Chapter 273: The Falling Premier League

On November 2, in the 10th round of La Liga, Atletico Madrid faced promoted Cordoba at home.

Atletico Madrid topped La Liga in the last round, and this time at home, the fans in Calderón Stadium were enthusiastic, and many banners were pulled in the stadium encouraging the team to defend their title.

Facing a promoted team that was not strong, Atletico Madrid soon attacked at home in a warm atmosphere of the home fans.

However, Córdoba defended well in the first half, until the 42nd minute before the end of the first half, when Atletico Madrid won a second well-placed free-kick, and Ringer took the penalty himself, curling the ball around the wall and into the top left corner of the goal, Atletico Madrid finally took the lead.

At the start of the second half, Córdoba briefly equalised but soon Griezmann scored twice and Raul Garcia also headed home from a corner to seal the win for Atletico Madrid.

In the past few months since joining Atletico Madrid, Griezmann has slowly integrated into the team and started to perform better and better.

Although Cordoba scored another goal before the end of the game, it was irrelevant, and in the end, Atletico Madrid beat Cordoba 4-2 at home to take three points and continue to lead the league standings.

In this round of La Liga, Real Madrid beat Granada 4-0 away, which was expected, but Barcelona was a big upset at home, losing 0-1 to Celta Vigo and suffering two consecutive league defeats.

The last time Barcelona suffered two consecutive league defeats was in the Pep Guardiola era, and in the 08/09 La Liga season, Barcelona began to rotate the squad to prepare for the Champions League final when Barcelona had already won the championship in advance, which led to two consecutive defeats in the league.

Now, after a few years, Barcelona has suffered two consecutive defeats, and it is said that after the loss, the Camp Nou stadium was simply booed, and many fans shouted for the chairman to leave class.

After this defeat, there has been a lot of change in the La Liga standings, Real Madrid successfully overtook Barcelona to rise to second place in the standings, and Atletico Madrid also took the opportunity to open the gap with the second place.

After 10 rounds of La Liga, Atletico Madrid has 28 points from 9 wins and 1 draw, Real Madrid has 24 points from 8 wins and 2 losses, and Barcelona has 22 points from 7 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses. The gap between Atletico Madrid and the second place has widened to 4 points, and the gap with Barcelona has widened to 6 points, occupying a large advantage.

Ringer scored a goal in this round, but Ronaldo also scored a goal in the game, and in the La Liga scorer list, Ronaldo scored 17 goals and Ringer scored 15 goals, still two goals behind the opponent.

Ringer has scored 15 goals in 10 league games, averaging 1.5 goals per game, but still trailing the opposition.

After the league game, Atletico Madrid will soon be preparing for the Champions League in midweek.

In Group A, where Atletico Madrid is located, Atletico Madrid's current lead is still relatively large, as long as they go to Sweden to win Malmo away in this round, they can almost lock up the group qualification.

On November 4th, the entire Atletico Madrid squad travelled to Malmö, a city in southern Sweden, where they will take on the club Malmo.

Malmo reached the Champions League final in the last century, but lost 0:1 to Nottingham Forest and missed the title, and now Malmo has long been uncompetitive in the Champions League and can only be reduced to a scoring machine for a strong team.

At the Swedish Bank Stadium in Malmo, Atletico Madrid didn't suffer too much trouble.

In the 30th minute of the first half, Ringer broke through the middle and then split the ball, and Koke, who was inserted on the right side, pushed the goal to help Atletico Madrid open the scoring.

Kork has been in pretty good form in recent times, performing in almost every game.

In the 39th minute, Ringer broke through with the ball again and was fouled by the opposing midfielder Forsberg in the penalty area, and the referee awarded a penalty and showed a yellow card to the opponent.

Ringer took the penalty himself, scoring from the penalty spot to help the team extend the score to 2:0.

In the 76th minute of the second half, Juanfran passed the ball from the side, forcing a mistake from the opposing defender and clearing the ball to the feet of Raul Garcia, who seized the opportunity to make it 3:0.

In this way, Atletico Madrid defeated Malmo 3-0 away and beat each other 8-0 on aggregate over the two legs.

With the win over Malmo, Atletico Madrid reached 10 points from their Champions League group. In the other game of the same group in this round, Juventus defeated Olympiacos 3:2 at home, and finally did not come out of the basket again.

Currently in the Group A standings, Atletico Madrid have 10 points, Juventus 6, Olympiacos 4 and Malmo 3.

With two rounds of group stage remaining, Atletico Madrid is six points ahead of third-placed Olympiacos and has almost locked a qualifying spot, and the possibility of group elimination only exists in theory.

However, the most concerned in this round of the Champions League are Barcelona and Real Madrid, to be precise, Messi and Ronaldo.

After the end of the last round of the Champions League, the total number of goals scored by Messi and Ronaldo in the Champions League has approached the historical record, Messi's total goals in the Champions League have reached 69, Ronaldo has reached 70 goals, and the all-time Champions League goal record is 71 goals, which is held by former Real Madrid captain Raul.

So in this round of the Champions League, Ronaldo only needs to score one goal, Messi only needs to score two goals, they can tie Raul's historical record, and if they score more goals, they can directly break the record and be promoted to the Champions League all-time scorer king.

At the end of this round of games, although Real Madrid defeated Liverpool 1:0 at home and killed each other 4:0 in the two legs of the group stage, it was regarded as revenge for being eliminated by the opponent 5:0 during the Champions League 16 Lang period, but Ronaldo did not score a goal. In Barcelona's 2-0 away win over Ajax, Messi scored a brace and beat Ronaldo to tie Raul's historical record.

There is no doubt that whether it is Messi or Ronaldo, they have a good chance of breaking Raul's record this season, and Messi will also break the all-time record for total goals in La Liga.

In this round of the Champions League group stage, none of the four teams in the Premier League won, which is also a topic of more concern in the European media.

In addition to Liverpool's 0-1 defeat to Real Madrid, Premier League champions Manchester City lost 1-2 at home to CSKA Moscow, Chelsea drew 1-1 away to Maribor, and Arsenal was chased by the opponent with a 3-0 lead away from home, and finally drew 3-3 with Anderlecht.

Chelsea and Arsenal still have a big advantage in their respective groups, and a draw won't have much impact, but Liverpool and Manchester City, last season's Premier League champions and runners-up, are not in great form after this defeat.

Manchester City have picked up just two points from four group games and are currently bottom of Group E, not at all what a Premier League title should be. Since the arrival of the Middle Eastern tycoon, Manchester City has won the Premier League twice, but failed to reach the quarterfinals in the Champions League, and now it is possible to be sent home in the group stage.

The situation of the Premier League runner-up Liverpool is not good, with three points in the four rounds of the group stage, relying only on the advantage of winning and losing to avoid the bottom of the group, and three points behind Basel, the second place in the group, the situation is also quite dangerous.

A lot of media have been writing about the Premier League on its way down. At least in terms of European points, the Premier League is indeed like this, and the current European points of the Bundesliga have surpassed the Premier League, and the Premier League has officially been relegated to become the third league in Europe.

Of course, there is also a lot of news in this round of the Champions League, the Brazilian Luis Adriano, who was a five-star star in the last round, scored another hat-trick in the 5-0 home win over Borisov at Shakhtar Donetsk.

The Brazilian was really a sheep and slew the wool hard, brushing eight goals alive from Borisov's underdog team. The Brazilian has now scored nine goals in this season's Champions League group stage, equalling the record set by Cristiano Ronaldo last season and has a chance to break that record in the future.

After scoring two hat-tricks in a row, Adriano also became the first player in Champions League history to score two hat-tricks in a row.

Through the performance of these two games, the Brazilians have also successfully attracted the attention of the big teams, especially those poor giants who are slightly declining, such as AC Milan, Inter Milan, and some strong teams in the five major leagues, are expressing close attention to this "brush".

Borisov's Belarusian team is also miserable, it is easy to meet weak teams in the Champions League qualifying round one after another, and successfully pass the qualifying round to enter the main competition, but everyone is a ghost and wants to put a hat trick on his head.

Borisov has lost three of the four Champions League rounds, including a 0-6 defeat to Porto, where Algerian striker Brahimi scored a hat-trick; 0:7 defeat to Shakhtar Donetsk at home, Adriano five-star beads; 0:5 away defeat to Shakhtar Donetsk, Adriano hat-trick.

This TM Champions League has played four games, three were slaughtered, and every time someone has scored a hat-trick on the head, it's really amazing.

This is already a Champions League record, with no team having ever scored three hat-tricks in a single season in the Champions League, with Borisov setting a record.

This is what Platini's Champions League policy has brought about, to try to make the strong teams cannibalistic in the Champions League qualifiers, and to escort the weak teams to the Champions League main game, so as to attract fans from those small football countries to watch the Champions League.

That's why a strong team like Napoli can't make it to the Champions League, while a weak team like Borisov comes in and becomes someone else's goal machine.

It is worth mentioning that although Borisov was beaten badly, they were not the team at the bottom of the group, because they still won one game, beating La Liga team Athletic Bilbao 2-1 at home in the second round.

The Basque team seems to have achieved its goal by reaching the Champions League main game, and the rookie team that everyone kills can't win it.

After losing 0:2 at home to Porto in this round, Athletic Bilbao only got one point in the four group stages and has been eliminated in two rounds in advance.