Sevilla are this season’s La Liga crisis club but perhaps a last-gasp penalty at Cádiz can turn their fortunes aroundIvan Rakitic seemed to be trying not to look up and he wasn’t listening either, not when Alejandro Hernández Hernández came for one of those pointless pep talks referees like so much. He’d taken penalties before, thank you very much. And even if his mother-in-law once sent him a picture of a labrador with a ball at its paws and the message, “your dog takes them better than you”, he’s not bad either: he had done it in the derby, rolled in at Madrid to keep Sevilla in the title race, and is the only player to be put on the...
Against Atalanta, the show went on after the announcement of a severe penalty but so much remains uncertainFor a couple of hours, Juventus allowed themselves to forget. The buildup to their game against Atalanta had been overshadowed by news of a 15-point penalty, a punishment nobody saw coming. Even the prosecutor leading the case against them had only asked for nine.Anger at that decision was palpable inside the Allianz Stadium. The Serie A anthem was loudly whistled and the positioning of league-branded materials on the pitch before kickoff met with hostile chanting. A banner hung by fans on the gates outside read: “Serie A or Serie B, we are always here. Only for Juventus FC.” Continue reading...
With Mikel Oyarzabal, out for so long, capping an emphatic victory against Athletic Club it was a special night at Anoeta“There is not one fan going home with a single ‘but’ tonight,” Real Sociedad forward Takefusa Kubo said. There were plenty not going home at all, not yet. Late Saturday in San Sebastian and if it was finally quiet inside Anoeta, although you swore some of those seats still hadn’t stopped shaking, outside the band played on and the bars kept serving. “This smile will last at least til tomorrow,” Imanol Alguacil, the manager, beamed. 24 hours earlier, he had called the Basque derby the most important match of the year, every year, and now his team had just won...
Aurélien Tchouaméni and Benoît Badiashile have brought in €120m in the last six months – and the players keep comingBy Luke Entwistle for Get French Football NewsNew Chelsea signing Benoît Badiashile is the latest player to emerge from Monaco’s unrelenting conveyor belt of talent and he won’t be the last. The Monaco academy boasts a star-studded list of alumni: World Cup winners Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Petit, Lilian Thuram, David Trezeguet and Kylian Mbappé all graduated from the club. When Monaco tinkered with their successful formula of youth development, signing Radamel Falcao and James Rodríguez for big money, they won Ligue 1 and reached the Champions League semi-finals, but that strategy eventually proved unsustainable. They have since returned their focus to...
Run of eight Juventus league wins without conceding was ended emphatically by a dominant 5-1 Napoli win and displayIt took 30 years for Massimiliano Allegri’s career to come full circle. In May 1993, as a young midfielder, he scored the goal that set Pescara on the way to an unforgettable 5-1 win over Juventus. The Bianconeri would never concede that many again in Serie A until Allegri, as manager, took them to face Napoli at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona on Friday night.The context was very different. Pescara were already relegated in 1993 while Juventus’s minds were on the beach after winning the Uefa Cup a fortnight before. This season, everything is still to play for. Allegri’s team travelled to...