The Turin team beat Milan and returned to first place

In the central match of the European football weekend, Juventus beat defending champion Milan thanks to a brace from Claudio Marchisio - 2:0. In Spain, Barcelona and Real won routine victories, and in the French championship, PSG came to the fore, defeating Lyon - 2:0.

Italian Championship

After the final whistle, which announced victory over Milan, Juventus head coach Antonio Conte began to dance uncontrollably. With his frantic dance, he eclipsed even the numbers performed by the shocking coach of Borussia Dortmund, Jurgen Klopp. Having completed the performance, the 42-year-old coach rushed onto the field and began to hug every player of the Turin club, including the reserves.

Conte's emotions perfectly illustrate how significant the victory over Milan was for him and Juventus. After all, all the talk about the revival of the Turin team, which has been wandering around Italy since the beginning of the season, until this meeting was not supported by a single significant success. Their game was attractive and looked promising, but they only defeated the middle peasants of the championship - like Parma and Siena. The fight with Milan was supposed to confirm whether Juventus was really ripe for a real fight for the championship. And she proved that the people of Turin are quite ready to overthrow Milan and Inter, which have reigned in Italy for the last eight years.

Milan goalkeeper Christian Abbiati
Photo: REUTERS/Giorgio Perottino, Reuters

It cannot be said that Sunday's central match of the tour was an exquisite spectacle: both teams were primarily thinking about how to pin down their opponents more reliably. Juventus handled the neutralization better, depriving the excellent Milanese attack, led by the extremely versatile forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic, of room for maneuver. The Turin team themselves attacked a little more inventively and, before the turning point of the match, hit the woodwork of Christian Abbiati's goal twice. The decisive moment was Claudio Marchisio's goal in the 86th minute. To some, this ball might seem unimpressive, because Milan defender Daniele Bonera, in fact, hit his own goal: interrupting the pass in a tackle, he hit the Juventus midfielder, from whom the ball flew into the net. However, attention is still worth paying attention to the whole openwork combination of Juventus, which included three consecutive one-touch passes (the last one was given by Mirko Vucinic, who was constantly tormenting his opponent) near the Milan penalty area, forcing Bonera to rush into a risky tackle.

In the last minutes of the meeting, two events occurred that finally finished off the Milanese. First, Kevin-Prince Boateng lost his temper and hit Giorgio Chiellini in the face with his hand, deservedly receiving a red card for this. And then Marchisio scored the second goal: Abbiati curiously missed a simple long-range shot between his legs. Thanks to this victory, the Turin team returned to first place with 11 points, which they share with Udinese. And they are already separated from Milan and Inter by six and seven points, respectively.

Spanish Championship

“Barcelona” and “Real” went through the last round without losing points. However, the victories of the giants turned out to be very different. Madrid impressively defeated Espanyol 4:0, and Jose Mourinho managed to fit all his prime ministers into the scheme - Cristiano Ronaldo, Mesut Ozil, and Kaka, who was gaining shape. However, the hero of the meeting was not one of the brilliant midfielders, but striker Gonzalo Higuain, who scored three goals against Espanyol.

Barcelona unexpectedly encountered stubborn resistance from Sporting Gijon, which scored only one point in the opening five rounds. It seemed that after Adrian’s quick goal in the 12th minute, the Catalans would not have any problems and the balls would fly into Juan Pablo’s goal regularly. However, Barcelona failed to crack Sporting's defense any further. However, even a minimal victory brought her to the championship lead. True, for now the Catalans share the first place with Levante.

Three teams lose one point to them. He leads the pursuit group "Real", and is supported by "Malaga" and "Valencia". It is curious that both clubs retained their hold on Madrid thanks to the goals of players who were at different times written off from the capital's giants. At the same time, both scored outstandingly beautiful goals. Malaga's victory over Getafe (3:2) was brought about by Julio Baptista's delicious overhead kick, and Valencia's success in the battle with Granada (1:0) was ensured by a mesmerizing long-range volley from Sergio Canales.

French Championship

The millions pumped into PSG by Arab sheikhs seem to be starting to bear fruit. The Parisians, who greatly updated their roster in the off-season, spent the first two rounds on adjustments, and then put on an impressive streak of five wins and one draw. On Sunday, PSG won the battle against Lyon (2:0) for sole leadership. The decisive goal was the goal of the main star of the French championship, Javier Pastore, acquired by the capital club from Palermo for €42 million.

For Lille, CSKA's rival in the championship group B, the last round turned out well. Rudi Garcia's team, after three draws in a row, beat Rennes 2:0 and is four points behind leaders PSG.

Petr Kuznetsov

Next rounds of European national championships

Spanish Championship

Seventh round. "Atlético" - "Sevilla" 0:0. "Betis" - "Levante" 0:1 (Huanglu, 33). "Sporting" - "Barcelona" 0:1 (Adrian, 12). "Espanyol" - "Real" 0:4 (Higuain, 17, 66, 89; Callejon, 82). Team position. 1. Barcelona - 14 points. 2. Levante - 14. 3. Real Madrid - 13. 4. Malaga - 13. 5. Valencia - 13. 6. Sevilla - 12. 7. Betis - 12.

The Spanish Championship started with the second round. The first round matches were postponed due to a strike.

Italian Championship

Sixth round. "Juventus" - "Milan" 2:0 (Marquisio, 87, 90+3). Team position. 1. Juventus - 11 points. 2. Udinese - 11. 3. Napoli - 10. 4. Palermo - 10. 5. Cagliari - 10. 6. Roma - 8. 7. Lazio - 8. 8. "Chievo" - 8.

The Italian Championship started with the second round. The first round matches were postponed due to a strike.

French Championship

Ninth round. PSG-Lyon 2:0 (Pastore, 64; Jaier, 90). "Lille" - "Rennes" 2:0 (Sauve, 7; Balmont, 32). "Marseille" - "Brest" 1:1 (Ayew, 19 - Poyer, 5). Team position. 1. PSG - 20 points. 2. Montpellier - 17. 3. Lyon - 17. 4. Toulouse - 17. 5. Lille - 16. 6. Lorient - 16.

Juventus are back to their old ways