What to watch in international soccer this weekend
David hosts Goliath in an FA Cup match Friday and the rest of the weekend’s top soccer action in Europe features six German teams renewing their battle for Champions League invitations and Real Madrid trying to salvage its season in Spain.
FA Cup: The beauty of the FA Cup, the world’s oldest soccer competition, is that it allows the smallest clubs in England to take on the most successful clubs in the world. That will happen again Friday when Manchester United, the winningest club in Premier League history, travels to Somerset to meet tiny Yeovil Town, the 21st-place team in League Two, the lowest division of the English Football League (FS 1, 11:30 p.m. PST).
The fourth-round FA Cup game will be played at 5,200-seat Huish Park and could mark the Manchester United debut of Alexis Sanchez, who signed a record $46-million deal with the Red Devils after coming over from Arsenal this week. That’s roughly $1,000 for every man, woman and child in Yeovil.
Bundesliga: Bayern Munich’s 16-point advantage atop the Bundesliga is the largest in any of Europe’s five major leagues. And that could grow Saturday with a win over mid-table Hoffenheim (FS1, 6:15 a.m. PST).
But if there’s little doubt left in the race for the title, the battle for automatic Champions League berths, which go to the next three teams in the standings, is tight. Only one point separates second-place Bayer Leverkusen from seventh-place Eintracht Frankfurt. That makes Friday’s game between Frankfurt and fifth-place Borussia Monchengladbach (FS2, 11:15 a.m. PST) a crucial one for both clubs.
La Liga: Real Madrid’s pursuit of a second consecutive league title may not be finished, but the defending Spanish champion enters the weekend closer to 17th in the table than to first-place Barcelona. And that has already led to a lot of hand-wringing as No. 4 Madrid tries to figure out what’s wrong with star Cristiano Ronaldo (six goals, three assists). Finding a solution in time for Saturday’s game against No. 3 Valencia (BeIN Sports, 7 a.m.) could help ease that anxiety.
