EUROPE'S BEST: LAST WEEKENDS STAND OUT STARS

Featured Image Credit: New Straits Times

Ligue 1: Karl Toko-Ekambi - Olympique Lyonnais

Toko-Ekambi scored his second league brace on the trot at the weekend as Lyon cruised to a 4-1 victory over Monaco.

The Cameroonian forward made two deft finishes after scoring twice last week against Strasbourg. He also won the penalty put away by Aouar to help take Lyon to 4-0 up before half-time.

Toko-Ekambi made his loan from Villarreal permanent in the summer and has begun to prove his worth over the past couple of weeks, after an unproductive start to the season. 

Special mention: Neymar - PSG

After a disappointing loss to Manchester United in the Champions League, Neymar bounced back against Dijon, setting up two goals, which could have easily been more.

Bundesliga: Robert Lewandowski - Bayern Munich

Week-in, week-out, Robert Lewandowski proves he is the best player in the Bundesliga and the best striker in the world right now. The only competition for him begins with H and ends with ‘arry Kane’, but even the most devoted Spurs fan would surely eventually concede to the unstoppable Polish goalscoring machine.

Every week he is in contention for the Bundesliga award, and this week he gets it with a perfect hattrick (left foot, right foot and header) against Eintracht Frankfurt. He made it look so simple as he tucked away all three goals in just under an hour. 

He came off soon after the third, and Bayern eased away to a 5-0 win, but if he had stayed on, he could have easily netted all 5.

Serie A: Gaetano Castrovilli - Fiorentina

The name Castrovilli might have passed by a casual Serie A follower until now, but it won’t for much longer, as the 23-year-old Italian midfielder is making a name for himself in the purple colours of Fiorentina.

He scored two and assisted one in a 3-2 win over Udinese on Sunday, which saw Fiorentina edge into the top half of the table on goal difference. 

Last season was Castrovilli’s first in Serie A and showed flashes of his potential, but this year he looks set to step things up a gear in the No. 10 shirt in Florence.

Special mention: Andrea Belotti - Torino

Torino earnt their first point of the 20/21 season against high-flying Sassulo, with a goal and assist from star man Belotti.

La Liga: Sergio Ramos - Real Madrid

The El Clasico still remains one of the biggest league games in world football, and this time it ended 3-1 in favour of Real Madrid, helped in no small part by their captain.

Ramos put in a serious shift at the Camp Nou, earning and scoring a penalty, and almost grabbing a second. If scored, that goal would have been his 100th goal in a Madrid shirt, an outstanding achievement for a defender. 

As usual, he was also a huge presence when they were on the back foot, demonstrated by a superb last-minute tackle to stop a surging Leo Messi on a counter-attack. 

He may be 34, but when Ramos is in form, he is still a titan for Los Blancos.