The Isco Renaissance

We may have only had two weeks of club action in March, but those two weeks were jam-packed. Let’s dive in.

The season’s first piece of major silverware was up for grabs in March and it was the boys in black and white that lifted it. Newcastle, inspired by local hero Dan Burn and cult hero Alexander Isak, beat Liverpool to lift the League Cup, ending a 70 year wait for a major trophy on Tyneside. For good measure, 33 year old Dan Burn rounded-out the month with an England call-up, earning his first cap.

Elsewhere in England, the top half of the Premier League table continues to be as lively and competitive as it’s been all season. Brighton, Newcastle, Fulham, Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Manchester City have all been trading points, leaving the top half perfectly poised with only 10 points separating Chelsea in 4th and Palace in 12th. Perhaps no two teams epitomise that competitiveness more so than Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth. Since Bournemouth’s 5-0 rout of Forest at the end of January, Bournemouth have been on a slide, losing 4 of their 6 league games, picking-up only 4 points from a possible 18. In contrast, Forest rebounded from that humiliation with a 7-0 demolition of Brighton, additional victories over Manchester City and Ipswich and a draw with Arsenal to solidify their spot in 3rd. Defeats to Fulham and Newcastle halted any real challenge for 2nd spot, but a 5-point buffer over Chelsea in 4th affords them a little bit of breathing room. Brighton are unbeaten since their 7-0 mauling at the hands of Forest, winning 6 and drawing 1.

Barcelona, still unbeaten in 2025, continue to romp through their busy schedule. Through their last 20 games they’ve racked-up 17 victories and only 3 draws. An obscene 11 of those 20 games (yes, 55%) saw Barcelona score 4 or more goals. One of those was a statement victory against title rivals Atlético Madrid at the Metropolitano, coming back from 2-0 down after 70 minutes to win 4-2 and reclaim top spot in La Liga. Barcelona have won their last 9 games in La Liga.

The only other La Liga team even remotely close to Barcelona’s form is Real Betis, who have strung together 6 straight league victories. Next up: Barcelona vs Real Betis at the Camp Nou. Betis have been climbing the table and are now challenging Villarreal for 5th. (More on the magic brewing at Betis in the feature below).

Over in Italy, lowly, 19th placed Venezia found some impressive defensive solidity from somewhere to have a major impact on the Serie A title race. Having kept just 2 clean sheets all season, Venezia held Lazio (3rd highest scorers in Serie A), Atalanta (2nd highest) and Napoli (6th highest) goalless in a run of 4 straight draws, taking vital points from teams at the top and doing just enough to keep their hopes of safety still flickering.

Napoli continue to stumble, having taken only 11 points from a possible 24 through their last 8 matches, yet somehow they remain just 3 points adrift of Inter at the top and 6 points clear of Atalanta. Atalanta had themselves in contention and looked the part as they put Juventus to the sword in a 4-0 rout at the Allianz Stadium, but back-to-back defeats to Inter and Fiorentina sees them now 9 points off top spot. Their focus is now on defending 3rd from the charging Bologna, who’ve won 5 straight to climb within 2 points of the faltering Atalanta.

Italy’s form team remains Roma. They emerged from their generous run of fixtures with 7 wins from 7, climbing up to 6th in the process, but now face a difficult run through the final 8 games. They do so without talisman Paulo Dybala, but with everything to play for. They could feasibly climb as high as 4th and drop as low as 9th.

In the Bundesliga, Bayern Munich sit 6 points clear at the top, but Harry Kane’s first ever trophy is still far from being a done deal. Besides their 5-0 aggregate smack-down of Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League, Bayern have looked alarmingly vulnerable in recent weeks. They have a difficult run of fixtures to finish the season and hungry defending champions on the chase. 

PSG are still cruising and although Liverpool snapped their 22-game unbeaten run in the first leg of the Champions League Round of 16, it wasn’t enough to stop PSG from progressing to a Quarter Final with Aston Villa. 

Ousmane Dembélé just keeps on scoring, but one man who’s hit a relative dry patch is Mohamed Salah. Through 390 minutes of club football in March he failed to register a goal from open play or an assist, scoring just 2 penalty goals. Whilst 2 goals from 4 games is far from a disaster, it’s a material slow-down from his marauding ways so far this season.

The green and white half of Sevilla is an exciting place to be right now. Real Betis are on the rise and forgotten man Isco is at the heart of it.

In 2022, after 9 seasons at Real Madrid, Isco’s career at the Bernabéu had fizzled out. He’d contributed only 5 goals and 4 assists through his final 3 seasons at the club, through 76 matches and over 3,000 minutes. He was deemed surplus to requirements and left the club at the end of his contract. Hoping to rekindle the Isco magic of old, Sevilla snapped him up on a two year contract, but he lasted just 4 months before his contract was terminated because he "did not meet the club's expectations". For the rest of the 2022-23 season the supremely talented Isco, at the age of just 30, was without a club.

But that’s not where the story ends. Cross-city rivals, Real Betis and former boss, Manuel Pellegrini, took a chance on the discarded Isco for the 2023-24 season and boy did it pay off. Through 36 appearances for Betis he contributed 9 goals and 7 assists and won the Man of the Match award in 19 of the 29 La Liga matches he played in. Possibly one of the craziest stats we’ve ever heard!

A broken leg at the end of the season left him sidelined for six months, so his 2024-25 season didn’t get started until December, but once he was back he was better than ever. Through just 20 games and half the total minutes of last season, he’s 1 goal contribution away from matching his 2023-24 tally, he’s one of only two players in La Liga averaging more than 6 shot-creating actions per 90 minutes and he’s 6th in La Liga for goal contributions per 90. In short, his stats this season are better than when he won 19 out of 29 MOTM awards.

And his performances have been winning points and earning wins for Betis. Since his return in early December, Betis have 13 victories, 4 draws and 5 defeats, which has helped them climb from 11th up to 6th in La Liga and progress through to the quarter finals of the Conference League.

But this isn’t just about Isco. January signing Antony has had a barn-storming impact too, contributing 4 goals and 4 assists through his first 11 games and they have goals elsewhere in the team too. Spurs outcast Giovani Lo Celso was hitting his stride in green and white earlier in the season before picking-up an injury and is now back to add to his 9 goal contributions for the season, whilst Cucho Hernández was also signed in January, hot off a productive season for Columbus Crew (29 G+A).

They’re building something special at Real Betis. Don’t be surprised to see them lifting the Conference League trophy in May and look out for what they can do next season.

March Goal Contributions Leaders

Georges Mikautadze tops the table in March, with 9 goal contributions for Lyon through their 6 matches. He added a further 5 goal contributions to that tally on international duty with Georgia during a 9-1 aggregate victory against Armenia in the Nations League. After a slightly slower start to life in Lyon than he might have liked, Georges Mikautadze is now cooking.

9 - Georges Mikautadze

8 - Isco, Bruno Fernandes,

7 - Harry Kane, Rayan Cherki

6 - Ousmane Dembélé, Alassane Pléa, Bradley Barcola

Beyond just being a beautiful illustration of the ranking mechanism in action, these awesome graphs over at soccerstats.com are highly useful for highlighting other patterns too.

Like the fact that Como, looking fairly safe for the moment in 13th in Serie A, have done things the hard way, failing to beat any of the bottom 4 teams so far this season, instead collecting points against theoretically ‘harder’ opposition. Or highlighting the serious struggles Borussia Dortmund and Auxerre have had away from home this season (11 and 9 points respectively) relative to their strong home performances (27 and 26 points each).

🐶Can any of the underdogs cause a shock?

It’s the business end of the season and we still have plenty of underdogs putting-up a fight. Biggest underdog of them all, fourth tier Cannes, have won their way through to the Semi Finals of the Coupe de France. Miraculously they avoided Ligue 1 teams all the way to the Semis, but now face Reims. In the other Semi Final, second tier Dunkerque vanquished three Ligue 1 teams for the right to play defending champions PSG.

In Germany, third tier Arminia Bielefeld have also had to overcome three top division teams in the DFB Pokal for a shot at the defending champions, Bayer Leverkusen.

At the European table, a Bodoe/Glimt victory in the Europa League over Lazio would be big as would wins for Legia Warszawa over Chelsea, Jagiellonia Bialystok over Real Betis or a win for NK Celje against Fiorentina.

Here’s hoping for upsets!

🏆Will May’s Clásico be the title-decider?

Barcelona are in sizzling form. Real Madrid aren’t quite, but they’re still picking-up wins. Their last 7 games across all competitions have been won or lost by a single goal margin, including 2 defeats, but they’re still well in the fight being only 3 points back. There are 5 league games until the 11th May Clásico and only 3 to play afterwards. Expecting fireworks.

🎨Can Venezia convert their newfound defensive solidity into victories and safety?

Clean sheets against Lazio, Atalanta and Napoli earned Venezia impressive draws, but they’re still 6 points adrift of safety with only 8 games left to play. Their next three games are against fellow cellar-dwellers Lecce (16th), Monza (20th) and Empoli (18th) so they have an huge opportunity to take strides towards safety. Can they continue keeping the goals out whilst scoring some of their own?