Bundesliga powerplay takes Germany top of 2014/15 UEFA rankings
Cologne - With all six of the Bundesliga's European representatives picking up wins on the same matchday for the first time in the UEFA Champions League era in midweek, the is once again the talk of the continent.
Goals, goals...
Between them, Champions League quartet FC Bayern München, FC Schalke 04, Borussia Dortmund and Bayer 04 Leverkusen and UEFA Europa League pair VfL Wolfsburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach weighed in with no less than 26 goals on Matchday 3 in a string of intoxicating performances that have helped move Germany top of this season's UEFA coefficient rankings.
Kicking the action off in high style on Tuesday evening, Bayern were already five up when the referee blew for half time at AS Roma's notoriously intimidating Stadio Olimpico. The Italian hosts did manage to pull one pack - the first of just six goals conceded by the Bundesliga's European sextet this past week - only for two late efforts at the other end to rubber-stamp arguably the most one-sided away display in the competition's history.
Not to be outdone by a Bayern side that has played a part in three of the last five Champions League finals, Roberto Di Matteo's Schalke hit back from a goal down to record a stirring 4-3 win over 2013/14 Primeira Liga runners-up Sporting Clube de Portugal that self-same night. Dortmund and Leverkusen got in on the act a day later with 4-0 and 2-0 wins over Galatasaray AS and FC Zenit respectively, but the entertainment didn't stop there.
… and more goals
Wolfsburg, for one, took their steadily improving domestic form onto the European stage, recording their first Europa League win of the campaign away to FK Krasnodar. The Wolves arrived on the banks of the Kuban River having never won in Russia - an awkward venue for even the most seasoned of competitors - but showed guts, heart and a touch of class en route to an eventual 4-2 success.
Rounding out another week to savour for German football, Gladbach also enjoyed their maiden European victory of the season at home to Cypriot side and potential banana skin opponents Apollon Limassol FC. Netting five goals without reply was more than the Foals deserved at the Borussia-Park as Lucien Favre's men stretched their unbeaten run to 14 matches in all competitions ahead of Sunday's top-of-the-table showdown with Bundesliga pacesetters Bayern.
Europe's top dog in 2014/15
On the subject of rankings, the aforementioned wave of success has once again seen the home of the recently crowned FIFA World Cup champions further reduce the gap atop UEFA's five-year coefficient standings. Spain still lead the way on 86,427, with England on 72,962 in second, but it's Germany - third since 2010/11 - who are out in front in 2014/15 with more points on the board than any other member association (6,857; 70,415 overall).
In layman's terms, that means Germany's peerless top flight will continue to be well represented in Europe for years to come, thanks in no small part to a clean sweep of continental victories not seen since the Bundesliga's class of 1989 (Bayern, SV Werder Bremen, 1. FC Köln, VfB Stuttgart, Hamburger SV and Dortmund). Spain et al. have been warned.
Christopher Mayer-Lodge
