It was another exciting weekend of football with solid victories for title favourites across Europe’s top leagues. Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool won their respective matches while Chelsea also put out a statement win by scoring six goals against Wolves.
In LaLiga, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid secured victories over the weekend but it is Celta Vigo who are topping the table after two gameweeks. Bundesliga began on Friday with wins for reigning champions Bayer Leverkusen as well as for Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig.
ESPN’s By The Numbers brings you best stats from the weekend:
7
Manchester City’s Erling Haaland has scored his 7th Premier League hat trick on Saturday, equalling Wayne Rooney for the seventh spot in the overall rankings.
6
Since 2022-23, Manchester United have lost more Premier League games after conceding goals in the 90th minute (including stoppage time) than any other team — 6.
They had only lost two such games in the first 30 seasons of the league combined.
BRIGHTON SCORE IN THE 95TH MINUTE TO BEAT MAN UNITED �� pic.twitter.com/XzHIjPv4YU
– ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) August 24, 2024
23
Chelsea’s Noni Madueke became the 23rd different player to score a Premier League hat trick for Chelsea. The club has more unique hat trick scorers than any other team in the Premier League.
3
Cole Palmer’s 3 assists are the most by a Chelsea player on the road in a Premier League game since Cesc Fabregas had 3 in April 2016 at Bournemouth.
92%
Liverpool completed 92% of their passes in the game against Brentford, their best passing accuracy in a Premier League match on record since 2003-04.
1
Arne Slot became the first Liverpool manager to win each of his first two Premier League games in charge of the club.
1
Endrick became the youngest Real Madrid player to score on his LaLiga debut in the 21st century — 18 years and 35 days, and the fifth youngest overall in this period in the league.
Endrick doing extra training on the Bernabéu pitch after Real Madrid’s 3-0 win over Real Valladolid and scoring his first goal for the club ����
(via @realmadrid) pic.twitter.com/70XpEjuPrA
– ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) August 25, 2024
12
Among players born since 2005, only Mathys Tel (17 — 12 goals and 5 assists) has more goal involvements in the top five European leagues than Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal, who has 12 — 6 goals and 6 assists, the same as Desire Doue — 7 and 5.
10
Since 2015/16, Atletico de Madrid have scored 10 direct free-kick goals in all competitions, 9 of them by Antoine Griezmann, who scored against Girona in the weekend.
17
Hakan Calhanoglu scored his 17th penalty goal out of 17 attempts in the league. Since 2023-24, in the big 5 European Leagues, the Inter Milan midfielder has scored the most goals from penalties — 11 to Cole Palmer’s 9.
13
Bayern Munich remained undefeated in their opening game of a Bundesliga season for the 13th time in a row (W11, D2) — a new record for a team in league history.
Bayern Munich come back from 2-1 down to beat Wolfsburg in their first Bundesliga match of the season under Vincent Kompany �� pic.twitter.com/P732vjJkLB
– ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) August 25, 2024
474
With his 474th appearance for Bayern, Thomas Muller has overtaken Sepp Maier as Bayern’s record appearance maker in the competition.
4
Bayer Leverkusen’s Granit Xhaka has scored four Bundesliga goals from outside the box in 2024. In Europe’s five big leagues, only Phil Foden of Manchester City scored more league goals from outside the box this year — 5.
MESSI-RONALD WATCH
18 and 25
Cristiano Ronaldo scored for Al Nassr in their season opener against Al Raed, which ended in a 1-1 draw. With the goal, this is his 18th career calendar year with at least 25 goals in all competitions for club and country.
From 2006-2024, the only year in which Ronaldo failed to score 25 goals for club and country was in 2022 –16 goals.