How does a team that had not beaten anyone on the pitch all season – nor indeed won a Serie A match since 2013 – suddenly produce a 5-0 thrashing of Genoa?Harold Wilson believed a week was a long time in British politics. What on earth would he have made, then, of football on Italy’s Adriatic coast?Seven days ago, Pescara were in freefall – bottom of Serie A and reeling not only from consecutive thrashings by Lazio and Torino but also an arson attack on their president’s private property. Desperate to change something, anything, they fired manager Massimo Oddo, replacing him with Zdenek Zeman. On Sunday, they thrashed Genoa 5-0. Related: Italy still producing prize managerial exports from its winning...
The embattled manager saw his team fold at disturbing speed against Bayern despite the efforts of a frustrated Alexis Sánchez, and the end now seems a lot nearerAt times, as Arsenal’s players flickered in and out of focus during a traumatic second half in Munich, it was almost possible beneath the roars and whoops and gurgles of a sated home crowd to hear the sound of something else. Departures, farewells, changing trains, a little distant exit applause.For 15 first‑half minutes this Champions League last 16 first leg had swung wildly on its axis. From 1-0 down Arsenal were led back into the game by a passage of thrillingly angry, high-energy centre-forward play from Alexis Sánchez, who became briefly an embodiment...
The Bernabéu tie this week has rekindled memories of the occasion when one of Real Madrid’s finest sides met a Napoli inspired by Diego MaradonaThe teams are in and Diego Maradona will be leading Napoli in Madrid. He touched down at Barajas airport on Monday and took refuge in his hotel – the same hotel Real Madrid use when they are brought together the night before home games – from where he will head to the Santiago Bernabéu on Wednesday night, invited by the Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis. Thousands of Neapolitans will be there too, high in the north stand. The ones who get tickets, anyway. The sports newspaper AS said on its front-page: “10,000, plus Maradona”. Marca warned...
For the first time in weeks, it feels like there will be a relegation battle in Spain after all. And Leganés will be in itSporting Gijón haven’t got a prayer, but they might just have a little hope at last. The miracle arrived in the week they stopped asking for it – and the week they needed it most. The week Granada and Osasuna needed it, too. “Resurrection Sunday”, one headline called it, and it was huge: a match that felt like all their fates hung on it, even with 17 weeks still to go. “We have to win, come what may; we can’t afford another defeat,” the Sporting coach Joan Ferrer, ‘Rubi’, said. “Salvation will depend largely on what...
Their late win at Ingolstadt was the spirit of Old Bayern, as they are perceived nationally, and made it 25 points from 27 to go seven points clear at the topThere simply had to be some sort of tribute and, in the event, there was more than one, conscious and subconscious. As Bayern Munich worked to just about chisel out a win at struggling Ingolstadt – which ultimately proved to be even more valuable than it might have first appeared – it was impossible to ignore the context of the match, unfolding just four days after Philipp Lahm confirmed that he would indeed be retiring from football at the season’s close.The most ostentatious hat tip to the captain was in...