What to watch in European soccer this weekend
Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Atletico Madrid are all looking up at another team atop their respective league tables, but the season is still young. And in the cases of defending champions Bayern Munich and Manchester City, scoring has not been an issue since both lead their respective leagues in goals and have the leading individual scorer as well. Look for more scoring Saturday in the top televised soccer matches from Europe.
Bundesliga: Bayern Munich is chasing unbeaten Red Bull Leipzig in the league standings, but Robert Lewandowski is running away with the race for the Golden Boot with nine goals in five matches, four better than anyone else. He’ll try to pad his league Saturday when Bayern, also unbeaten, meets last-place Paderborn on the road (FS1, TUDN, UniMas, 6:30 a.m. PT). Behind Lewandowski, Bayern leads the Bundesliga with 16 goals while Paderborn, Germany’s only winless team, has allowed 14, the second-highest total in the league.
EPL: Second-place Manchester City is already five points down to Liverpool in the standings, but no team in Europe is scoring like the Sky Blues, whose 8-0 win over Watford last week equaled the second-most one-sided result in EPL history. On Saturday (NBC, 9:30 a.m. PT), City will make the short trip to Liverpool to face an Everton team that has scored just once in its last two EPL games. Sergio Aguero’s league-leading eight goals for City are three more than Everton has as a team.
La Liga: The first Madrid derby of the season Saturday could lead to a change atop the Spanish table with unbeaten Real Madrid visiting Estadio Wanda Metropolitano to meet second-place Atletico (BeIN Sports, noon PT).
