Barcelona will have their chance to approach LaLiga leaders Real Madrid who will be playing in Japan by beating their city rivals Espanyol.While Real Madrid will be busy playing at the Club World Cup, Barcelona have nice opportunity to put some pressure on them by reducing the gap between themselves and the leader – however, the task will be anything but easy, as Espanyol are in a very good form this season and are playing incredibly well under Quique Flores. History will be on Barcelona’s side At Camp Nou as Barcelona have won 75 times out of 99 encounters between both side.

Reeling contenders Atletico Madrid  will look to snap a two-game winless slide as they clash with middling squad UD Las Palmas. Domestically, the last six weeks have been one of the most challenging periods of Diego Simeone's tenure as manager of Atletico Madrid and this has coupled with the fact that star forward Antoine Griezmann has not scored for eight league games. Saturday sees them clash with the side from the Gran Canaria, a team who themselves have suffered a dip in form after a bright start. Jorge Sampaoli’s first few months at the helm of Sevilla have clearly gone to plan as his side are enjoying a free-flowing attacking style football that has really lit up La Liga. They face Malaga who find themselves in mid table.

Bottom placed  SV Darmstadt will try to snap a five-game losing streak as they host defending champions and current league leaders FC Bayern Munich. The Bavarians reclaimed league leadership after the team crushed lowly club Wolfsburg, 5-0, at the Allianz Arena last Saturday to extend their winning streak to three games.

Make no mistake: this is the biggest game of the weekend in Europe and it involves the team from the capital club Roma and Turin based Juventus. It is Serie A’s best defence against Serie A’s best attack. It promises to be fascinating. Naturally, a lot of the attention on Saturday will fall on Miralem Pjanic, who left Roma for Juventus this season. Juventus remain the benchmark at practically every level, but Roma are increasingly well-coached and well-run.

Saturday's game should be a fantastic advert for Serie A.

Listen to the Audio wrap by Kweku Arhin