The third round of the Champions League league stage is just around the corner. We’ve got all the action for you on Paramount+, CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo Network all season long. Here’s what we’ll be watching for in three big games on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Milan vs Club Brugge: Pulisic leads the way again
For the first time in his career as an EU member, Christian Pulisic has the role he seemed destined for when he came onto the scene just nine years ago. He is probably the most impressive striker in a team with critical aspirations for the local competition and perhaps even a run in the Champions League. It’s helpful to announce that this in itself might be something no other American football player has done. Even the best of the best before Pulisic were mid-level stars (think Clint Dempsey) or the useful team pieces that many of the USMNT internationals of late are. That was even Pulisic’s role at Chelsea and, as excellent as his performance was, on his first day in Milan. An invaluable participant who is unsure, but not someone for whom there was always room to be found.
This season that might seem to have changed. Pulisic has more field minutes in Serie A than any other Milan player by quite a considerable margin. He has 640 out of a possible 720 to his name. In the second field, Tijjani Reijnders has 553. This is practically a full game more played in the entire US world than any other in red and cloudy. Part of that may be down to availability, such a challenge for him earlier this season, but Pulisic has deteriorated his generation extremely clearly.
Six goals and three assists is a dizzying decline so far; unlike last season There are plenty of indicators to persuade that this too will be the last. Had the Pulisic of 2023-24 continued to this day, it’s entirely possible his production would have stagnated. Rather, Captain America is doing more to keep its profits on top. His no-penalty anticipated targets (npxG) per 90 have gone from 0.28 to 0.36, an increase that is even more notable because he is actually shooting more frequently. Less efforts from space or with the head, but the same poaching skills that were valued by Thomas Tuchel and Stefano Pioli.
The most important advances, however, are available at launch. Pulisic has long given the appearance of being more of a serve than a passer, and this season that could become. His shots are off, his passing is up (especially in the final third), his expected assists (xA) and the chances created are skyrocketing. In fact, their final 20 Serie A leaders, their xA is closer to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. A goalscorer, writer and accomplished member of the team, the highlight was Fonseca was ready to hammer the future Pulisic had lent his support in Saturday’s 1-0 win over Udinese.
That game was as illuminating as any of the paths Pulisic has taken. Whether it was to keep players retained for a very difficult meeting with Club Brugge or to clean up his team, Fonseca made the changes on Saturday. Where Rafael Leao and Tammy Abraham made their way, Pulisic was held back, thrust into the center of the action as the slightly more withdrawn second striker in front of Álvaro Morata. There are alternatives to create Milan entrance 4. Pulisic is the crunchy orange cream in a can from Detail Boulevard (send them to the US for those who don’t know how cruel I am). He is the stuffing of your Thanksgiving campaign. You’ll take him first. And Fonseca will no doubt do just that as he tries to get some trouble on the board in the third round of the Champions League.
Manchester Town vs Sparta Praha: big bet for Haaland
The latter gasps winners to stifle the likes of Wolves and Fulham, a haphazardly constructed team that appears brilliant on the strongest issues and a titanic off-field saga to distract them – if any other club option than Manchester Town had been in Manchester. Given the state of the city, it might seem like it’s time to ask some tough questions about whether those disputed naming effects will be later. Probably, as Pep Guardiola is, Town deserve the good of insecurity. If anyone can reorient a team that seems brilliant for the players to develop unprecedented possibilities for Erling Haaland, he is the best lecturer in the game.
Don’t expect even what on paper seems like a simple night in the EU to be the waltz it once was, either. After all, Town had been making the week robotically harder for themselves. Even with their biggest complete win of the season so far, 4-0 over Slovan Bratislava, I’m rarely ready to turn the pitch on. Celtic received by that margin!
Town’s most productive iterations are not throwing the kitchen sink at a 10-man Arsenal, let alone the mid-table aspects they have outplayed in recent weeks. During the 90th minute of a Wolves game in which they hadn’t even led, Town had created 1.3 xG. Against Newcastle 0.91 in one match they led in a single role for about 20 minutes. Let’s leave aside the chances they offered against Fulham, but a rather rickety defense is not so unusual for Town at this stage of the season. An attack that doesn’t really fit the team until Jack Grealish comes off the bench? That’s new.
To get a sense of how the city’s struggles are accelerating, just take a look at Erling Haaland’s relative struggles. Without shooting against Wolves, he sees less of the ball in 90 Premier League minutes than at any level of his career. His 22.16 touches are around 20 per cent fewer than he received on day one in England. Their non-penalty xG is similar on the downward slope and the trajectory is not entirely encouraging, 0.45 towards Newcastle, 0.25 towards Fulham and 0 towards Wolves.
His shot numbers still hover around the 4-90 mark, but if Kevin De Bruyne doesn’t return before too long, he could be the last to fall. With the Belgian in the sound, Haaland has 8 goals and 3.9 xG. In homogeneous minutes without him, a 1.8 xG function. The town has become a team tailored to Haaland’s supernatural abilities and the opposition knows it. Without De Bruyne, they can really easily focus on limiting the supply to the heavy guy and challenge Jeremy Doku and Savinho to get past them (think Phil Foden, by the way?).
The same is expected from Sparta Praha on Wednesday. Chances are it won’t be much to get them a point, as notable as Lars Friis’ team has been this season. It will no longer be too difficult to prevent them from losing by a good margin. But when the Czech champions can keep company and slow City’s stock price, it will only increase the feeling that Guardiola’s men are a great way to get ahead this season.
Barcelona vs. Bayern Munich: The Catalans turn out to be the real businessmen
Wednesday brings us one of the league’s first Grade A section hypergames and this one is packed with a ton of off-field storytelling and on-field skill. Without a doubt, for Barcelona the conversation with Bayern Munich must be transcendental. There is no better opponent to allow them to change that disagreement, actually, they are at it again.
The 2015 victory over Bayern in the semi-finals could leave him unwell as the apotheosis of post-Guardiola Barcelona, a team that had built financial muscle from success and deployed it to build a better team, led by the dreadful trident of Luis Suárez, Neymar and Lionel Messi. During the time those two met again, things were going downhill pretty quickly. Neymar’s reward was wasted and a team with little nonsense was destroyed by Hansi Flick’s Bayern, now in charge of returning Barça to the top.
Simply to discover that this was a fluke, Bayern destroyed Barcelona at team level two years later. Once they did one more time in 2022-23 it just felt a little cruel. The reaction to this series of setbacks in Catalonia (the sale of a future stake in multiple income streams) does not seem particularly effective in light of the new CAS ruling, but one thing seems certain.
Barcelona is remaking itself. Across all five European leagues, disagreeing teams score more points, disagreeing teams are solving things at a higher rate, and disagreeing teams have a higher overall xG excess. Raphinha has a compelling case to be the best scorer on the continent in this era, Robert Lewandowski is their best local scorer and the young supporting cast among the veterans, many of them local, is showing composure despite their years. They will face their toughest test yet at Bayern, but the team that in the past gave up a surprisingly even three goals to Eintracht Frankfurt has not quite taken its dependence to the inexplicable. This seems to be a month for a revitalized Barcelona.
