Autumn of upstarts – Newspaper Kommersant No. 188 (7389) of 10/11/2022

The first two months in the European Big Five championships brought some surprises. These, for example, include the rise of Arsenal in the English championship and Union in Germany.

English Championship

At Arsenal’s home stadium, a simple chant is now in vogue. “We are top of the league!” – the fans chant, fixing an indisputable fact: well, yes, the club, which, although by inertia, is constantly recorded in the English giants, but which in fact did not seriously aim at gold for a long time, and in the previous championship took fifth place, is leading in the current championship. In nine matches – and this, by the way, is almost a quarter of the distance of the tournament – eight victories were won. Eighth – on Sunday over Liverpool with a score of 3: 2 in a style typical of today’s Arsenal: there are enough mistakes, miscalculations, but everything is compensated by the passion and speed that coach Mikel Arteta put on, having collected a curious foundation. Average age of players who went out to fight with Liverpoolare 24 years old, while the goalscorers Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli are in their early twenties.

In the trend, football experts have heated debates about how large the safety margin of the young Arsenal is. And there are versions that are big enough, at least in order to at least desperately wrestle with the reigning champions Manchester City, who are only one point behind the Londoners.

Other giants are doing a little worse. Chelsea and Manchester United with Criscitano Ronaldo, who, it seems, the new coach Erik ten Hag does not see in the starting lineup, but who became the hero of the next round, scoring in the match won – 2: 1 – by Manchester United against Everton 700 -th goal in club competitions, not in the top three. And with Liverpool, something incredible is happening. After losing to Arsenal, the club, supposedly obliged to keep pace with Manchester City again, collapsed to tenth position. His backlog from the Londoners is already 14 points – an abyss, even considering that the Liverpool team has a meeting in hand. And the injuries of the leading players obviously do not add to the mood of their fans: in the match with Arsenal, they disabled Luis Diaz and Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Spanish Championship

In the Spanish championship, finally, the usual picture: at the top of the table are two football colossus, who lost only two points in eight rounds. “Real” kept the tone, and the summer “reboot” survived the crisis “Barcelona” turned out to be successful. Newcomers immediately joined the squad, and Robert Lewandowski has already scored nine goals. True, in October, the Catalans win with a creak: they beat both Mallorca and Celta with a score of 1:0. Next Sunday, the leaders will meet face-to-face in Madrid. Perhaps she will clarify something in the question of which of them is worthy of the title this time.

Italian Championship

The Italian championship is perhaps the most interesting among all the Big Five championships in terms of intrigue. While the fall of Juventus, which recently reigned supreme in the championship, which, after nine rounds, has only 13 points and is in eighth place, continues to fall, a whole group of clubs, very similar to real contenders for gold, is fighting for leadership. There are half a dozen of them – Napoli, Atalanta, Milan, Udinese, Roma, Lazio. Six points separated the first and sixth teams on Monday afternoon, despite the fact that Lazio still had to play their match of the ninth round with Fiorentina late in the evening Moscow time. Crazy density.

The favorite is a little more drawn to Napoli, who often show luxurious football with an emphasis on attack, such as in Saturday’s match with the defeated – 4: 1 – Cremonese. And the Georgian football player Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who played for Rubin Kazan last season, has become its most important element. In the Russian Premier League, the phenomenal dribbler Kvaratskhelia, by the way, was effective, but not nearly as effective as in Italy. At the moment, he is both Napoli’s top scorer with five goals, and the top scorer in the “goal plus pass” system: the forward has two assists in his track record. And these figures describe the degree of its usefulness far from exhaustively. Kvaratskhelia, for example, often earns dangerous standards for Napoli, and in a meeting with Cremonese he got a penalty kick, from which an account was opened.

German Championship

In the Transfermarkt rating, based on the cost of the application, Union is below 11 clubs in the top German division, and this cost itself – slightly over € 100 million – will not arouse the envy of the strongest Russian clubs, certainly Zenit. And yet, after nine rounds of the championship, the Berlin team is ahead of everyone, and from the eternal champions Bayern, with which it played a draw in September, it came off by four points.

Of course, you can’t say about Munich that they fell into the same deep hole as Liverpool, but still something strange is happening to them.

At the start of the championship, they played without noticing the loss of Robert Lewandowski at all: in three matches – three wins with a total score of 15:1. But then Bayern creaked. For the next six games, there was already only one victory.

French Championship

The appointment of PSG head coach Christophe Galtier seems to have benefited the French flagship. It’s not so much about the numbers: for this club, eight wins and two draws in ten rounds is more normal than great. It’s about the form and mood of those PSG players who make up his striking power, the presence of which turns him into a football monster. And they have great shape. Kylian Mbappe has already scored eight league goals. Lionel Messi scored five times against the other’s goal, and seven more times with his passes provided goals to partners. But Neymar’s statistics stand out even against such a background. The Brazilian has as many balls as Mbappe and as many assists as Messi.

True, so far it has not been possible to create a reinforced concrete separation from the PSG pursuers. One point behind him is the unexpected upstart Lorient.

Alexey Dospekhov