Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga results from the weekend - September 22
Clive Rose
(click to expand scores)
Premier League
Saturday September 20
Queens Park Rangers 2-2 Stoke City
Aston Villa 0-3 Arsenal
Burnley 0-0 Sunderland
Newcastle United 2-2 Hull City
Swansea City 0-1 Southampton
West Ham United 1-3 Liverpool
Sunday September 21
Leicester City 5-3 Manchester United
Tottenham Hotspur 0-1 West Bromwich Albion
Everton 2-3 Crystal Palace
Manchester City 1-1 Chelsea
La Liga
Friday September 19
Elche 0-2 Eibar
Saturday September 20
Deportivo La Coruña 2-8 Real Madrid
Athletic Bilbao 0-1 Granada
Atlético Madrid 2-2 Celta de Vigo
Espanyol 2-2 Málaga
Sunday September 21
Real Sociedad 1-2 Almería
Villarreal 4-2 Rayo Vallecano
Córdoba 1-3 Sevilla
Levante 0-5 Barcelona
Bundesliga
Friday September 19
Freiburg 2-2 Hertha BSC
Saturday September 20
Augsburg 4-2 Werder Bremen
Hamburg SV 0-0 Bayern Munich
Paderborn 2-0 Hannover 96
Schalke 04 2-2 Eintracht Frankfurt
Stuttgart 0-2 Hoffenheim
Mainz 05 2-0 Borussia Dortmund
Sunday September 21
Wolfsburg 4-1 Bayer Leverkusen
Köln 0-0 Borussia Mönchengladbach
Serie A
Saturday September 20
Cesena 2-2 Empoli
AC Milan 0-1 Juventus
Sunday September 21
Chievo 2-3 Parma
Genoa 1-0 Lazio
Roma 2-0 Cagliari
Sassuolo 0-0 Sampdoria
Atalanta 0-1 Fiorentina
Udinese 1-0 Napoli
Palermo 1-1 Inter Milan
Torino 0-1 Hellas Verona
3 Things
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Jamie Vardy is our new favourite story
There are normally one or two of them knocking around the Premier League. Players who didn't find their way into England's top division by any of the traditional routes; players who, instead, were let go by a professional side at a young age, climbed their way back to the top from the sprawling wilds of non-league football, and then made a bit of a splash when they get there. Grant Holt is the most notable recent example, making his way from Workington to Norwich City and, so rumour had it, to the fringes of the England squad.
The latest incarnation of this proud lineage is Jamie Vardy, formerly of FC Halifax, Fleetwood Town and Stocksbridge Park Steels, now of Leicester City and by general consensus man of the match during Sunday afternoon's humbling of Manchester United. One of those things that you simply couldn't make up, unless you were writing fictional sports stories for television, film or print, where things like this happen all the time. They don't happen very often in the real world, is the point.
Of Leicester's five goals, Vardy was central to four of them, making it his afternoon's business to embarrass each member of United's brittle back four in turn. First he beat Marcos Rojo to a long punt down the wing, hooking a cross over for Leonardo Ulloa to point an excellent header past David de Gea. Then, on the hour, came the decisive intervention: first he barged into the back of Rafael, then, having taken control of the ball and advanced into the area, crumpled to the ground as the outraged right back responded. Some rules are the same whatever level of football: if the referee offers you a gift, grasp it with both hands.
Full backs dealt with, he turned to the central defenders. His goal (Leicester's fourth) came as he advanced into acres of non-Chris Smalling occupied, non-Tyler Blackett occupied space to slot beyond David de Gea, before he won another penalty with a reprise of the win-the-nudge, win-the-penalty trick. Blackett was again the victim, first getting the header all wrong, then compounding the error by chopping the striker down from behind. If Jonny Evans was the only United defender not to feel hot, Vardy-related shame at any point in the afternoon, that's because he injured himself after half an hour.
It would be tempting to suggest that Vardy's hustle was some kind of triumph for good honest non-league graft as set against Manchester United's over-indulged aristocrats. But that would be patronising and trite: after all, there are plenty of lazy dilettantes further down the pyramid, and United's problems don't stem from a lack of effort. What might be true, however, is that the romance of the story -- if that's not the wrong word for a player with such a defiantly unromantic haircut -- is perhaps protecting him from the opprobrium that might be coming his way if he were winning penalties while being, say, Ashley Young.
Such is the power of a good story. And such is the appeal of seeing one of England's bigger clubs falling about the place in the clownish style. There's nothing the broad sweep of the nation loves more, and if there's something a bit heart-warming about one of the men wielding the custard pies, so much the better.
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Bayer flip the switch ... in the wrong direction
When a player is sent off seven minutes into a match, there's generally very little to be learned from it. It becomes an onslaught for one side and a battle of fitness for the other, but when Bayer Leverkusen had to play the final 83 minutes with 10 men on Sunday, it didn't become a throwaway. It became revealing, for both their potential and reason to be very, very scared.
Giulio Donati was shown red after just seven minute when he clipped Junior Malanda, denying Wolfsburg of a goalscoring opportunity. To make matters worse, it was in the box, so Wolfsburg earned a penalty that put them 1-0 up. But Bayer didn't fade right away.
The visitors played well despite being down a man. Karim Bellarabi continued his brilliant start to the season and Hakan Calhanoglu was also good, while Josip Drmic brought Bayer level with a tidy goal. The team's abundance of talent was on full display, especially in the attack, where they can be downright deadly. It was, for a time, a clinic in quickness and skill going forward, as well as athleticism at the back, making them plenty competitive, even down a man.
But Bayer have been talented before, and they have managed to fall apart. It has become their unfortunate M.O. and after Wolfburg scored just before halftime, the match was over. Bayer went to pieces, showing a lack of organization and composure, while expectedly tiring in the last 20 minutes. Wolfsburg added two more in the second half for a 4-1 win and Bayer had an embarrassing Bundesliga loss to go with their midweek Champions League defeat to struggling Monaco.
Normally, the early red card would have made the match a throwaway, but Bayer are not normal. They are a club that have made a habit of shooting themselves in the foot, falling apart for a month in the middle of a season or letting one mistake snowball into a series of them.
This Bayer team has several new faces, and certainly several new stars. They are supposed to be different and, after a fast start to the season, it looked like they just might be. But this week reeked of old Bayer -- good, but always getting in their own way and keeping themselves from being great. Now the pressure is on and the supporters are on edge: is this a new Bayer or not?
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What’s a little bit of concussion between friends?
The Premier League’s much-vaunted concussion protocols, which came into effect over the summer after a series of high-profile incidents at the World Cup have, as expected, seems to have changed nothing at all. And so when Dejan Lovren collided with teammate Mamadou Sakho on the Boleyn Ground pitch, requiring lengthy treatment for a head injury, there was no surprise that he was allowed to continue playing. Wearing a black bandage, naturally.
There was, however, plenty of indignation that Lovren stayed in the match. The same solution bandied about during the World Cup was repeated here: an extra sub for head injuries, with the decision taken out of the managers hands. And, in fairness, implementing such an idea would indeed represent progress in the fight for players’ long-term health. But the fact that concussions are a sexy point of discussion seems to have obscured the overall issue, and what the overall goals of those who profess to genuinely claim to care about athletes’ long-term safety should be.
The concussion problem is a symptom of the fundamental disconnect between what a club wants out of a player and that player’s safety. Footballers are contracted to teams on a short-term basis, and their behaviour towards their employees is therefore based all around short-term gain. And a manager, fighting for his job, probably doesn’t look beyond the next week or two in making decisions. An athlete, meanwhile, has to live with any health problems incurred on the job forever.
The bottom line is this: teams cannot be trusted to make long-term decisions that benefit athletes. There’s no reason for them to do anything but prioritise the short term, and that applies to concussions and more or less every other injury. Yes, broadly speaking, coaches are ignorant of the problems concussions can cause. But even should they (as the rest of the world seems to have done overnight) suddenly manifest sage-like powers on the subject of traumatic brain injuries, the problem would almost certainly remain.
Concussion, no doubt, is a serious problem, and one that should be addressed. But the failure to recognise that it’s symptomatic of the treatment of footballers (and other athletes) in sport, the failure to expand the conversation to overall post-footballing health, does everyone involved a grave disservice.
FIFA and friends are masters of getting the public into a frenzy over a specific and then sending out a sacrificial lamb to appease them while leaving the overall structure of the sport intact. And so while we should be grateful that steps are being taken on the concussion front, we should remember to keep the big picture in context.
