Luuk De Jong is a man for the big moment as Barça’s rivals found out to their cost on SundayNico González had in his hand a piece of paper. Time was running out and unless they could do something about this – and fast – Barcelona were going to lose a Catalan derby at Cornellá for the first time in La Liga. It had taken them only 73 seconds to score one, but in 73 minutes they hadn’t got a second. Worse, Espanyol had. Sergi Darder curled in a gorgeous equaliser and then Raúl de Tomás put them ahead, meditating cross-legged on the grass ignoring the madness all around him. Xavi Hernández, though, had a plan, written down and sent...
The Napoli stalwart, headed for Toronto, scored a penalty but Edin Dzeko’s goal kept the title race wide openAt least Lorenzo Insigne will not need to be taught another lesson by his children. He had barely made it back to his car after Napoli’s win over Torino in October when his sons, eight-year-old Carmine and six-year-old Christian, warned him that they would be getting the football out and showing him how to strike a penalty as soon as they got home.Maybe they had some good pointers. The tame effort saved by Vanja Milinkovic-Savic in that match was Insigne’s third missed spot-kick of the season. Since then, he has converted four out of four. After Inter’s Stefan De Vrij kicked the...
Perennial runners-up face leaders Inter on Saturday as quest to win Serie A for the first time without Maradona gathers paceLast Sunday, amid jubilant scenes at the Pier Luigi Penzo Stadium, Napoli scored a 100th-minute goal to seal a 2-0 win over Venezia, cutting Internazionale’s lead in Serie A to a single point. The following morning, tickets for their next game – a potential title showdown at home to Inter – went on general sale.Almost immediately, Napoli’s ticket website began to gasp under the sheer volume of traffic. Disgruntled fans complained to the club after spending hours refreshing and rebooting the page, sitting in virtual queues of about 15,000. The stadium box office was a similar story, as restive queues...
The title candidates who just won’t let go couldn’t quite hold on either, leaving Madrid six points clear on topIvan Rakitic had the ball in his hands and Sevilla’s fate in them too, or at least that’s how it felt. On moments like this titles turn, so it goes. They had spent the last two months hanging in there, the team still standing even as players were falling, clinging on for a chance like this. But time was running out on the first day of the rest of their season, the opportunity they had waited for untaken and slipping away again. Until suddenly, almost out of nothing, it was given back. All they now had to do was score a...
Forward turned the derby on its head with a quickfire double that breathed life into the title race – and the dreaded No 9 shirtEven Olivier Giroud was starting to wonder if he might have jinxed himself. The Frenchman had no hesitation in accepting Milan’s No 9 shirt after he joined last summer, shrugging off the fact that no player in a decade had hit double figures while wearing it in Serie A. Ten players had tried and failed – among them such talented goalscorers as Gonzalo Higuaín, Fernando Torres and André Silva – but Giroud insisted: “I’m not superstitious.”By the turn of the year, he was sounding a little less confident. “I don’t believe in the curse of the...