European Round-up – Inter humiliate their city rivals

Sampdoria, Juventus, Lazio and Genoa are sitting pretty in Italy with two wins out of two.

The Milan derby saw an Inter team who had been held at home the previous week play ‘away’ at Milan who had an away victory to their name. The outcome would have been a little difficult to predict. Motta and Milito had already put Inter 2-0 up before Milan’s Gattuso got sent off for the umpteenth time in his career in the fortieth minute. Maicon made it 3-0 before half-time and a comfortable second half saw them add one more through Stankovic.

Mr Ancelotti must be feeling very pleased about his move to 100% Chelsea!

Roma lost 3-1 at home to Juventus and find themselves with no points from their opening two games. It could be a long season for the team from the capital.

The Spanish league finally kicked off and Real Madrid started in exactly the fashion we all predicted they would. The ‘it doesn’t matter how many you score, we’ll get at least one more’ attitude was evident straight away in their 3-2 victory over Deportivo.

Raul and a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty twice put Real ahead but Riki and Valeron equalised both times. Eventually Diarra bagged the goal that gave the points to the home side.

Barcelona had an easy and ominous 3-0 win over Sporting Gijon with Zlatan Ibrahimovich bagging his first and Barcelona’s third goal.

Elsewhere, Mato and Pablo goals gave Valencia a fine 2-0 win over Sevilla although both goals came in the second half when Sevilla were down to ten men following the first half injury-time dismissal of Freddie Kanoute.

Soldado scored an opening day hat-trick in Getafe’s fine 4-1 win at Racing and Malaga opened up with an excellent 3-0 win at home to Atletico Madrid.

New boys Xerez had a nightmare start going down 2-0 at Mallorca and having two players sent off.

Hamburg and Bayer Leverkusen have opened up a three point gap at the top of the German table. A pair from Guerrero and another from Trochowski gave Hamburg a 3-1 win over Cologne whilst Friedrich and Kiessling helped Bayer to a 2-1 victory over Vfl Bochum.

Bayern Munich had an impressive 3-0 win over champions Wolfsburg with new boy Arjen Robben finding the net twice.

Title hopefuls Hertha Berlin find themselves in the relegation zone after a 3-2 defeat at home to Werder Bremen left them with just three points from their four games.

Champions AZ Alkmaar have made their way back to the top of the Dutch league with Holman and Moreno giving them a 2-1 win over Willem II.

Close behind though are the usual suspects of Feyenoord, FC Twente, PSV and Ajax. PSV and Ajax had comfortable wins whilst Feyenoord and FC Twente cancelled each other out in a 1-1 draw. Twente had taken the lead through Kuiper fifteen minutes from the end but Feyenoord equalised with a last minute Roy Makaay penalty.

Marseille remain top of the French league despite being held 0-0 at home by title rivals Bordeaux.

PSG and Lyon are level on points with the leaders after they had easy wins. PSG beat Lille 3-0 with goals from Clement, Luyindula and Jallet, whilst Gomis, Lopez and Michel Bastos gave Lyon the points against Nancy.

Grenoble are still to pick up their first point after they lost narrowly by the only goal at St Etienne.

Braga remain top with three wins out of three as a Hugo Viana brace helped them to a 3-1 win over Belenenses.

Sporting and Porto are not far away after they had easy away wins.

Celtic and Rangers are the only teams left with a 100% record in the SPL after Rangers beat Hamilton 4-1 with two goals each for Steven Whittaker and Kris Boyd and Celtic had a decent 1-0 win at Hibernian courtesy of Georgios Samaras despite having Aiden McGeady sent off half an hour before the end of the game.

Panathinaikos have won two out of two after they beat FC Xanthi 1-0 at home. Unsurprisingly, Olympiacos, PAOK and AEK Athens all won their first game of the season and will no doubt be challenging Panathinaikos all the way.

Fenerbahce beat Manisaspor 2-1 to remain top of the table with a maximum points haul from four games. Galatasaray joined them after an easy 2-0 away win.