What to watch in international soccer this weekend

In the weekend’s top European soccer action, Napoli seeks to hold its lead in Italy, Barcelona – and Lionel Messi – seek to hold our interest in Spain while in Germany a tight pack seeks some breathing room beneath Bayern Munich’s shadow.

Serie A: Napoli, battling to end a 28-year title drought, has held the top spot in Italy’s top division after 22 of the Serie A’s 27 match days. But last week’s home loss to Roma cut that lead to one point over fast-charging Juventus. That leaves Napoli with no margin for error when it travels to Milan to play fifth-place Inter Milan on Sunday. (BeIN Sports, 12:45 p.m. PT). The teams fought to a scoreless draw in their first meeting in October. In addition to a matchup of two of the league’s top-five teams, Sunday’s game will also match two of the top scorers in Inter’s Mauro Icardi, who is second with 18 goals, one better than Napoli’s Dries Mertens.

La Liga: There’s little suspense surrounding unbeaten Barcelona’s visit to Malaga, where it will meet a 20-loss team bound for relegation (Saturday, BeIN Sports, 11:45 a.m. PT). But any game featuring Lionel Messi is worth watching. And speaking of Messi, his 24 goals is more than the 16 Malaga has scored as a team. Messi’s teammate Luis Suarez has also done better with 20 scores.

Bundesliga: Bayern Munich figures to clinch a sixth consecutive league title before the end of the month but a tight battle rages for the rest of the league’s European tournament spots with just two points separating the next four teams. Two of those teams – third-place Borussia Dortmund, with U.S. star Christian Pulisic, and fourth-place Eintracht Frankfurt meet Sunday with each hoping to move up with a win (FS2, UDN, 10 a.m. PT). Dortmund comes in riding a 10-game unbeaten streak dating to early December while visiting Eintracht has lost two of its last five, both on the road.

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