England: The Premier League title race is effectively down to two clubs after Liverpool dropped more points away to West Ham United while Arsenal and Manchester City powered on. Arsenal raced into a 3-0 half-time lead in the north London derby, but Spurs came back to put pressure on the league leaders. They hung on to win 3-2. Manchester City won 2-0 at Nottingham Forest with Erling Haaland coming on to score the clinching goal late on. Liverpool, in the early Saturday game, were held 2-2 at West Ham.
Northern Ireland: Larne are champions for the second successive season, the first provincial club in Northern Ireland to win back-to-back championships since Portadown in 1991. Tiernan Lynch’s side secured the title with a 5-0 win against Coleraine.
Portugal: Porto and Sporting drew 2-2 to leave the Lisbon side top of the table by five points with three games to go. Porto went into a 2-0 lead with goals from Evanilson and Pepê Aquino but Sporting demonstrated their resilience with two goals in two minutes from € 100 million-rated Viktor Gyökeres. Sporting’s comeback was marred by the sending off of Marcus Edwards in the 90th minute. Whatever happens in the coming weeks, Sporting look certain to lose their coach, Ruben Amorim as as well as a couple of their talented young players. Reports suggest Amorim has been in talks with West Ham and he was linked earlier with Liverpool. Meanwhile, Benfica also staged a comeback to beat Sporting Braga 3-1 with two goals coming from Marcos Leandro.
Spain: A much-changed Real Madrid side beat Real Sociedad to strengthen their position at the top of the table. The winning goal came from 19 year-old Arda Guler, who is known as the “Turkish Messi”. Real need fout points from five games to secure the title. Barcelona, the reigning champions, came back to beat Valencia 4-2 with Robert Lewandowski netting a second half hat-trick. Valencia, who led 2-1, had goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili sent off in first-half added time. Atlético Madrid beat Athletic Bilbao 3-1 but the game was held up at one stage because of racist abuse aimed at Bilbao’s Nico Williams.
Germany: Champions Bayer Leverkusen maintained their unbeaten record when they came back from 2-0 down against Stuttgart to earn a 2-2 draw at the BayArena. They scored the equaliser in the sixth minute of added time through Robert Andrich. Over in Munich, Harry Kane scored two more goals to achieve a personal best of 42 in all competitions as Bayern beat Frankfurt 2-1. The promotion battle in 2.Bundesliga is warming up, with cult club St. Pauli top on 63 points and Holstein Kiel on 61. The Hamburg side jumped back to first place after a 1-0 win against Hansa Rostock while Kiel were losing 3-1 at home to Kaiserslautern.
GAME OF THE PEOPLE 