With club football taking a break this weekend, all eyes have turned to the international stage as Europe’s top players aim to drive their countries through the next round of World Cup qualifiers. Hopeful nations clashed across the continent giving some of the biggest names in Europe a chance to impress on the grand stage.
With so may top players in action over the weekend, we’ve picked out five of the best who impressed during this round of fixtures.
5 Antoine Griezmann – France
Griezmann was voted one of the stars of Euro 2016 after posting a number of impressive performances for hosts France this summer, as his side reached the final only to be beaten by Portugal.
Aiming to kick on from what will now be seen as a disappointing European Championship campaign, Les Bleus needed a good result in their second group game after a draw against Belarus in the opener last month, and a good result is what they got.
Beating Bulgaria 4-1 at the Stade De France. Golden boy Griezmann was in good form, and the Atletico Madrid forward scored one of his country’s goals, capitalising on an error from the Bulgarian defence.
Gifted the ball on the edge of the penalty box, Griezmann made no mistake in firing the ball low into the bottom corner.
4 Thomas Muller – Germany
The world champions will hope to make light work of their qualifying group as they look to defend their title in Russia in 2018. Joachim Low’s team also had a disappointing summer at the Euros, failing to get past the semi-final stage.
Thomas Muller, who had a quiet tournament in France, has sparked back into life for Germany. He scored a brace on Saturday night as the national side beat the Czech Republic 3-0.
It took the Bayern Munich man just 12 minutes to open the scoring after Mario Gotze sent the ball into Muller’s path for the striker to slide into the net.
He then rounded off a comfortable evening for the hosts by tapping in Jonas Hector’s cross from close range. The 2014 World Cup winners will be hoping to keep Muller in fine form. Germany now sits atop their qualifying group with two victories from two.
3 Eden Hazard – Belgium
Hazard has been in decent form for Chelsea so far this season and already has two Premier League goals under his belt. The Belgium captain impressed again on Friday night with a classy goal to put his country 2-0 up against Bosnia.
Dries Mertens split the weak defence to play in Hazard, who rounded his club teammate Asmir Begovic before rolling the ball into an empty net from a tight angle.
The captain offered his fellow countrymen a quality outlet throughout the night and was able to have a significant impact on the game from the left wing. The Red Devils now sit joint top of their qualifying group level on points with Greece.
2 Diego Costa – Spain
Costa has been on fire this season for Chelsea, scoring six goals from seven league games before the October international break. It was almost inevitable then that he would net again for Spain this weekend.
The only surprise is that it took Spain over 55 minutes to break the deadlock against Albania. Costa was the man to do so, capitalising on a terrible error from the Albanian goalkeeper that allowed the Spaniard to tap into an empty net after being set up by David Silva.
With Costa in this kind of goal-scoring form, Spain should have no trouble getting through their qualifying group which they are now leading with seven points from three games.
1 Cristiano Ronaldo – Portugal
Ronaldo marked his Portugal return in spectacular style on Friday night when he scored four goals in a 6-0 demolition of Andorra. It was his first international match since being injured in the Euro 2016 final, which his country won 1-0.
The Real Madrid man scored twice in the opening four minutes to put his side in cruise control. The captain rounded off his hat-trick two minutes after the half-time before adding a fourth midway into the second half.
Andorra clearly had no idea about how to deal with the European champions and had two players sent off in the space of 10 minutes for fouls on talisman Ronaldo. The forward took his international goals tally to 65 in 134 games. With only one victory in the qualifying round, Portugals now sit third behind Switzerland and the Faroe Islands.
