohamed Salah from criticisms of his overall play after scoring a last-minute penalty to Liverpool's win over Burnley.
Arne Slot said it best: against a Burnley side that parked the bus, it was going to take a moment of magic or a moment of luck to break the deadlock. Liverpool got the latter when Hannibal Mejbri turned his back and threw out his arms on Jeremie Frimpong's 93rd minute cross, conceding a penalty. Mohamed Salah, who had done close to nothing to that point -- zero shots and just six touches in the opposition box, which is hard to do against a side that sits so deep -- duly converted when it mattered, and Liverpool got the three points to stay perfect.
It's not lost on anyone that Liverpool's four wins this season have all come thanks to late, late goals, all of them in the 83rd minute or later. That's not a good thing, and it speaks to how Slot isn't yet where he wants this team to be. Alexis Mac Allister has yet to click (international duty didn't help), Salah has started slowly, Florian Wirtz (despite being among Liverpool's brighter sparks) has yet to find his role, and Hugo Ekitike blows hot and cold. Alexander Isak will help when he's finally fit, but I'm not sure it will be an instant fix.
Then there's Milos Kerkez. Slot took him off after 38 minutes after he got a yellow card for an evident dive. The official line was that they didn't want to risk a second yellow and to be fair, in a game like this, Andy Robertson is more than adequate. But it doesn't change that for any uninjured player, getting subbed off in the first half is humiliating. Maybe the thing to do here was to explain that Kerkez came off because you don't want to see your players cheating rather than talking about the possibility of a second yellow. Or wait until halftime, when the sub is less noticeable.
Conventional wisdom is that a team that wins while playing poorly must be really, really good. Liverpool were really ,really good last season and with the players they added, they can be even better this year. But from what we've seen thus far, they are punching way below their weight, and the fact that they're winning doesn't change that.
Kylian Mbappé and referees offers a sense of déjà vu for Real Madrid
Coaches change, but some things don't. Real Madrid stayed perfect in LaLiga this weekend, winning 2-1 away to Real Sociedad despite playing an hour or so down a man. Credit the team's resilience, credit Kylian Mbappe, and credit manager Xabi Alonso's ability to maintain (relative) calm in the cauldron of Anoeta. But, of course, that gets somewhat overshadowed by the hissy-fit reaction to the red card Dean Huijsen received for pulling back Mikel Oyarzabal in what referee Jesus Gil Manzano deemed to be a denial of goal-scoring opportunity.
Was it the wrong decision? Probably: Éder Militão was around to cover and the foul was a long way out. VAR did not intervene -- wrongly, according to the referees committee, per a report in the daily Diario AS -- thinking it wasn't a "clear and obvious" situation.
Was it a mistake? Sure. Could it have cost Real Madrid dear? Yes, but ultimately it didn't. And to launch the Real Madrid TV attack dogs -- "The league is an embarrassment ... this is a disagreement to the competition" -- with their talk of sending dossiers to FIFA moments after a big win is just unseemly. VAR screwed up: that's it.
As a result, we're talking about this rather than another sterling performance from Kylian Mbappe (a goal and an assist) or Xabi Alonso's decisions (Dani Ceballos and Vinícius distinctly underwhelming) or a first half-hour, at 11 vs. 11, that might have been Madrid's best football of the season.
Quick hits
10. Fermin Lopez leads the charge for injury-hit Barcelona, and it's a good thing he stuck around: It's pretty much an open secret that Fermin Lopez was shopped around all summer. On a club needing to balance the books, a homegrown player of his quality on low wages in a position where you have plenty of cover could have been a target to unload. It's no surprise that Barca coach Hansi Flick himself remarked how happy he was that the transfer window had closed so that we could stop the Fermin Lopez speculation.
It's true that he's not a projected starter and with Gavi and Marcus Rashford around, maybe not even second or third option off the bench in the attacking midfield line. But he gives you something different, he loves the club and he's one of the smarter players out there. With Lamine Yamal injured plus Raphinha and Dani Olmo dropped to the bench, Lopez got his first start of the campaign in the 6-0 drubbing of Valencia, responding with two goals and a man of the match performance.
Barca's squad construction is a head-scratcher and from a purely "Moneyball" perspective it would have made sense to push him out and pick another central defender. Then again, he brings intangibles to the table that matter too. And they're a better team with him as an option.
Luis Garcia credits Hansi Flick for being brave enough to drop Raphinha, before bringing him off the bench in Barcelona's 6-0 win.
9. Serhou Guirassy is a great example of when the experts get it wrong: The big center forward opened the scoring in Borussia Dortmund's 2-0 win away at Heidenheim, a comfortable victory made all the more so by the opposition going down to 10 men after 22 minutes. He has now scored in his last eight Bundesliga appearances, going back to last season and 13 of his last 15 appearances for the club. He also has 73 goals in his last 84 matches, going back to the summer of 2023 -- Only Harry Kane (93), Kylian Mbappe (92) and Erling Haaland (77), out of the Big Five leagues, have done better. That's the sort of company he keeps.
The funny thing about Guirassy is that before he joined Stuttgart (initially on loan) at age 26 in the summer of 22, he had reached double figures in league goals just once in his career. That may explain why, even after his breakout 2023-24 campaign at Stuttgart, in which he notched 30 goals in 30 games, most big clubs had little interest and he ended up at Dortmund for a paltry €17.5m ($19m). The thinking was that forwards don't suddenly improve in mid-career, that 2023-24 was a freak event, that he'd regress to what he'd been most of his professional life: a big bruiser, mostly off the bench. It turns out that even at an unstable club like Dortmund, he has continued banging them in. I guess the wise men were wrong.
8. New-look Arsenal stomp Nottingham Forest: The 3-0 win saw a front three of Eberechi Eze, Viktor Gyökeres and Noni Madueke who weren't at the club just a few months ago. Neither was Martín Zubimendi, the midfield general who scored two goals, or Cristhian Mosquera, the center back who was replacing William Saliba.
It's noteworthy because integrating five newcomers into a starting XI at this early stage of the season isn't always straightforward. It's also unlike Mikel Arteta who, in his previous campaigns, seemed so obsessed with chemistry and stability that he rarely rotated. Given the five aforementioned players transferred for close to $300 million and therefore are expected to play a significant role this year -- Zubimendi and Gyökeres appear to be nailed on starters -- it's important that Arteta gets them to mesh quickly. Forest are in disarray, admittedly, but on Saturday's evidence Arsenal are on the right track.
Ale Moreno believes there was "never a doubt" about Arsenal's dominant 3-0 victory over Nottingham Forest.
7. Bayern wrap it up early against newly promoted fallen giant Hamburg: Going 4-0 up at home against a side like Hamburg (former European champions no less ... if Schalke and Hertha didn't exist, you'd make a case for them being Germany's worst run club over the past decade) is exactly what you want heading into the Champions League. Three points in the bag and a chance to give some regulars a breather after the break.
Takeaways? Serge Gnabry opened the scoring and continues to look good (unlike recent seasons), Aleksandar Pavlovic looked sharp and reminded us he could add some important depth in the middle of the park, and 17-year-old Lennart Karl's cameo confirmed the hype. Nico Jackson made his debut in the second half and looked ho-hum, but by that stage the game was over. The haters may chortle, but I think he can definitely contribute this season.
6. Rasmus Højlund is just what the doctor ordered for Napoli on his debut: He had become a punchline at Old Trafford and has his skeptics (including me), but the Danish striker did exactly what Antonio Conte asked of him on his Serie A debut and did it extremely well. Three minutes in, when he somehow had his shot blocked from two feet away, things didn't look promising, but he shook it off and showed strength and speed to score as Napoli beat Fiorentina away, 3-1.
Højlund still has his limits: he's not great at getting shots, he's not prolific and he's not really a back-to-goal striker. But he's 22, he has a coach (in Conte) who knows how to use him, and in games where you need the big, back-to-goal presence, Conte can rely on Lorenzo Lucca and his 6-foot-7 frame. Napoli don't just have three wins from three games, but they've delivered three (mostly) convincing performances and seem better rounded than last season, when they won the title.
Gab Marcotti reacts to Rasmus Højlund's debut goal for Napoli after joining on loan from Manchester United.
5. Bradley Barcola carries Paris Saint-Germain as their injury crisis mounts: Having himself picked up an injury (falling off his bicycle), PSG boss Luis Enrique is facing a mounting injury crisis among his players too. With Ousmane Dembélé and Désiré Doué out, he benched João Neves, Nuno Mendes, Fabián Ruiz, Marquinhos and Willian Pacho for the visit of Lens and still saw Lucas Beraldo, Lee Kang-In and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia come off injured.
Lucky for him, despite a generally lackluster performance, Barcola was on hand to bang in both goals (both nice, the second spectacular) and secure the win. Luckier still, PSG's second string is so good they can ride out a win even when getting outplayed. That said, the injuries mean PSG will be severely short-handed up front in the Champions League against Atalanta in midweek.
4. Luka Modric turns back the clock at 40 years young as Milan down Bologna: Most figured Modric's move to Milan was about easing into retirement after making history at Real Madrid. Some cameo appearances, some flicks and creativity, a good role model on the training pitch. Maybe that's what it will be by the end of the season, but on Sunday night Modric, five days after his 40th birthday, turned back the clock. Not only did he score the only goal in the 1-0 win, while anchoring the midfield with savvy and quality (which could be expected), but he also pressed, ran and won duels. He's (probably) not going to do this every week, which is why Milan needed to show growth independently of him. And they did. The back three worked out, Christian Pulisic had an impact off the bench and they hit the woodwork three times.
And then there was the Christopher Nkunku penalty appeal, which so infuriated Max Allegri that he got himself sent off (after removing his jacket, of course). Nkunku was fouled by Jhon Lucumí as he bore down on goal and in the ensuing scramble, he may or may not have been fouled again. After the penalty was awarded, VAR sent the referee to the screen, suggesting Nkunku had taken a dive. He may have, but that was on the second incident: on the first, the foul was pretty evident. It's hard to understand how VAR could focus only on the end of the play or, indeed, how the referee himself didn't ask to see the entire incident.
Janusz Michallik assesses Thomas Frank's impact at Tottenham after their 3-0 win vs. West Ham.
3. Tottenham begin post-Daniel Levy era with derby win that's hard to decipher: Not because it was undeserved, because they were by far the better side, but rather, it's because of the circumstances. West Ham are terrible right now and coach Graham Potter is under serious fire. But for Spurs, Dominic Solanke is out, Xavi Simons just arrived, Richarlison was deemed too fatigued to start and Randal Kolo Muani remained on the bench, because he wasn't needed. Oh, and Tomás Soucek, who really should know better, got himself sent off early in the second half.
I don't know what you can learn from that. It may be relevant that, at halftime, it was 0-0 and both teams had just one shot on target. Against an opponent that unraveled quickly, Spurs went to town. It's going to be a different task in the Champions League and against other opponents. So in that sense, yeah, we're still in the dark on what they're going to look like, especially in midfield and attack.
2. Atletico get their first win in victory over Villarreal, but let's not get carried away: After going winless in their first three outings, it was inevitable that Diego Simeone should hail Saturday's 2-0 win as some sort of turning point. It's big, no doubt, not least because Villarreal are legitimate top-four contenders, but I'm not sure it was the sort of performance worth writing home about.
Pablo Barrios' opener came courtesy of an errant backpass, Alberto Moleiro had several good chances for the opponents and Nicolas Pépé hit the woodwork. It was nice that Nico Gonzalez got his goal on his debut, but is that a position where you need to put resources when you just signed Álex Baena and Thiago Almada? Especially when things still look shaky defensively?
Atleti made a ton of changes this year and it could take a while for Simeone to make it work. Assuming he does, of course.
Steve Nicol reacts to Chelsea's 2-2 draw against Brentford as late substitute Fabio Carvalho rescued an equaliser in the 93rd minute for the Bees.
1. Two points dropped is disappointing for Chelsea, but their dependency on Cole Palmer is bigger: You score what you think is the winner five minutes from time and then get undone in injury time by a long throw that makes its way to Fábio Carvalho of all people and your win turns into a draw ... well sure, that will be the main talking point. But really, once again, it's all about Cole Palmer for Chelsea, and that's not a good thing.
Coming off an injury, Palmer started on the bench and his absence was felt in the first half. Without him, Chelsea had 70% of (sterile) possession and mustered a single shot on target with an xG of 0.30. Not just that, but they went a goal down when Jordan Henderson donned his Luka Modric cape to set up Kevin Schade. Palmer came on in the 54th minute, scored the equalizer, should have scored again and cleared the space for Moisés Caicedo to make it 2-1. The xG was 0.85 in the 36 minutes (plus injury time he was on the pitch).
Palmer is obviously a massive asset, and there's nothing wrong with building your team around him. But too often, Chelsea look like he's Plan A, B and C. And when he's not there -- or underperforming -- they are a far worse, and far more predictable, team.