The goals came a’flying in across Europe this weekend, with high tallies and thrillers across the top leagues -- everywhere, that is, except in England. The Premier League did provide some tension, with Chelsea’s comeback win over Liverpool, the back-and-fourth between Queens Park Rangers and Manchester City, and another late collapse for Arsenal at Swansea.
Real Madrid scored five; still not awarded weekend’s best goalfest
The Premier League is looking rather stingy on goals compared to elsewhere, with teams across the continent knocking them in with abandon.
Simon Hofmann
When compared to the top five leagues, Premier League’s 21-goal tally doesn’t fare too badly. In La Liga, only 19 goals were scored, while Ligue 1 managed 23, as did Bundesliga, who play just nine matches. Serie A was the winner here, with 29 goals scored. Defensive, indeed.
What the Premier League failed to provide this weekend was a good, old-fashioned goalfest, the sort enjoyed by anyone that doesn’t drool over the machinations of Steve Bruce. No team scored more than two; six sides failed to get on the scoresheet. Fortunately, plenty of other teams were able to pick up the slack.
Real Madrid 5 - 1 Rayo Vallecano
League leaders Real Madrid made it clear from the start that they weren't going to be caught out by Rayo's minnows. Gareth Bale scored before ten minutes were up, although it took some time before Sergio Ramos doubled the hosts' lead in the 40th minute. Rayo had the temerity to cut the lead in half just before the break, which only served to anger Madrid. After the restart, they came back to score three more, with Toni Kroos, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo all finding the back of the net. Five goals, five goalscorers. Real Madrid now have an astonishing 42 goals from 11 league matches, nearly 20 more than second-place Barcelona.
But while Madrid dominated, Juventus annihilated. Much praise has been given to Max Allegri after a tactical shift, moving away from a three-man backline to a 4-3-1-2. It's worth remembering, however, that this match pitted the top of the table against the bottom, and coming in, Parma had already conceded the most goals in Serie A, with 21. The system worked against Olympiakos midweek, but perhaps a truer test will be against Lazio in two weeks, when the bianconeri will need to contain Filip Đorđević.
For now, though, fans of gratuitous goalscoring (Serie A doesn't break ties by use of goal difference) will have loved witnessing the bloodshed. Fernando Llorente scored twice, newboy Álvaro Morata did the same -- despite being on the pitch just twenty minutes -- and Carlos Tevez scored a fantastic, dribbly goal. He scored a second eight minutes later, pulling him even with José Callejón at the top of the Serie A goal charts.
Hoffenheim 3-4 Köln
Domination. Annihilation. Both are fun, but what really gets the pulse pounding -- for neutrals anyway -- is a back-and-forth slug-fest. Even better when the ultimate winners are the freshly-promoted side who’d only scored seven goals prior to the match, who’d failed to score in their first four outings. Add a little come-from-behind action and this Bundesliga match was practically a dream come true.
Too bad almost every media outlet chose to show Bayern Munich's routine 4-0 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt, eh? But those lucky enough to be paying attention to Twitter knew they were on to something special, and fired up streams before ten minutes had passed. Thus they were able to see the goal from Matthias Lehmann - the third goal of the match, after Hoffenheim took the lead within two minutes through a goal from Adám Szalai, and Pawel. Olkowski responded with an equalizer from the visitors. Köln then went up 3-1 thanks to Anthony Ujah, but a brace from Roberto Firmino put the game at 3-3 at the break. The second half saw Hoffenheim pushing for the win, but instead it was a second from Olkowski that handed all three points to the Billy Goats.
Whatever your pleasure, the weekend in Europe certainly delivered. And that’s without even taking into account the most bizarre occurrence of the round, that of Christoph Kramer’s magnificent own-goal that gifted Dortmund a much-needed win against previously undefeated Gladbach.
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