Chelsea and Manchester City drew and scored eight goals against each other

Last weekend, several interesting events took place in European football. These, for example, include a crazy match in the English championship, in which its leader Manchester City drew – 4:4 – with Chelsea, which is not emerging from the crisis, as well as the loss of the winner of the previous Italian championship, Napoli, to the outsider Empoli. — 0:1; after him, the position of Neapolitan coach Rudi Garcia, apparently, became extremely precarious.

English Championship

British media resources seem to have spent the whole day non-stop savoring the details of Sunday’s 12th round match between Chelsea and Manchester City. And the BBC, taking advantage of a convenient opportunity, even invited users of its website to rank the ten best games in the history of the English Premier League, keeping in mind, of course, that it would be impossible to do without this one. Moreover, the selected comments from the experts hinted that she should not end up at the bottom of the top ten. For example, former England defender Jamie Carragher, sharing his impressions of this match with Sky Sports, called it “the Premier League at its finest.”

It is truly impossible to argue with the fact that it turned into a football masterpiece. There was enough of everything – nerves, attacking beauty and, above all, sharp plot twists. “Manchester City” at home first led in the score, then lost, then led again – as many as twice. And Chelsea saved themselves at the end of the long stoppage time thanks to a penalty converted by Cole Palmer.

Another thing is that the match, no matter how spectacular it was, did not change much the understanding of the situation in the championship and the status of the two rivals. Manchester City, having lost points, remained the leader, although the tandem of Liverpool and Arsenal is now close to it – at a distance of one point. Chelsea, having scored a valuable point in the battle with the flagship, still sadly trudges in tenth place, risking failure for the second season in a row, and has the appearance of a classic mood team. In a good situation, he can fight with the favorite (the Londoners also drew with Arsenal), in a bad situation, he can lose to the middle team without question.

Spanish Championship

After Barcelona’s home match against Alaves, her coach Xavi, of course, paid most attention to what happened at the very beginning. The Catalans managed to concede a goal from teenager Samu Omorodion, who rejoiced at Ilkay Gundogan’s sudden blunder, already in the 18th second. Xavi said that such mistakes are completely unforgivable, that they break the whole game. But in this case, everything ended well for Barcelona. Having survived several more unpleasant episodes in the first half, in the second they achieved a turning point and, thanks to Robert Lewandowski’s double, won with a score of 2:1.

The victory allowed Barcelona not to let those clubs ahead of it in the table go far. And there are two of them at once. One is, of course, Real Madrid, which destroyed Valencia 5:1 in the 13th round. He is separated from the Catalans by two points. And exactly the same distance is between “Real” and “Girona”, which is still clinging to the position at the top, contrary to all forecasts, and which in this round managed – 2:1 – with “Rayo Vallecano”. And the winning streak of the upstart team, which started shortly after the crushing defeat just at the end of September by Real Madrid, has stretched, by the way, to five matches.

German Championship

Paradox: Bayern seems to be doing great. The game is going on, there are no obvious breakdowns, Harry Kane, refuting the thesis that he will need some time to adapt to Germany after moving from Tottenham, is tearing and rushing and has already scored 17 goals. The last two were in the match of the 11th round, in which the Munich team defeated Heidenheim 4:2. However, they still have not reached their usual first position. And it’s all about Bayer, which, under the leadership of young coach Xabi Alonso, is showing some exceptionally inspired play, sparkling with freshness. Leverkusen, who destroyed 4:0 Union, a participant in the Champions League, are two points ahead of the Bavarians.

Italian Championship

The central theme of the weekend in Italian football is the fate of Napoli coach Rudi Garcia. AP, AFP and a number of other sources reported that a decision could be made to fire him as early as the middle of this week, and Garcia is unlikely to survive. There is nothing surprising in this news.

Rudi Garcia arrived at the Neapolitan club in the summer. Before his arrival, Napoli had an enchanting season under the leadership of Luciano Spalletti, winning the championship gold by a huge margin. But Spalletti left and took charge of the Italian national team, and the club post went to the experienced Garcia, who was thought to be unlikely to quickly ruin everything.

However, today’s Napoli, despite the fact that it has retained most of the key characters without parting with, say, Victor Osimhen or Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, is completely different from the Napoli that recently flew to the gold medals. He often suffers and has already suffered three defeats, all at home. The most recent one was completely offensive. In the 12th round, in added time, Napoli conceded the only goal from Empoli, which is one of the candidates for relegation. And the whistling of the club’s fans at their favorite team, which sounded during this game, has actually become a common occurrence.

Now the Neapolitans are in fourth place, two points behind Milan, which closes the top three. The leader Inter is already ten points ahead, the next Juventus is eight points.

French Championship

The first “Russian derby” took place in the French championship last weekend. In the 12th round, Le Havre, for which Daler Kuzyaev has been playing since this season, hosted Monaco with the “hot” Alexander Golovin. The outcome of the confrontation was entirely peaceful – 0:0. He apparently pleased the fans of Le Havre, who settled in the middle of the table, more. Because of the draw, Monaco slightly let go of its competitors in the race for championship medals: Nice is two points behind it, PSG is three.

Alexey Dospehov