Liverpool drop first points at home
Norwich first team to get relegated
Norwich finally succumbed to relegation, a fate its own manager and many others expected at the start of the English Premier League.
Fewer, though, would have predicted Liverpool losing its perfect home record against Burnley.
With two weeks remaining in the longest ever English season, issues at both ends of the standings are close to being finalized.
Certainly, the relegation picture looked a lot clearer on Saturday, with Norwich guaranteed to return to the second-tier Championship after one season after losing to West Ham 4-0 at home.
“From the first day after promotion, our chances to survive were perhaps 5%,” Norwich manager Daniel Farke said, “so in 19 out of 20 cases you will go down.”
That win for West Ham — achieved thanks to four goals by makeshift striker Michail Antonio — and Watford’s come-from-behind 2-1 victory over Newcastle pushed those two victorious teams six points clear of the relegation zone with three games left.
Bournemouth and Aston Villa, the teams in 18th and 19th place respectively, will need three wins from their remaining four matches to survive. A tough ask, considering neither has won since the resumption of the Premier League last month.
At the other end of the table, Liverpool has just records to chase after clinching a first league title in 30 years, and one of them fell by the wayside on Saturday.
The Reds will not become the first team in the Premier League era (since 1992) to win all of its home games in a single campaign, after drawing with Burnley 1-1. They won their previous 17 games at Anfield, and had just Chelsea left to play there.
Given Chelsea lost at Sheffield United 3-0 on Saturday in a surprisingly oneside match, Liverpool likely wouldn’t have been too perturbed.
The heavy defeat meant third-placed Chelsea could get overtaken by both Leicester and Manchester United in the coming days in the race for Champions League qualification.
Fifth place will still secure a place in next season’s Champions League if second-placed Manchester City fails in its bid to get a two-year European ban overturned in the courts. City will discover the result of its appeal on Monday.
City won at Brighton 5-0 in the late game, with Raheem Sterling scoring a hat trick.
Players wore black armbands as games started with a minute’s silence in a tribute to England’s 1966 World Cup winner, Jack Charlton, who died on Friday aged 85.
Serie A
The little squad from Bergamo can play with the big boys.
If anyone still doubted Atalanta’s credentials in Serie A or the Champions League, a 2-2 draw at eighttime defending Italian champion Juventus on Saturday showed just how competitive “the Dea” can be.
Juventus needed two penalties from Cristiano Ronaldo — including a 90th-minute equalizer — to prevent Atalanta from winning its 12th straight match in all competitions.
“We faced the team that has the best form in Europe right now,” Juventus coach Maurizio Sarri said. “Playing against Atalanta is an enormous problem right now -- not just for us but for everyone.”
Duván Zapata gave Atalanta an early lead before Ronaldo equalized for the first time after the break. Then second-half substitute Ruslan Malinovskyi scored 10 minutes from time to set up a late assault from Juventus.
“We wanted to see where we were at, because we’re going to be facing teams like this in the Champions League,” Atalanta coach Gian Piero Gasperini said. “We were able to do everything we intended to do.”
Still, Juventus stretched its lead over second-placed Lazio to eight points. Although with six rounds remaining, third-placed Atalanta -- which is one point further back -- might be the Bianconeri’s biggest challenger.
Motivated to play for Bergamo,
which has had more than 6,000 deaths from the coronavirus, Atalanta is shaping up as a dangerous opponent for Paris SaintGermain in the Champions League quarterfinals.
The highest-scoring team in Italy threatened from the start and Zapata completed a give-and-go with Alejandro “Papu” Gómez before firing in a low shot for his 15th goal of the season.
A handball from Marten de Roon led to Ronaldo’s first penalty, then Atalanta had more chances before Malinovskyi drilled in a powerful shot from the edge of the area after being set up by fellow substitute Luis Muriel.
Muriel, however, was whistled for a handball to set up Ronaldo’s second penalty and, just like the first one, the five-time Ballon
d’Or winner converted his spot kick into the left corner of the net.
With 28 goals in 28 games, Ronaldo moved within one score of Lazio’s Ciro Immobile atop the league scoring chart.
“We knew that if we didn’t move the ball quickly, with one or two touches, we would struggle against Atalanta,” Juventus defender Leonardo Bonucci said. “They were so fired up and we struggled at the start, but kept our heads and waited for the right chance.”
Neither handball appeared intentional.
“The interpretation of the rule is not the same here as elsewhere. Other countries don’t give penalties like that,” Gasperini said. “But these are the rules here, so fine.”