Arsenal ousts Spurs; Reports of anti-Semitism mar League Cup match

It's been a bizarre few days in European soccer. Robert Lewandowski scored five goals in nine minutes for Bayern Munich on Tuesday. Barcelona lost its first league game in seven months to little Celta de Vigo on Wednesday, by no less than 4-1. And Mathieu Flamini, who scored just once in all of last season, bagged a brace for Arsenal against archrivals Tottenham Hotspur later on Wednesday.

Let's talk about that last thing, the third and final installment in this uncanny mid-week trilogy of strange occurrences.

Flamini, in case you're unfamiliar with him, which would be totally understandable, is a backup holding midfielder who had yet to make an appearance for the Gunners this season. He's the bruiser sort. A player who prides himself on covering ground, breaking up attacks and bailing out the defenders he's charged with shielding. A scorer of goals, however, he is not.

In 12 years of senior professional soccer, Flamini failed to score a goal in three different seasons. There were four years in which he got a goal just once. In two campaigns he managed to score twice.

On Wednesday, he equaled or bested his total goal tally for nine of his previous seasons by scoring both of the goals in Arsenal's 2-1 win over Spurs.

It may have only been the inconsequential League Cup, and merely the third round of it at that, but it was still a North London Derby. And the intensity was still there, even if it took some time for both teams to find their rhythm. After all, Arsenal had made 11 lineup changes from the weekend and Tottenham made eight.

Arsenal's rarely seen Costa Rican Joel Campbell threatened first, but he sent his difficult diving header high and wide. But before the half hour, Flamini, playing his first League Cup game in nine years, struck home the rebound from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's low and hard shot, which goalkeeper Michel Vorm could only just parry.

The teams exchanged chances, with Harry Kane, last season's English breakout player, still failing to find the net for a first time this year. He dragged a shot just wide in injury time of the first half and early in the second was disallowed a goal for having strayed offside.

Arsenal was on the back foot then, and the Spurs finally equalized in the 56th minute when Nacer Chadli's low cross was poked past David Ospina and redirected into his own goal by Calum Chambers. Shortly thereafter, Kane's scissor kick was saved off the line by Kieran Gibbs.

And then re-emerged that man Mathieu Flamini. In the 78th minute, with the Spurs still threatening, he run onto the end of a failed clearance and lashed a jumping volley from outside the box past Vorm to swing the momentum back to the Gunners and ultimately win the game.

And so Arsenal ended a two-game swoon which had included a 2-1 loss at Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League and an even more painful and controversial nine-man, 2-0 loss to Chelsea in the Premier League. Spurs, meanwhile, saw a three-game winning streak and six-match undefeated run come to an end.

But that wasn't where the story ended. Before the first whistle there had been reports of anti-Semitism.

Arsenal fans reportedly marked Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism, by chanting about Auschwitz on their way into the stadium – the Spurs' fan base has traditionally included a lot of Jews.

And after the final whistle, that ugliness reportedly continued.

Images also emerged of Arsenal fans vandalizing the Spurs' White Hart Lane stadium.

Arsenal may have knocked Spurs out of the League Cup, but there may yet be more repercussions to this game.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.