Barcelona’s defeat at the hands of Athletico Bilbao last night means that there are now only seven teams still undefeated in Europe’s top division leagues. There were nine teams undefeated on Friday night, but Porto fell short as well on Saturday night, surrendering their status against Academica. The undefeated teams now stand with Steaua Bucharest, PSG, Sparta Prague, Roma, Olympiakos, Bayern Munich and Celtic. How many teams can keep this going?
Roma enjoyed the best start by any team in the world to their domestic campaign. They went on a 10 game winning streak, conceding just one goal in all. In their 11th game, they looked to be continuing this incredible run, 1-0 up away to Torino. But in the 63rd minute, Torino scored, and held out for a 1-1 draw, the first team to take points from Roma. Since this game, Roma have been a shadow of the team they were to start with, having drawn the next three games that followed. Roma are still unbeaten, but it now looks like a matter of time before they fall, and that almost came in yesterdays draw with Atalanta, as they scored in the last minute to make it 1-1. Torino’s goal looks to have had a huge impact on the player’s confidence at Roma.
Bayern Munich are probably one of two teams named above who are almost expected to go unbeaten. Bayern had a slow start to the season, as Pep Guardiola took charge, and it’s only now that they are starting to look like the team they were last season. Dortmund themselves have been in poor form recently, and are the only team that you could say are capable of beating Bayern, but now Bayern have opened up a 7 point gap over Dortmund. Bayern have played 14, won 12 and drawn 2, but now they are looking unstoppable. They are on course to win the treble this year still, and they won the treble last year. To do a double treble including retaining the Champions League trophy is near impossible to do (to clarify that point, the Champions League trophy is included in the treble). For Bayern though, the impossible is possible.
While Bayern are probably one of the two teams expected to go unbeaten, the other team is arguably PSG. Out of the 14 games played so far, they’ve won 10 of them, drawing the other 4. One of these draws was against Monaco, like Dortmund with Bayern, Monaco are probably the only team capable of beating PSG. It is hard to imagine any side French league will beat PSG anytime soon; they are now starting to beat teams by 3 or 4 goals.
Olympiakos are probably the team out of the 7 mentioned that are doing the best at this point form wise. Of the 13 games played so far, they have won 12 of them and drew just 1, 37 points from a possible 39 and in doing so they have scored 41 goals and conceded only 4. At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of a team who could stop them, although the Greek league has teams such as Panathiniakos and PAOK, who could cause an upset on their day. Olympiakos are currently 9 points clear, and look to have the league wrapped up already.
Czech team Sparta Prague have played the most games out of all mentioned, 16 all in, winning 13 of them and drawing 3. So in terms of going unbeaten the most, Sparta Prague are on top. This run looks under threat recently however, with Sparta finding themselves going goals down and having to overturn the result. Their ability to do this though could well define how far they go unbeaten. There are a few teams in the Gambrinus Liga who could beat Sparta, those teams being Plzen, Dukla Praha, Liberec and Teplice. Steaua Bucharest are the Romanian team still to taste defeat, having gone 13 games so far unbeaten, winning 9 of them and drawing 4. Although they are undefeated, they still find themselves in 2nd place in the league, one of two sides undefeated not top, the other being Roma.
Bucharest are probably the team which can be most expected to be beaten at some point, as they have rode their luck somewhat. Teams such as Astra Giurgiu, Petrolul, CFR Cluj and Dinamo Bucharest are more than capable of diminishing Steaua’s unbeaten status.
Lastly, Celtic, who have also been a team riding their luck this season in terms of remaining unbeaten. After 13 games, Celtic have won 10 and drew 3, and like Olympiakos, Celtic look to have won their league already. However Celtic like to do things the hard way, and a couple of last minute goals from Celtic (notably that against Dundee United), have kept this record in tact. In terms of competition and teams capable of beating Celtic, on paper, nobody is capable of stopping Celtic. That’s not to say they won’t be beaten though.