Eder Sarabia and Gerard Piqué have FC Andorra moving up as they look to move on from one of Barcelona’s worst nightsOn a cold, wet Sunday night in a valley some way up the Andorran Pyrenees, 18km beyond the Spanish border and somewhere above the clouds, the linesman turns towards the bench and delivers a warning. Behind him the manager of the home team is on his feet, pacing and shouting. “Eder,” the linesman says, correctly imagining a long evening already, “we haven’t even been playing six minutes.”There is a smile then and again two hours later, sitting in aportable building at the south end of the pitch where coaching staff and sporting director dissect the match, magnetic players on...
Having been well off the pace in January, Real beat Barcelona to briefly return to the top of La Liga on Saturday“I’ve been locked up for two weeks, as if I was in a cage, and I feel like a fight,” Zinedine Zidane said, so he went out and found one. Having tested positive for the coronavirus and isolated at home, he had heard the whispers, read the press, taken the hits and knew what lay beneath. Worse, he had watched his team. He had seen his assistant David Bettoni insist that Real Madrid’s fans “still believe because our DNA is to fight to the end” but even in empty grounds – where there are no whistles and no white...
Willingness to believe in the cult of the winner is worsening the plight of Barcelona and Juventus On Tuesday, Juventus might overcome a 2-1 deficit against Porto in the Champions League. On Wednesday, Barcelona almost certainly won’t come back from 4-1 down to beat Paris Saint-Germain. Both clubs were comprehensively outplayed in the first legs, both are burdened by an ageing and expensive superstar, both have found the cracks in their financial planning exposed by the pandemic. At some point the narratives of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will decouple, but not now, not yet.Football deals badly with mortality. It can be brutal in dealing with those with whom it has finished. Bill Shankly couldn’t even tell Ian St John...
The 33-year-old showed again this week exactly why Man City or PSG might just consider him worth the investmentOf all the many Elvis Presley incarnations – Vegas Elvis, Leather Elvis, Super-Handsome Young Elvis – my favourite is probably Karate Elvis.Elvis loved karate. He often appeared in public dressed in karate gear, and spent years planning his own starring role in a karate-based blockbuster movie. The problem was, he kept on doing karate as he grew older and vaguer, encouraged by dependant body guards whose duties included humouring Elvis in the belief he remained a deadly fighting machine. Related: Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend Related: Michail Antonio's West Ham evolution from utility man to star striker...
The Uruguayan, at 34, has been sensational for Atlético. Not bad for a free transfer who Barcelona were desperate to get rid of“Madness,” Lionel Messi called it, but even he hadn’t imagined it being this mad.One Friday in September Messi walked into the dressing room at Barcelona’s San Joan Despí training ground and it hit him. After six years his best friend wasn’t there, so he sent him a message. “It’ll be strange seeing you in another shirt,” it said, and two days on he discovered how strange when Luis Suárez made his Atlético Madrid debut. Introduced as a sub against Granada, 90 seconds later, Suárez had provided an assist. By the end of the 90 minutes, he had scored...