The 21-year-old has appeared disengaged and immature at Barça – but he has a habit of scoring when it mattersBy night, he plays video games and eats junk food; by day, he rides to the rescue, saving the same men who have been trying to save him from himself.Ousmane Dembélé’s national team manager says arriving late is “a little habit of his”, and it’s one that the manager of his club is trying to get him out of, his teammates too, but on Saturday he arrived just in time. Related: Ousmane Dembélé’s last-gasp goal saves draw for Barcelona at Atlético Madrid | GOAL! | ICE COLD OUSMANE DEMBELE ️The winger brings the Barcelona level against Atletico Madrid, 1-1! pic.twitter.com/bNXuwPOlEx| GOAL!...
Barcelona finally shrugged off the ghost of Butarque but Atlético and Real had their own battles as La Liga’s threads all came together in Madrid“The Ghost of Butarque: that’s a good name for a novel,” Ernesto Valverde said. It was coming up to midnight three days after Halloween and, Barcelona’s manager admitted, “everywhere we turned the Ghost of Butarque appeared.” His team were back in Madrid for the first time since September, the final leg of a Grand Day Out in the capital – Leganés v Atlético at 1pm, Real Madrid v Valladolid at 4.15pm, Rayo v Barcelona at 8.45pm – and it was happening again: the same feelings, the same fears. Back then, Barcelona lost at bottom-placed Leganés, their...
Just seven weeks in, no one is winless in Spain and no one is unbeaten either. Is this season competitive rather than cheap?On Saturday afternoon, leaders Barcelona only managed a 1-1 home draw against 15th-placed Athletic Club Bilbao; without a win in three, they dropped their seventh point in six days. On Saturday night, Real Madrid failed to score for the second game running, drawing 0-0 with Atlético Madrid; they’ve won just one in four now, while their city rivals left the Bernabéu unbeaten for a sixth successive season but have only won three from seven. And in between those matches, Sevilla beat Eibar, taking them third and on to 17 goals in 10 days, including three against Madrid. Before...
This time it really was the end for The Kid, taking his final bow with Atlético on an emotional evening at the WandaDefeat hit hard and so did the coach, apportioning blame and pointing the finger; they had let everyone down, he said. It was 2001, Spain had been knocked out of the U17 World Cup, and during the flight home Fernando Torres and Andrés Iniesta, close friends since they had met at 14, decided to put their feelings into words. As they sat on the plane, they wrote a letter outlining everything that had gone wrong. They never posted it but the writing helped and when they touched down back at Barajas airport they swapped shirts, dedicating them to...
Atlético Madrid were on the ropes but there was no knockout blow at the EmiratesIt is a lovely thought, Arsène Wenger burnishing his legacy by collecting the first European trophy of his career in Lyon next month, and for a while Arsenal’s manager could dream about that perfect send-off. Atlético Madrid were on the ropes, Diego Simeone was growling in the stands and for once it seemed that Wenger was not going to regret talking about a team with the potential to win the Europa League before this match.Yet the awkward truth for Arsenal’s eternal optimist is that the best teams show no mercy when the odds are stacked so heavily in their favour. This was an occasion that ought...