This weekend’s edition of the Top Five highlights a weekend of goodbye’s and hello’s, as Crystal Palace wave goodbye to its futile record, Juventus bid adieu to its two-year home unbeaten streak, Liverpool and Manchester United introduce a new solution to insomnia, and Jupp Heynckes returns to Munich with a bang.
Behold an oven-fresh edition of 90 Minutes’ Top Five of the Weekend.
1. Chelsea’s resurrection miracle
In a Biblical feat akin to that of Jesus Christ bringing Lazarus back from the dead, Chelsea awoke the comatose Crystal Palace with a post-international break gift of a 2-1 victory at Selhurst Park.
Yes, Antonio Conte was missing N’Golo Kante and Alvaro Morata. But a loss to a team that had zero win and scored zero goals all season is inexcusable. The miracle began as all miracles do, with a fortuitous occurrence, when Cesar Azpilicueta had a ball just bounce off his body and into his own net for the 1-0 in the 11th minute. Remember, this was Palace’s first goal all season. Tiemoue Bakayoko’s header seemed to right the ship back to normal course, until Wilfried Zaha whipped out a run from out of nowhere to beat Thibaut Courtois and put the definitve 2-1.
Credit where credit is due, Roy Hodgson pulled off a tactical coup by neutralizing Conte’s ever-efficient midfield to back up the speed and skill of Zaha and Andros Townsend. As for the Blues, the gap with Manchester City is now nine points. Let that sink in.
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2. Down goes Juventus Stadium
If there’s something this Serie A season has revealed, is that Juventus’ stronghold on the league seemed to loosen up some.
But this weekend taught us just how much.
For the first time since August of 2015, Juventus lost a Serie A match at home Saturday, when Lazio upended the Bianconeri in a match that featured a little bit of everything, except a familiar ending. Juve’s old friend Ciro Immobile found the back of the net twice in the second half, overturning a 1-0 deficit courtesy of Douglas Costa’s goal in the 23rd. The critical moment came at the end, when the referee awarded Juve a stoppage time penalty kick after VAR review. And it was Paulo Dybala, “La Joya,” the new Juventus wonderkid number 10, who has his penalty kick saved masterfully by Albanian keeper Thomas Strakosha.
With Napoli’s win at Roma, Juve sits third, five points behind Maurizio Sarri’s team. Serie A is ripe for the picking, and Juventus’ reign could be coming to a bitter end.
3. Liverpool-United: the cure for insomnia
The old statement says that the more things chance, the more they stay the same.
That could not be any more the case for what fans on this side of the world had to sent their alarms for an early wake up call to watch the long-hyped rematch between Liverpool and Manchester United. In terms of spectacle, it did not seem to difficult to surpass last year’s scoreless festival of the parked bus. But, as the saying wisely dictates, Jose Mourinho and Jurgen Klopp managed to replicate last year with a near facsimile this season. For as powerful as United seemed so far on offense, and how fragile Liverpool had been on defense, it is beyond anyone’s shallow soccer knowledge to comprehend why Mourinho chose to park the bus again, allowing Liverpool to fire off 19 shots, while only producing six of their own.
And Mourinho better have taken David De Gea to the most expensive restuarant in all of Liverpool, because the Spaniard’s incredible save deserves such a recognition.
4. Jupp, like he never left.
Jupp Heynckes returned to the Bayern Munich bench that same way he left back in 2013: victorious.
The Bavarians enjoyed perhaps their best performance of the season, shellacking Freiburg 5-0 to earn their first win in three matches. And yes, it was Freiburg, the third-worst team in Bundesliga. But the way Bayern won is significant becuase these were the type of matches where the team, under Carlo Ancelotti, would complicate things for itself constantly. Saturday, though, the confident, dominant Bayern Bundesliga fans where accustomed to seeing returned, led by an outstanding Thiago Alcantara pulling the strings in the attack.
5. Kimmich goal
Bayern’s rout of Freiburg was capped off by an oustanding piece of skill courtesy of Joshua Kimmich, whose back heel finish earns him the Top Five Goal of the Weekend: