With the European club football season two months old, let us take stock in some of the star performers so far and some who have already disappointed.
Best team: Bayern Munich
It is by no means hyperbolic to state that Bayern Munich’s start to the season could not have been better.
Pep Guardiola’s side, who have won the last three Bundesliga titles by margins of 25, 19 and 10 points, have won every single game they have played in all competitions, scoring 39 goals and conceding just five.
The 5-1 thrashing of second-placed Borussia Dortmund before the international break underlined how much stronger they are than the rest of the German top flight, while their two Uefa Champions League encounters with Olympiakos and Dynamo Zagreb have been clinically negotiated. Bayern look unstoppable at present.
Biggest flop: Chelsea
Having won the Premier League title with such ease last term, Chelsea were strong favourites to finish top of the pile this time around too. That ambition already looks unattainable after just eight games, though, with the champions 10 points adrift of leaders Manchester City after a dismal start to the campaign.
Chelsea have been defeated by City, Crystal Palace, Everton and Southampton this season, with Jose Mourinho’s job coming under pressure for the first time since he returned to Stamford Bridge in 2013.
The Portuguese will need to oversee a drastic improvement if Chelsea are to start climbing the table.
Surprise package: Angers
Angers ended a 22-year absence from Ligue 1 by securing promotion to the top tier of French football in May. It has not taken them long to reacclimatise, either: only Paris Saint-Germain have collected more points than Angers, who sit in second place after winning five and drawing three of their first nine fixtures.
“It’s a dream,” manager Stephane Moulin said after watching his team defeat Bastia 1-0 in their last outing. “It’s amazing to be second with an average of two points per game.”
Best player: Nolito
Celta Vigo’s 4-1 thrashing of Barcelona last month was arguably the performance of the season, with Nolito, a former Barcelona player, superb from start to finish.
The 28-year-old forward recorded two assists and generally wreaked havoc against last season’s treble winners.
His performance that night was far from a one-off, with the Spaniard having put in some magnificent displays. He has scored five goals in total and laid on another three for his teammates. His early season form has been rewarded with a deserved call-up to Vicente del Bosque’s Spain squad for the Euro 2016 qualifiers with Luxembourg and Ukraine, also.
Best goalscorer: Robert Lewandowski
Bayern Munich’s perfect start to the campaign has been helped in no small part by the extraordinary form of striker Robert Lewandowski in front of goal: the Poland international has found the back of the net 12 times in his last four Bundesliga matches, including an astonishing five-goal haul in the space of nine minutes against Wolfsburg last month.
Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy, Sampdoria’s Eder and Nice pair Hatem Ben Arfa and Valere Germain have impressed in topping the goalscoring charts in their team’s respective countries, but no one comes close to Lewandowski, whose club record so far in 2015/16 reads: 10 games in all competitions, 16 goals.
Best manager: Paulo Sousa
While Vincenzo Montella did an excellent job in guiding Fiorentina to three consecutive fourth-place finishes in Serie A, he could not quite take that final step and return the club to the Champions League, with his departure in the summer feeling like the right move for all parties concerned.
It is still early days, but his replacement, Paulo Sousa, has given Fiorentina fans hope that this will be the year they finish in the top three again. The two-time Italian champions, who remain an extremely attractive side to watch under their new Portuguese coach, have won six of their seven matches so far and, for the first time since 1999, look down on the rest of Serie A from the summit.
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