Conclusions from the Weekend of Football

All the hype this weekend may have been about the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks Superbowl game, but that didn’t stop European teams from giving viewers some real entertaining football. The German Bundesliga finally returned from the winter break with some surprises, the Premier League offered the usual fast paced action and La Liga treated its fans to a couple of high scoring games. Here are some of the conclusions from this weekend’s football action:

In England, Mourinho showed everyone once again that his team will get results in the big games with a credible draw against Manchester City which keeps Chelsea’s lead at the top of the table at five points. On the other side of London, Arsenal turned in a performance of the ages with a 5-0 thumping of goal-shy Aston Villa. With Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool all picking wins and Southampton dropping the three points against Swansea because of Jonjo Shelvey’s wonder strike, the race for Champions League just got more intriguing.

La Liga was packed with interesting games over the weekend, Real Madrid had an easy 4-1 victory over Real Sociedad where Bale failed to shine in the absence of Balon D’or winner Cristiano Ronaldo. Benzema on the other hand showed us why he is so highly rated by his manager Ancelotti with a very good display. Barcelona ended Villareal’s 18-game undefeated streak with a hard-fought 3-2 win after scoring two goals in the space of two minutes. Luis Suarez may be struggling to find his shooting boots for his new team, but he was integral in two of Barcelona’s goals. Sevilla and Espanyol met for the third time in 11 days and it was another enthralling game. Sevilla edged it 3-2 with an 89th minute winner from Iago Aspas. A brace from Mario Mandzukic gave Atletico Madrid a 3-1 win over Eibar keeping them in the title picture.

After a long winter break, German football is back and it returned with a huge shock. Pep Guardiola’s ‘invincible’ Bayern Munich finally lost a game, sinking to a 4-1 defeat against Kevin De Bruyne inspired Wolfsburg. The scoreline means that Bayern have already conceded the same number of goals as they did all through the first half of the season. Borussia Dortmund still can’t get a win from anywhere and their 0-0 draw with Leverkusen means they are resigned to the last place on the league table.

Things were a little  weird in Ligue 1 with no team scoring more than 1 goal in any of the games. Marcelo Bielsa’s Olympique Marseille and Paris Saint Germain picked up 1-0 victories taking their tallies to 47 points, two behind league leaders, Olypmique Lyonnais who were involved in a tight affair with Monaco that ended 0-0.