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El Clásico, FA Cup Third Round, Inter vs. Napoli, and more
There's plenty to look forward to this weekend and The Assist is here to pick out the gems from your FotMob match feed.
The fixture gods have provided a wide variety of action for the next few days. There’s distractions for some of Europe’s biggest sides, in the form of mid-season Super Cup trophies and cup competitions, and vital top of the table clashes and first games back after winter breaks elsewhere. We also take a look at a space race inspired team from the Netherlands.
El Clásico
Barcelona and Real Madrid meet in Saudi Arabia to contest the final of the Supercopa de España on Sunday. In the seventh year since the tournament shifted to a four team format, we have a fourth straight showpiece game that features Spain’s big two, which is exactly the desired outcome for those marketing the competition!
If you’ve been sleeping on this week’s semifinals, Barcelona were ruthless against Athletic Club, with five unanswered goals either scored or assisted by a combination of Hansi Flick’s front four; Raphinha, Ferran Torres, Fermín López, and Roony Bardghji.
Missing Kylian Mbappé through injury, Real had to endure an onslaught from city rivals Atlético Madrid after going two goals up in the other semi, eventually holding on to win 2-1.
Back in LaLiga, Madrid are one of only two teams to beat Barcelona this season but Xabi Alonso’s side do trail their great rivals by four points at the top of the table.
In terms of this competition, you can usually guarantee goals, with 16 coming across those three consecutive Clasico finals. Barcelona have come out on top in two (5-2 and 3-1) while Madrid’s last triumph came in 2024 (4-1).
Inter vs. Napoli
First meets third on Sunday night as the defending Serie A champions face off against the side who won the Scudetto the season before last. In fact, Inter and Napoli have each lifted the title twice in the last five years, with Antonio Conte starting that run at Inter when they won back in 2020/21 before tasting success again, this time with Napoli in 2024/25.
Conte now returns to San Siro with his side sitting four points down on leaders Inter after 18 rounds. That gap would have been wider if it weren’t for Giovanni Di Lorenzo’s late leveller that earned Napoli a point against Hellas Verona in midweek.
Cristian Chivu’s Inter have won their last five games and with 40 goals scored, they’ve outgunned everyone else in the division by some margin this season. Lautaro Martínez has put away exactly one quarter of those and he currently leads the race to be named the Capocannoniere, the ‘head gunner’ as it’s known in Italy.
The third round of the FA Cup, the world’s oldest national cup competition, takes place this weekend. This is, of course, the round at which the sides from England’s top two divisions enter the chat. And that’s why we’ve chosen to highlight it in this week’s newsletter.
Among the various ties that pit non-league and lower league minnows against the big boys, there is the usual smattering of all-Premier League ties. One of them - Manchester United’s clash with Brighton - will be notable for the presence of Darren Fletcher in the home dugout. After United’s disappointing draw at Burnley in midweek, this will be Fletcher’s second and last game in temporary interim charge of the club he played for with distinction, ahead of what is expected to be the announcement of a slightly longer term interim managerial appointment at some point next week.
Elsewhere, despite the history of the FA Cup now spanning 155 years, there are still new stories being written. For instance, sixth-tier Weston-Super-Mare are competing in the third round for the very first time. The Somerset side have already won five ties to reach this point, including a qualifier that required a replay, and a period of extra time in another round. An away trip to League Two Grimsby Town isn’t perhaps the dream glamour tie they were hoping for, but it does offers up an opportunity to progress even further.
PSG vs. Paris FC
When you wait 25 years for the first all-Parisian top flight derby, another one comes along the very next weekend! This time, the next door neighbours that we discussed in last week’s edition of The Assist, meet in the Coupe De France Round of 32, a competition that PSG have won a record 16 times since 1982.
PSG beat Paris in Ligue 1 last Sunday thanks to a second half strike from Ousmane Dembélé and Luis Enrique’s side have since travelled all the way to Kuwait and back. There, they required a penalty shootout to beat Marseille and lift the Trophée des Champions, the French Super Cup, for the 12th time in the last 13 years.
Marseille, their vanquished rivals, return to face a potential banana skin of their own in the Coupe De France early next week. Roberto De Zerbi must take his team to Bayeux, home of the tapestry, and the last side from France’s semi-professional regional leagues left in the competition.
Founded shortly after NASA sent the first Telstar communication satellites in to orbit in the early 1960s, a Dutch football team was inspired to take on the Telstar name. And now, Sportclub Telstar are enjoying/enduring their first top flight season since the 1977/78 campaign.
Sat just outside the relegation zone at the halfway point of the season, they are due to take on Amsterdam giants Ajax this weekend. Now managed by the aptly-named Fred Grim, Ajax are struggling to keep pace with their main Eredivisie rivals at the top of the table. PSV currently lead the way with Feyenoord sat 11 points behind them in second. Ajax are third, a whopping 16 points down on the side from Eindhoven.
The Africa Cup of Nations has provided few shocks so far, but as a result of that, we have been left with four heavyweight contests as we reach the quarterfinal stage.
All six top-seeded nations from Pot 1 of the draw process are through, as are the two highest ranked sides from Pot 2, and the action kicks off with Mali against Senegal later today. Mali have gotten this far despite not winning any of their four matches in normal time (they beat Tunisia via a shootout) while Senegal have averaged 2.5 goals per game, and have looked like strong contenders to go all the way.
That is followed by hosts Morocco taking on Cameroon, a team who have belied expectations following the administrative crisis that saw two warring head coaches submit two different squads to CAF in the build up to the tournament.
For a full preview of all four games, hit the link below.
The 19-year-old French forward has landed in the Premier League and banged in seven goals in under 600 minutes of football for a team who have only won once since October. Junior Kroupi has been a sensation. We published this profile just ahead of the Spurs game on Wednesday night.
Faced with a hostile home crowd who see him as a traitor for leaving the club that developed him to join cross-city rivals Barcelona, Joan García put in the kind of goalkeeping display that firmly places him in to the conversation on World Class net minders.
While a lot of attention has been on the goings on at Celtic in recent weeks, Danny Röhl has been quietly rescuing Rangers’ season on the other side of Glasgow. The German coach came in to a club in crisis but his pragmatic management style produces results, and all of a sudden, Rangers are back in the title race.
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Friday: The FA Cup action starts early with tonight’s headline fixture featuring Championship high-fliers Wrexham against Nottingham Forest, of the Premier League. Top level football returns to Germany as the Bundesliga restarts following it’s Winterpause. Second placed Borussia Dortmund go to Eintracht Frankfurt in the opening game.
Saturday: The second set of quarterfinals takes place at the AFCON as free-scoring Nigeria face Algeria and Egypt take on the Ivory Coast. There’s an all-Premier League clash in the FA Cup as the under pressure Thomas Frank leads Spurs against Aston Villa, and other standout ties see Manchester City host third tier Exeter City, and Chelsea cross London for a meeting with Championship side Charlton Athletic. With the big three away for the Supercopa, third placed Villarreal can make up some ground in LaLiga when they face Alavés.
Sunday: Arsenal can take a break from the pressure of the Premier League title race as they travel to Portsmouth in the FA Cup. Bayern will be looking to pick up where they left off in the Bundesliga by continuing their unbeaten league run against Wolfsburg. And in Serie A, while their Scudetto rivals face off late in the day, Milan face relegation threatened Fiorentina in a lunchtime kick off.