Now that league play for some of the top footballing (er, “soccer-ing”?) nations in the world has gone into full effect, we will be compiling a simple recap for what we’d like to call “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly & The Goal.” We’ll be focusing on the “Big 4” leagues of world soccer (England’s BPL, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Calcio and the German Bundesliga) and a “rest of world”  (mostly sticking to France’s Ligue 1, MLS, Liga MX, Scottish Premier League and Brazil and Argentina’s leagues, among others).

Check below for this week’s edition of The Good, The Bad, The Ugly & The Goal.

The Good

BPL: Swansea City- Who would have guessed that the Welsh squad would be the most effective side of the BPL at any point of this season? Well, they are and with quite a bit of flair to go along with that. Two (2) games, two (2) wins, 8 goals in favor, 0 against. There’s no denying that seeing the Swans perform this well is a true pleasure.

La Liga: Barcelona- The winningest team of the last few years isn’t showing signs of missing former boss Pep Guardiola and have transitioned (literally) perfectly to being guided their the former’s right-hand man, Tito Vilanova. Two (2) straight wins with seven (7) goals in favor and just two (2) goals against is a great start for the Catalonians as they lead La Liga.

Serie A: Internazionale & Napoli- The Milanistas and Maradona’s former love had the best possible starts to their season with dominating 3-0 wins against Pescara and Palermo respectively. Napoli may have lost wonder striker Ezequiel Lavezzi but they’re showing no signs of missing him, while Inter built upon their strong play last season to continue being a force to be reckoned with in Serie A.

Bundesliga: Fortuna Düsseldorf- The newly-promoted side won its first game in the top level of the Bundesliga. Hopefully they can build upon this strong start to find their way clear of the relegation zone.

Rest Of World: Marseille- This French side has continued its perfect run in Ligue 1 with three (3) wins in three (3) games, along with four (4) goals in favor and zero (0) goals against.

The Bad

BPL: Aston Villa- The Villains are having a bad season so far, with one (1) goal in two (2) matches (a scorcher from Al Ahmadi) and four (4) goals against plus Clark seeing red in this last match against Everton. The squad looks like a promising one, but if they wish to turn things around, Paul Lambert will need to figure out a way to bring out the best of his men ASAP before to get into a slump that they can’t come back from.

La Liga: Osasuna- Have shown very little so far. Four (4) goals against and just one (1) in favor has given them zero (0) points so far and they sit at the bottom of La Liga. They showed signs of courage as they took an early lead against the mighty Barcelona, but a lack of concentration in the Blaugrana’s comeback shows that this side will need a better attitude for their game in order to hold on to leads.

Serie A: Palermo- The guys with the pink kit may be doomed to relegation already, even with the season being simply one match in. They lost 3-0 and they played terribly; who knows if they can do better than the 17th position they reached last season.

Bundesliga: 

Rest Of World:

The Ugly

BPL: Wayne Rooney’s injury- The man had sat out the first 68 minutes of the match only to suffer a terrible injury that may sideline him for 2 months. Perhaps signing someone as huge as RVP will be what saves Man United from feeling the effects of this loss.

La Liga: Real Madrid’s dismal start- After having a magnificent pre-season, Mourinho’s men have gained just one (1) point in the first two (2) games of La Liga and they lost the first Superclásico match of the season already. Los Merengues will need to turn things around fast if they don’t want to be left too far behind in the race for the league title.

Serie A: Atalanta & Siena- These two have started the season with negative three (3) and negative five (5) points respectively because they were involved in another one of Serie A’s match-fixing scandals. There’s nothing nice about that.

Bundesliga: SpVgg Greuther Fürth- Last place in the Bundesliga plus a loss in the League Cup. Add five (5) goals against and none in favor, and you’ve got yourself a perfectly bad run.

Rest Of World: PSG- Millions of dollars? Check. World class players? Check. Success? Not so check. The Parisians made quite the splash during the silly season by bringing in players like Ezequiel Lavezzi, Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. But in soccer, it has less to do with individual talent, and more to do with synergy. Three (3) ties in three (3) games is not how the world expected things to turn out for PSG and the boat-load of talent will need to prove their worth sooner than later.

The Goal

Big 4: It had to be a tie between RVP’s first goal with his new team at in their home opener at the “Theatre Of Dreams” and Osvaldo’s spectacular bicycle kick.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOfMsqNLf2Y]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsrtBsFtHd8]

Rest Of World: Cristian Pellerano (Xolos; Liga MX) Without a doubt, this long shot was a true scorcher of a goal.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x10Nyu2ad-o]