⚽︎Friday, October 27: Is El Clásico Still THE Game?
For 20 years, the best players played in Spain. But that dominance is dwindling, and on Saturday, these two titans will want to remind the world what they're about.
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Derbies make the football world go ‘round—or, in the case of Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, stand still. The Galacticos and the tiki-taka legends are gone now, though, and El Clásico’s reputation as appointment viewing for any self-respecting football fan has been put to the test in recent years. Other grudge matches have come to the fore, and some beefs have just kept on cookin’. The Manchester derby still has juice, even amid United’s perpetual decline from the days when Wayne Rooney was on his bike, and it could be another Mancunian special on Sunday—unless Manchester City are on the warpath and the Red Devils get pillaged.
More on that below, but first…..
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THE HEADLINES
➟ Fabrizio Romano reports Sandro Tonali will be banned from football for 10 months after he admitted to betting on matches while at A.C. Milan.
➟ Everton could reportedly face a 12-point deduction for alleged breaches of financial rules, which could really shake up the relegation picture. I had them in mid-table this season, but not that far clear of the scrap. If the Toffees are docked a dozen, Sean Dyche has a serious job on his hands. But there’s also a bigger issue that Jamie Carragher got at in midweek: if this is the swift and brutal judgment for Everton’s alleged misdeeds, “Man City are going to end up in the National League North if the PL get their way!!”
➟ It would have been Pelé’s 83rd birthday this week, so why not mark the occasion by revisiting this obituary I wrote reflecting on the time I got meet and interview the Football Pope.
➟ In some further shameless self-promotion, it would have been Diego Maradona’s 63rd birthday this coming Monday—the two legends’ birthdays are a week apart—and you can mark the occasion by revisiting this obit for the chaotic genius.
➟ It’s never advisable to headbutt somebody, but if you’re going to do it, at least make it count! Bournemouth’s Lewis Cook unleashed possibly the most half-assed forehead smash in history on Hwang Hee-chan of Wolves last weekend to earn himself a truly disgraceful red card. Zidane would be ashamed, but also, the Cherries need every point they can get. This wasn’t exactly Joey Barton-esque in terms of sheer violence, but following Cook’s sending off in the 54th minute, Sasa Kalajdzic scored in the 88th to take all three points back to Wolverhampton. This is how clubs get relegated.
➟ Are PSG in danger of becoming likable? Somehow people forgot that Kylian Mbappé is the most dangerous attacker on green grass, and this squad is now full of exciting young players—some of them Parisian locals. Warren Zaire-Emery ran the midfield show against A.C. Milan in the Champions League this week at just 17 years old, but the highlight was Mbappé’s roasting of Fikayo Tomori for the opener: four or five tiny, lightning touches, then a step over to put the center back off-balance and a strike beneath him before he could adjust himself. Those fast feet were prime CR7 stuff, and Mbappé has 13 goals in 14 appearances for club and country this season.
➟ Two amazing matches played out simultaneously on both sides of Hadrian’s Wall on Wednesday. It was nearly a famous night in Glasgow, as Celtic twice led Atlético Madrid but ended up hanging on for a draw. In Newcastle, it took some goalkeeping heroics and an assist from the crossbar for Borussia Dortmund to smuggle all three points out of St. James’ Park.
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FRIDAY
CRYSTAL PALACE vs TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
3:00pm ET on NBC Sports / 8:00pm GMT on SKY Sports
North London visits South for The Early Weekend, and Tottenham will crash into Selhurst Park with supreme confidence. Ange Postecoglu’s side are top of the league and playing some really nice stuff: James Maddison is looking like the Premier League signing of the season so far, and Son Heung-min is back among the more menacing forwards in the division. But the surprises for Spurs are further back. They’ve allowed just eight goals so far this season, tied for second fewest in the league. They shipped 63 last term, more than any other club outside the bottom six.
They look solid in deep midfield with Pape Sarr and a resurgent Yves Bissouma, while Pedro Porro has immersed himself in the defensive scrap and young Destiny Udogie is excelling in a role where he steps into midfield. And then there’s Micky van de Ven, who’s shown an extraordinary turn of pace to root out counterattacks when Spurs get exposed. He and Cristian Romero are shaping up well as a partnership in front of Guglielmo Vicario, who looks a massive upgrade on Hugo Lloris. He has four clean sheets, tied for first.
He’s tied with Sam Johnstone, though, a fine shot-stopper who benefits from Roy Hodgson’s clever defensive tactics at Crystal Palace. The 76-year-old has not allowed the game to pass him by, and he remains a master of the fine art of getting results in the Premier League. His know-how will be crucial for Palace to continue stacking up points while their two brilliant young attackers, Michael Olisé and Eberechi Eze, are sidelined with injuries. You can expect the men in blue and red stripes to sit in deep, very deep, and invite Spurs to come and try to break them down. It’s the kind of test you get when you’re top of the league, and it’s the kind of match you lose 1-0 to a Jordan Ayew goal on the counterattack when your tenure at the top is temporary. If they can dig out the points, Spurs will go five points clear at the top of the league.
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BALLON D’GOAT?
The ceremony to award the Ballon d’Or, for the world’s best player over the last year, will take place this Monday night. It feels necessary to reiterate TFW’s position on the men’s award: while Lionel Messi is the greatest player who ever lived, and his World Cup victory was the crowning achievement he scarcely even needed, he wasn’t the best player in the world last season. That was Erling Haaland, who scored 51 goals in 50 appearances across the Premier League and Champions League and FA Cup, all three of which his team won. At the very least, it ought to be Rodri, who was the linchpin of those Manchester City teams. If World Cup performances are so decisive, why is Kylian Mbappé seemingly out of the running?
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SATURDAY
NOTTS COUNTY vs WREXHAM
10:00am ET / 3:00pm GMT on iFollow
Wrexham usually get headlines thanks to their Hollywood owners, but this one’s something else: a meeting of two of the founding members of the Football League. Notts County is the oldest association football club in the world, formed in 1862. They were so firmly established by 1903 that Juventus ended up adopting their kit design that year. Wrexham A.F.C. is two years younger, at 159 years old, and in the present they’re three points behind in the League Two table. This is second against third, with both oldies vying for automatic promotion to League One, though there is some competition in this time slot…..
BARCELONA vs REAL MADRID
10:15am ET on ESPN+
This one is blacked out in the U.K., and what a tragedy for England fans looking to see young Jude Bellingham do his thing in his first El Clásico. The 20-year-old has made the case this early season that he is the foremost attacking midfielder in European football, an indomitable ball-carrier and constant goalscorer who’s also capable of dropping into deeper midfield and timing his tackles well to start his team on a break. His form in that withdrawn role behind streaking wide forwards Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo has allowed Los Merengues to dodge the question of who could possibly replace Karim Benzema at center forward. It also might allow them to answer it next summer, when Kylian Mbappé will be a free agent.
Bellingham is one of many in a very athletic squad. Fede Valverde is an absolute machine, eating up the yards all over the pitch. His heat map for each match must look like a Category 5 hurricane. Aurélien Tchouaméni and Eduardo Camavinga are serious movers and shakers as well, but could Carlo Ancellotti opt for the seasoned sophistication of Toni Kroos and/or Luka Modrić for this one? Both legends have looked a bit off the pace in Madrid’s higher-octane encounters this season, but they’ve played in—and won—a lot of Clásicos.
It’s a game unlike any other. Rewind back to the Galácticos era, and the classic camera-pan across the 22 players lined up before the match: Ronaldo, Zidane, Beckham, Robinho, Roberto Carlos, Ramos, Casillas, Raúl, Puyol, Xavi, Deco, Eto’o, Ronaldinho, Messi. Then the tiki-taka golden age of Iniesta, Busquets, Villa, Henry, Neymar, Pique, and Mascherano against the New Galácticos of Ronaldo and Benzema and Bale and Marcelo and, yes, Modrić and Kroos. In that second era, especially, these matches could devolve into playacting and histrionics at times, with Busquets a particular culprit. But it was mostly because the stakes were so high.
This was the game, the one that determined who had the best team in the world at that moment, the one that pitted perhaps the two greatest players who ever lived against each other, twice a year. And for all the diving and the mischief, it was always a match that produced moments of supreme technical and tactical quality. This was the matchup in which Ronaldinho earned a standing ovation at the Santiago Bernabeu after he ran all over Real Madrid on their home turf. That was a testament to the great footballing taste of these clubs and their fans, their thirst for beauty in the game above all. This one won’t be played at Barça’s legendary home ground, as the Camp Nou is under construction, but this match is a legend-maker.
Barcelona will need to make some new legends in this one, because they are beset by injuries. There were only 12 first-team players available to face Shakhtar Donetsk in midweek, and names like Frenkie de Jong, Jules Koundé, Sergi Roberto, Pedri, Robert Lewandowski, and Raphinha were missing. João Félix went off injured, though he could be fit for Saturday. It didn’t hamper them too much, to be fair, mostly because the academy kids are coming through once again. A forgotten element of that golden tiki-taka generation, perhaps the best club team there ever was, is just how many of those players came from Barça’s famous academy at La Masia: Puyol, Pique, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Cesc Fàbregas, Pedro, Valdéz, Messi.
The tradition continues now, and not just through 16-year-old Lamine Yamal—who’s established himself on the right wing for both the Blaugrana and Spain—or 19-year-old Gavi, who looks one of the brightest prospects of his generation alongside Pedri. The new kid on the block is 20-year-old Fermín Lopez, who scored and assisted on his first Champions League start on Wednesday and hit the woodwork three times. He’s a serious threat ghosting into scoring positions in and around the box. Then there’s Marc Guiu, the 17-year-old who scored 30 seconds into his debut against Athletic Bilbao a week ago.
His coach at La Masia, Ivan Carrasco, has described Guiu as “not the typical Barcelona player” because he “doesn't stand out for his combination play,” but this will nonetheless be a referendum on these two clubs’ philosophies. Can the academy kids channel Barça’s deep-rooted culture of play to overcome Real’s star names? Could it actually just come down to the veteran technicians in blue and red, İlkay Gündoğan and João Cancelo? Madrid are slight favorites, but then the larger referendum is on this game: is it still the game?
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JEEPERS KEEPERS
Mikel Arteta has given himself a massive headache at goalkeeper. After dropping Aaron Ramsdale on the basis that David Raya would offer Arsenal some marginal gains at the position, the new #1 has endured some harrowing moments in recent weeks against Manchester City, Chelsea, and Sevilla. If anything, he’s been let off the hook on four or five mistakes that could have led directly to goals. He was not punished in midweek for an early giveaway that led to an instant chance for the Andalusians, and he was supremely lucky that his failed punch in stoppage time looped over his own crossbar. Had it ended up in the back of the net for a howling Sevilla equalizer, Arsenal fans would be baying for blood—or at least for Ramsdale. In fact, plenty still are.
In better news for the Gunners, Gabriel Jesus showed at the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium why the pundits who talk about him and Eddie Nketiah in the same breath don’t know ball. His turn to take two defenders out of the game and set up a streaking Gabriel Martinelli for the opener was lethal, and on the other side of halftime, he drifted into the box on the dribble to twist a curler into the top right corner. He was the best player on the pitch against Sevilla, though Arteta said after the match that he’d picked up a hamstring issue.
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SUNDAY
PSV vs AJAX
9:30am ET on ESPN+ / 2:30pm GMT on Mola TV
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the primary reason to tune in here is the ongoing conflagration that is Amsterdamsche Football Club Ajax. The 36-time Dutch champions sacked manager Maurice Steijn earlier this week following an 11th match without a win, but then they went up to Brighton on Thursday to catch another L in the Europa League. The perennial powers sit an astonishing second to last in the league table after seven matches (two fewer than most teams in the division have played, to be fair). No wonder the fans were rioting in their own stadium a month ago. A loss to top-of-the-table PSV in a derby known locally as “De Topper” could set a new ugly cycle in motion for one of Europe’s great clubs.
MANCHESTER UNITED vs MANCHESTER CITY
11:30am ET on Peacock / 4:30pm GMT on SKY Sports
It’s a testament to the vacuum that a true derby exists in—form goes out the window, etc.—that Manchester United have kept this fixture competitive in recent years. The Red Devils have the overall edge, of course, with 78 wins to Man City’s 59 across 190 Manchester derbies in all competitions. But they’ve also won four of the last eight in the Premier League and drawn another. That’s a better recent record than anybody outside of Tottenham—City’s bogey team—and we’re far removed now from the days of Sir Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney, the last of the red resistance to the almighty blue wave.
For further optimism, United have pieced together three victories in a row coming into this one. Granted, they haven’t looked good at all, particularly in midweek against wee Copenhagen. But they won that one anyway thanks to second-half heroics from Harry Maguire(!) and André Onana(!!), the latter of whom saved a penalty deep in stoppage time. After that, the red side of Manchester will feel like anything is possible.
To be fair, Maguire has been building a case that—while his mistakes over the last couple of seasons have been very real—the idea he’s a figure of permanent clownish incompetence was more a media masterpiece than a result of his recent play. He’s said outright that the statistics indicate United win more games when he’s playing, and while it’s probably more complicated than that, he is technically correct. Amid an injury crisis that’s ensnared Raphaël Varane, Lisandro Martinez, and Luke Shaw at times this season, Onana has seen six different centerback pairings in front of him. Maybe that’s part of why Erik ten Hag’s side have a -2 goal difference in the league.
Whoever’s back there, they’ll have a job on their hands. Just as we once whispered that Erling Haaland might not be at his best this season, we once again will use hushed tones to suggest that ladies and gentlemen, He’s Back. The Norwegian had a brace in the Champions League in midweek, though the hecklers will still heckle that Haaland prefers opposition like Young Boys to the bigger fish. United aren’t exactly the biggest—they’re eight points off pace-setters Tottenham already—but this is a derby where form really can evaporate. All the laws of football say that Julián Álvarez and Jack Grealish and Bernardo Silva and Jérémy Doku are about to run riot, but there’s something enduringly funky about this fixture. Even with everything that’s gone on at United this season, “Marcus Rashford to score first” sounds like a reasonable prop bet.
INTERNAZIONALE vs ROMA
1:00pm ET on Paramount+ / 6:00pm GMT on TNT Sports 2
The league leaders have a crazy schedule coming up, chock full of Champions League bouts and top-six Serie A showdowns, so Inter will be hoping to kick things off right against José Mourinho’s Roma. The blue-and-blacks have a dominant record on both sides of the ball in the league, with 24 goals scored and just five conceded. Lautaro Martínez has 11 himself in nine league matches, and new arrival Marcus Thuram has three with seven assists. They’re unbeaten in the Champions League, too, and it certainly seems like Inter are one of the five or six best teams in Europe.
They’ll be expecting to dispatch the Romans, then, though Mr. Mourinho has strung together some results after a period where it looked like he could be sinking into his notorious Third Season Syndrome. They’ve won four on the trot since a dismantling by Genoa at the end of September, and Romelu Lukaku, crowned “Big Rom King of Rome” on his arrival, has proven to be just that. He’s got seven goals in nine matches and he’s back to his battering-ram best, posting up defenders and giving his midfield runners time to get around and beyond him and stretch out the opposition. He’ll need to do a lot of that to hold off Internazionale, his on-and-off employers and the club that spurned him when he wanted to rejoin this past summer. It’s the chance to show an ex what a mistake they made.
NAPOLI vs A.C. MILAN
3:45pm ET on Paramount+ / 8:45pm GMT on TNT Sports 1
It’s been turmoil for Milan in the Champions League, where they caught a hiding from PSG in midweek. They’ve yet to score across three matches, though they do have two points. It’s a better story in the league, where they sit second, one point behind Inter. Their goal difference is inferior, however, as they’ve scored eight fewer and are leaking a goal per match. They need to tighten up, and Malick Thiaw won’t be in the backline to help them do it. He got himself sent off against Juventus last week and will miss this one, and the centerback pairing of Pierre Kalulu and Fukayo Tomori did not look entirely convincing in midweek.
Victor Osimhen will be the one putting them under pressure. He’s got six goals in eight appearances, taking care of business despite his treatment by Napoli’s social media department. Scarier still, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is beginning to find some form again. He is the magic man for the Neapolitans, as this suave dink over the keeper demonstrated a few matchweeks back. Kvara was among the world’s very best last season as Napoli zipped to a first Scudetto in 33 years. Look for him to flit into central positions from his nominal left-wing perch, stitching the play together before choosing the perfect angle to draw the killer ball. A graceful and devastating player on his day.⚽︎