At a time when he was looking like the real deal for Barcelona, the football gods have once again cursed Dani Olmo. The former RB Leipzig playmaker has picked up a fresh injury, which will keep him out on the sidelines for at least a month. This is a major blow for Barcelona, but even more so for Olmo, whose return to Catalonia has been marred by a series of untimely injuries.
Securing a famous bronze medal finish among Germany's elite last season, Dino Toppmoller's camp have secured back-to-back Bundesliga victories for the first time since the end of August. Last seen over the weekend marking their return from November's international break with an action-packed 4-3 victory away at Koln, Frankfurt could be smelling the chance to get their European charge back on track.
Eintracht have placed the emphasis on keeping the opposition quiet in their past two competitive games, and with good reason after suddenly becoming one of the most porous teams defensively in the Bundesliga, and that concerning pattern extending into the UEFA Champions League. Three conceded at Bayer Leverkusen started the unwanted trend and it worsened with four against both Union Berlin and Borussia Mönchengladbach and then five Gegentore against both Atlético Madrid and Liverpool on the continental front
Starting with the hosts, while Eintracht Frankfurt might have signed off September with a remarkable 6-4 victory away at Borussia Monchengladbach, it appears that might have been just a minor boost for the Eagles. Suffering late heartbreak against Freiburg over the weekend as they marked their return from October's international break with a 2-2 stalemate on the road, Dino Toppmoller's camp have drastically failed to find any kind of stability since opening up the new campaign.
When Hugo Ekitike joined Eintracht Frankfurt on loan from Paris Saint-Germain 18 months ago, he had a difficult start he didn't score in his opening 11 games, but you could see there was potential, Falkenmayer tells FourFourTwo. He came to life at the end of that campaign, scoring four goals in his final five games, and I was pleased to see that the deal was made permanent for 14m last summer. I felt that he'd have a bigger role to play, but I don't think anybody foresaw just how much bigger.
Against Frankfurt, Luis Diaz had, by far, his best game to date since joining Bayern Munich. The 28-year-old Colombian was involved in all three goals. In between completing a brace, he also provided the assist to Harry Kane for the second goal. In the attacking phases of the game Lucho scored with two of his three attempts on goal and created three chances in total.
With another week of football passing by, we have a whole new set of new performances to set the standard around Europe for who the top players around are. Let's look at who's on top of the world this week. For the unfamiliar, the nature of this list is as follows:- The intrinsic feature of 'power rankings' is to have a recency bias, showcasing who's trending upwards rather than just averaging out the entire season so far.
I was at the training ground that afternoon with Thomas Müller, Sven Ulreich, and Bouna Sarr. Then, in the evening, events unfolded rapidly. At some point, I read the news as a headline in BILD. It was like something out of a movie, and I thought to myself: 'Okay, where's the hidden camera?' I turned off my phone because I just wanted to be left alone.
