Barcelona close on LaLiga title, Man City thrash Liverpool, more

The international break is over and spring has sprung, with the big European leagues giving us plenty to talk about.

We’ll begin in LaLiga, where Barcelona took advantage of a second-string Atlético Madrid team to win 2-1 and take charge of the title race in the wake of Real Madrid‘s shocking last-gasp defeat in Mallorca. Barca’s lead is now seven points with eight games to play, though Atleti will be a much tougher test for them when the two sides also meet in the Champions League quarterfinals, which begin this week.

England‘s FA Cup quarterfinals saw a big win for Manchester City over struggling Liverpool (we’ll get into both of these teams later), and a big defeat for Arsenal, who succumbed to second-tier Southampton in a game that saw Gunners boss Mikel Arteta rotate his side with their own Champions League games ahead in midweek. Either way, the results will carry some momentum into the rest of the Premier League season and beyond, with significant takeaways for all three sides.

Elsewhere, we have talking points galore around Bayern Munich (who enjoyed yet another electrifying comeback win), Inter Milan (who are back to their winning ways), Monaco (who keep getting goals from U.S. star Folarin Balogun), Chelsea (who got a seven-goal mood boost of a win in the FA Cup), Lazio (whose fans are boycotting the team), PSG (who have goalkeeper woes) and much more. It’s Monday morning, so what better time for some musings? Let’s get into it.

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– Reaction: Haaland dazzles as Man City add to Liverpool misery
– Ogden: It’s make-or-break time for Arsenal, Mikel Arteta
– O’Hanlon: What would Premier League table look like without set pieces?

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Barcelona take huge step toward LaLiga title

One of the quirks of Barcelona’s trip to face Atlético Madrid on Saturday is that they’ll face off twice more in the Champions League in the next 10 days. Coaches often don’t like to show their hand in situations like this, and with Real Madrid losing earlier in the day, this game had sort of turned into a free hit, which meant Barcelona had every reason to rest their regulars.

But Hansi Flick is often counterintuitive (for better or worse), and so, with the exception of the fullbacks, center forward and possibly Eric García in midfield, this was pretty close to the best Barca XI available. Pretty much the opposite of Atlético coach Diego Simeone: with nothing to play for in LaLiga, he kept his powder dry.

Flick was vindicated, especially when it came to Lamine Yamal. There was no rest for the wunderkind (despite two starts in Spain‘s two friendlies) with Raphinha sidelined. He terrorized Atleti’s left flank, hitting the post, causing Nico González‘s second yellow card and generally giving the impression he could win the game single-handedly. The Gonzalez sending off turned the game after a first half that finished level thanks to goals from Giuliano Simeone (springing the high line, once again) and Marcus Rashford. Barcelona were the better side in the first half; in the second, they looked like the only side that was going to win, even though there was a lot of luck in their winner, which bounced off Robert Lewandowski.

So where does this 2-1 win leave Barca? The gap they have over Real Madrid is seven points, with eight games to go. The possibility of winning LaLiga at home in the Clasico on May 10 is very real, fulfilling Joan Laporta’s wildest expectations.

Days like Saturday only fuel confidence even though Barca continue to look fragile defensively and the impact of Raphinha’s injury can’t be overstated. But they got big performances out of Rashford, Dani Olmo (playing up front, where he provides a real alternative to Ferran Torres and Lewandowski) and João Cancelo, who reminded us that few fullbacks can match him for offensive output. There’s a feel-good factor there, one that can provide the fuel to paper over whatever cracks emerge in the stretch run.

As for Atleti, Simeone was incensed when the VAR downgraded Gerard Martín‘s red to a yellow. It felt a bit performative, partly because the stakes were so low for Atleti, partly because he knew his team was getting outplayed. But once he calms down, he can tell himself there is all to play for in the Champions League. Marcos Llorente (suspended) and Johnny Cardoso (injured) will be back. Julián Álvarez, Ademola Lookman and Dávid Hancko, all of whom were unused subs, will be rested and ready to start. And even if Jan Oblak doesn’t recover between the sticks, Juan Musso showed he’s a solid alternative.

The chance of knocking Barcelona out of a cup competition for the second time this season (and topping it off by winning the Copa del Rey) is still very much intact.

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Statement win for Man City; Liverpool need to move on

For much of the past two seasons, it felt like Pep Guardiola was searching for some kind of formula, both in terms of tactics and personnel. Witness the continued changes, the trial-and-error, the up-and-down results.

I suspect he has pretty much found it in the setup that demolished Liverpool 4-0 on Saturday in the FA Cup. You can debate the central defenders when Josko Gvardiol and Rúben Dias are available, and you slot in Gianluigi Donnarumma for James Trafford, but the fullbacks, midfield and front four look like the winning formula.

In 12 games with that “core eight,” City failed to win just once (a draw at Arsenal in January). Beyond that, if you take out Nico O’Reilly (who wasn’t a fixture early in the campaign) and Antoine Semenyo (who only arrived in January) and look at the “core six” — Erling Haaland (who had a hat-trick on Saturday), Jérémy Doku, Rayan Cherki, Bernard Silva, Rodri and Mateus Nunes — the numbers remain impressive: 18 wins in 22, the only two defeats coming against Real Madrid. That’s 2.55 points per game and 2.90 goals per game, compared to 1.83 points and 1.54 goals when one or more of the six was missing.

The takeaway? Semenyo and O’Reilly make City much better, and you imagine this will be Pep’s setup the rest of the way. But (and this may seem to be a no-brainer), Pep’s team is substantially worse when he has to turn to his bench, or when he fiddles with his approach.

As for Liverpool, the complete collapse after a decent half hour has to be a concern. When you concede three times away from home in a 12-minute span either side of halftime, the game is functionally over and there’s not much to read in what happened after that.

The worry is that, as Arne Slot put it, they got the “basics” wrong, which is what they’ve been doing for much of the season. When that happens with experienced, quality players, it’s probably not rocket science, but fatigue: This squad is deep in the wrong places, and woefully thin in defensive midfield and at the back.

As for the failure to create (and convert) chances — something else Slot bemoaned — that’s down not to a lack of talent, but to a lack of cohesion, acquiring players without figuring out how they fit, and without the time to make them fit. How much of that is on Slot, and how much on chief football officer Michael Edwards, is something the owners will figure out in the summer.

All that said, tempting as it may be to engage in the pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth and throwing of Mo Salah under the bus (no, he wasn’t good), there’s no reason to let this defeat affect what’s coming up as the team chase their two remaining objectives: the Champions League (they face Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday), and the hunt for a top-five spot in the league. This was a game you were not expected to win in a competition that’s important, but not mission critical. We’ll learn a lot about this side by how they respond.

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Glory for Vedad Muriqi, blame for Alvaro Arbeloa

Let’s start with Muriqi, who scored the injury-time winner for Mallorca. It won’t fully exorcise the shattered dream of losing at home to Turkey with Kosovo four days earlier and missing out on the 2026 World Cup, but it sure helps. And it was hard not to be moved watching him amble around the pitch, smiling and holding his little boy’s hand.

Maybe Muriqi will even have time to reflect on how sports (and life?) is a roller coaster, but his is more winding and twisted than most. Five years ago, he was a punch line at Lazio: one goal in 38 appearances when you’re a target man is not a good return. Now he’s a cult hero (again), and Mallorca’s No. 2 all-time leading scorer in the top flight (one behind some guy named Samuel Eto’o). He just scored the injury-time winner to give relegation-threatened Mallorca three points against Real Madrid and the only three guys who have scored more league goals than him this season are named Erling (as in Haaland), Kylian (as in Mbappe) and Harry (as in Kane). Not too bad.

From Real Madrid’s perspective, sure, the focus was primarily on gathering the troops after the international break and preparing for the visit of Bayern Munich in midweek. But it could not — or should not — have been lost on anyone (least of all Alvaro Arbeloa) that a win at Mallorca on Saturday afternoon would bring them, at least for a few hours, within a point of Barça ahead of their trip away to face Atletico. Instead, the lineup choices and attitude suggested they either thought Mallorca away was a gimme (their opponents were in the relegation zone, after all) or they had already given up on LaLiga. Neither of which makes sense.

Arbeloa is (rightly) getting stick for resting Vinícius, who had played nine days earlier. But there are ton of other questions you could ask too, like leaving out Gonzalo García or giving Manuel Ángel his first start (I get it, you like your homegrown players, but there’s a time and a place for everything) or not starting Jude Bellingham, who didn’t play a single minute on England duty over the break.

Madrid’s first half wasn’t terrible — Leo Román came up big several times in the Mallorca goal — and you can argue Manu Morlanes‘ goal was against the run of play. But the second half was pretty dire — before Éder Militão‘s late equalizer, they managed just five shots for an xG of 0.33 which isn’t good when you’re chasing the game — and conceding Muriqi’s goal just three minutes after making it 1-1 is unacceptable.

Were it any other team, you’d expect fallout affecting them in the Champions League. We know Real Madrid are a bit different, so nobody should write them off on the back of this. But it’s clearly not the best way to go into a tie that will define whether their season is over by mid-April.

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Quick hits

10. Tom Bischof‘s howitzer cues wild Bayern comeback: With the Champions League coming up in midweek, Bayern manager Vincent Kompany sent out what was very much a B-team away to Freiburg (I’d expect, at most, four of these guys to start against Real Madrid) so it wasn’t surprising that it struggled somewhat against a side who is tough at home and who is still gunning for Europe.

The bottom fell out after the break, beaten by a ridiculous Johan Manzambi long-range effort and a Manuel Neuer mistake. Then came the Bischof show. Two strikes from the edge of the box — minute 81 and minute 90+2 — from Bayern’s “other” young phenom leveled the score. And then, in the ninth minute of injury time, up popped his partner in crime, Lennart Karl, to turn in Alphonso Davies‘ cross for the winner. From 0-2 to 2-3 with nine minutes, plus time added on. That’s how Bayern roll right now. Needless to say, Bischof deserves more minutes, and probably not at fullback.

9. Lautaro Martínez returns to power Inter Milan past Roma: The Argentine center forward had been out since that wretched first leg against Bodo/Glimt and it’s probably not entirely coincidental that, without him, Inter managed two wins in seven across all competitions. Well, Lautaro scored straight away at home to Roma, before adding another en route to a comprehensive 5-2 win that leaves Inter sitting pretty ahead of the clash between Milan and Napoli, who sit second and third, Monday night. It was the lift Inter needed, especially given the fact that six of their players had seen their World Cup dream crumble just a few days earlier. They’re not out of the woods yet in terms of winning the Scudetto, but they’ve navigated another potential trap game.

As for Roma, the first half was pretty even, but as coach Gian Piero Gasperini himself said, they crumbled after the break. Manu Koné and Wesley were badly missed and, especially now that they’re out of the Europa League as well, it’s increasingly looking they won’t be in the Champions League next season. Gasperini will be under pressure, given the way results have dropped off in the past two months, but the underlying numbers are solid and a change in the summer would be silly.

8. Chelsea get a much-needed morale boost in rout of Port Vale: It’s the FA Cup quarterfinal and Port Vale sit bottom of League One, 62 places beneath them, with a streak of one win in six going into the game. So yeah, there’s not much you can conclude, football-wise, from Chelsea’s 7-0 home hammering. You can, however, deduce plenty from how Liam Rosenior is trying to lock in following a rough week, between Enzo Fernández and Marc Cucurella criticizing the club for sacking Enzo Maresca (and in Enzo’s case, talking about how much he appreciated Madrid), some horrific financial results and a run of four consecutive defeats.

Rosenior sent out Chelsea’s strongest available lineup other than Fernández (who he said was “suspended” for two games by the club), Cucurella (who stayed on the bench) and Moisés Caicedo (who played 180 minutes in Ecuador‘s two friendlies) and made no changes until the hour mark, when Chelsea were 4-0 up. He’s making bold choices — especially the Fernández move, since it keeps him out of the Manchester City game next week too — and he’s sending out “nobody is bigger than the club” vibes. If he’s going to crash out in the summer, he’ll do it on his terms.

7. Bundesliga‘s Champions League race is still uncertain: With the top two places locked up, there’s still plenty of drama to come in the Bundesliga in the battle for the Champions League places. Which, as of this writing, could go to the top four or top five, depending on European results between now and the end of the season.

Leipzig, Stuttgart (both on 53 points), Hoffenheim (50) and Bayer Leverkusen (49) are all still very much in contention with six games to go. Other than Hoffenheim — who would be a Cinderella tale if not for their yucky Dietmar Hopp backstory — each of the others have tasted relative success in recent years, albeit without being able to maintain it. It’s the age-old story of resource imbalance. Team does well. Team loses stars (Dani Olmo, Mohamed Simakan, Benjamin Sesko, Xavi Simons, Loïs Openda in the case of Leipzig; Enzo Millot, Nick Woltemade, Serhou Guirassy, Waldemar Anton, Hiroki Ito at Stuttgart; Granit Xhaka, Jeremie Frimpong, Florian Wirtz, Jonathan Tah at Bayer Leverkusen). Team has to rebuild. Missing out on the Champions League would only accelerate the departures.

6. Goalkeeper is the thing that can stop PSG’s juggernaut: There’s a growing feeling that PSG are getting stronger as the season progresses, much like last season when they were anonymous through January, only to be devastating after. Ousmane Dembélé is back to his best (11 goals — including two Friday night — in his last 17, all from open play, tell their own story) and the 3-1 win over Toulouse means they’re four points clear with a game in hand at the top of Ligue 1.

The gap means they can shift the focus wholly on the Champions League, starting with the clash against Liverpool. (Ligue 1 gave them a hand by postponing the big game with Lens next weekend.) Everyone has another season under their belt, which is a plus, but there’s one obvious downgrade: keeper. Lucas Chevalier, the big summer signing, lost his place and his replacement, Matvey Safonov, has looked limited. (He was at fault for Toulouse’s goal and nearly gifted them another with a wayward pass.) Should they have done more to hang on to Donnarumma? The accountants will say they did well to hold the line, but given how things are unfolding, fans might beg to differ.

5. Smash-and-grab for Borussia Dortmund as Stuttgart are pegged back: Metaphorically, their season might as well be over now. Borussia Dortmund are out of all cup competitions, and with six points to go, they won’t catch Bayern (who are nine points clear) and won’t slip out of the Champions League places (the gap is 14 points). Niko Kovac can start planning for next year, putting performance and development ahead of results.

That they’re in this position has a lot to do with Saturday’s 2-0 win over Stuttgart, who could have closed the gap to five points and, on the balance of play, should have gotten something out of this game. They had 67% possession and until Karim Adeyemi‘s goal in the fourth minute of injury time, had held Dortmund to three shots and 0.15 xG. As soon as Kovac gets done celebrating, he might want to focus on his team’s performance, because there’s a lot to be fixed. And remind himself that the guy who set up Adeyemi’s goal and scored the second — Julian Brandt — won’t be there next season.

4. Lazio boycott shows fans don’t just want to ‘win things’: On Saturday, only around 6,000 (many of them away fans) watched Lazio’s 1-1 draw with Parma. It was quite a drop for a club that drew around 44,000 a game last season, but there’s a reason for it. Since late January, there has been an active boycott of matches by supporters. Except for one game when the “fan strike” was suspended, attendance has oscillated between 2,000 and 6,000, including just 4,200 for the Coppa Italia semifinal first leg against Atalanta.

One of the stupidest things we in the media would have you believe is that, above all, fans want to “win silverware.” Unless you’re made of plastic, you don’t feel that way. What matters is the connection to the club and your faith in those running it. Lazio supporters have long been angry at owner Claudio Lotito, who has been there for two decades. They feel exploited, they feel he has no real interest in them, they want him to sell up and leave. And no, even the prospect of getting to a cup final (and their first chance at silverware since 2019) is going to change that. The boycott likely isn’t hitting Lazio’s bottom line — they have 29,918 season ticket holders, who have paid in advance — but it’s simply embarrassing for Lotito and his running of the club. Which is exactly what they want.

3. Leeds’ FA Cup quarterfinal win risks being a poisoned chalice: Don’t get me wrong, an FA Cup semifinal after 39 years is definitely worth it and will probably be the club’s second-biggest cup game since 2000-01, when they lived the dream and reached the Champions League semifinals. But watching them advance past West Ham on penalties on Sunday doesn’t necessarily make you more confident that they’ll stay up.

It’s not so much the extra fixture, when they’ll play Chelsea at Wembley — it’s more the fact that if you let a two-goal lead slip in injury time in a relegation battle, the damage can go well beyond the dropped points. And that’s exactly what Leeds did in Sunday’s dramatic clash, as West Ham forced the game to extra time. Looking at the table, they have a four-point cushion over the drop zone, so on paper they ought to be OK, not least because there are other clubs (Nottingham Forest, Tottenham) separating them from West Ham in 18th. But if you factor in the way they play and the fact that, other than Spurs (who hope for a positive reset under Roberto De Zerbi) the others are on an upswing, you can’t help but be concerned.

2. Folarin Balogun’s wonder-goal delivers huge top-four win for Monaco: Ten weeks ago or so, Monaco were 10th in Ligue 1. Now, following Sunday’s 2-1 home win over Marseille, they’re joint-fourth. It’s six Ligue 1 wins on the spin (including victories against big opponents like Lyon, Lens and PSG) and a very creditable (if unsuccessful) performance over two legs against PSG in the Champions League. It took them a while to get it right: Sebastian Pocognoli only took over as manager in October and was far from an instant success. But they’re roaring up the table and could well be back in the European big-time next season.

Maghnes Akliouche is having a monster season and Lamine Camara is one of the best young defensive midfielders around, but maybe it’s no coincidence that the recent hot streak has dovetailed with the revival of Balogun. The U.S. striker has scored in eight of his past nine games, and on Sunday he produced a worldie, conjuring up a delicious lobbed goal from a full-on counterattacking sprint. As for Marseille, the sacking of De Zerbi and natural chaos at the club isn’t helping. You wonder how serious the fallout will be if they slip out of the top four.

1. It’s time to chill out on Arsenal as their season is far from doomed: After the Quadruple dream went a couple of weeks ago, now the Treble dream is gone following their 2-1 defeat at Southampton at the FA Cup. They have nothing left to play for, other than insignificant baubles like the Premier League and Champions League. I was genuinely shocked seeing some of the over-the-top, Chicken Little headlines after their upset defeat Saturday, with some doom-mongers saying the season was “spinning out of control.”

Why? For a start, when you only play one and a half regulars (count Martin Odegaard as the “half” as we think he’s in Mikel Arteta’s best XI, but this was his first start since January) it’s not really a reflection on your team. Second, they weren’t good, but they weren’t terrible, either, conceding both goals on individual errors. Third, and perhaps most important: Arsenal’s best XI has such clear chemistry and such a well-defined style of play this season that throwing another group of players out there, however talented, and asking them to replicate that is a tall order. Arteta prioritized the Champions League clash with Sporting and the Premier League run-in (where, lest we forget, they’re nine points clear). It was the right thing to do, and trust me: Nobody will remember this game in a few weeks’ time.