From Juventus and Spurs’ intriguing battle to Chelsea’s forbidding meeting with Barcelona and a likely stroll for Bayern, we look over all eight last-16 matchupsTuesday, St Jakob-Park and Wednesday 7 March, Etihad Related: New era edges closer as Tottenham seek to draw a line under austerity years | David Hytner Related: Antonio Conte will not resign as pressure builds on Chelsea manager Continue reading...
After a tense buildup to the Catalan derby, Espanyol came close to repeating their Copa del Rey heroics until a late interventionThey were seven minutes away when Gerard Piqué appeared before them, a finger on his lips in the rain. “It was symbolic,” he said, and he made sure of that. Espanyol, the only team to have beaten Barcelona in almost six months, were leading again. For the second time in 18 days Barcelona had taken the short bus ride to the RCDE Stadium and, for the second time in 18 days, they were losing 1-0. After Barcelona’s defeat to Espanyol in the Copa del Rey, Gerard Moreno’s header left them on the verge of a league loss after 21...
Zinedine Zidane’s side have dropped more points than in the whole of last season and are 19 points behind Barcelona after Villarreal won at the Bernabéu – at their 19th attemptSergio Busquets probably felt like hiding behind his hands. “The ghosts appeared,” he said. It was a cold, dark night and everywhere he looked they were there. If he looked left, especially. Blue and white figures flew past. Over the other side, on the touchline, Ernesto Valverde pulled his jacket up tight and peered through the pouring rain. “You must have thought: ‘again’,” he was asked afterwards, when it was finally over – the match, the curse, probably the title, too. “Exactly,” he said. Everyone did. The day before, Barcelona’s...
Anfield feels it has lost its key man but statistics do not back that up and suggest that, while Barcelona have signed a fine player, Jürgen Klopp has alternativesNo sooner had Philippe Coutinho’s frenetic scribble sealed a £142m transfer to Barcelona than he was forced to hurdle the first attempted tackle on him at Camp Nou. What, one interrogator asked at his unveiling, did he make of his fee? “It’s an honour but I’ll leave the topic of money for the clubs,” he deftly replied. Yet the question is bound to scratch and linger, and could potentially turn poisonous. Is such a sum – the second biggest transfer in history – for the 25-year-old Brazilian justified?Barcelona’s thinking is easy to...
It took a while but the Manchester City manager has conquered England with a football that is not merely beautiful but also dominant. The question for 2018 is: can he now do it in Europe?The year ends with Pep Guardiola ascendant, his juego de posición, evolved over time and amended and slightly repackaged for England, cutting a swathe through the Premier League, just as it overwhelmed all in La Liga and the Bundesliga. There will be the usual complaints about how much money has been spent and, more pertinently, about the origin of that money, but English football has never seen anything quite like this.When Guardiola was winning two Champions Leagues in three seasons at Barcelona, their style became hegemonic. There...