Even in his moment of greatest sadness there was no recrimination, only departing tears, which Barcelona then repackaged as contentFittingly, it began and ended with a napkin. Lionel Messi’s first Barcelona contract was signed hastily on a restaurant serviette. Now, as he sobbed his way through his farewell press conference, his wife, Antonella, stepped forward from the front row to hand him a tissue. “If the rule you followed brought you to this,” asks Anton Chigurh in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, “of what use was the rule?”Out in the world beyond, Messi’s choking tears were already being repackaged as content. The live stream on Barcelona’s YouTube channel was accompanied by numerous clickable links inviting viewers to purchase...
Inter overthrew Juventus, who had a season to forget, even if Gigi Buffon offered a sterling farewell. It’s awards time!Less than a week has passed since the end of the Serie A season, and already it feels like some distant era. Eight of the league’s top 10 clubs have said farewell to their managers, including the newly-crowned champions and the team they just deposed.Juventus’s decision to move on from Andrea Pirlo came as no surprise. The winners of the previous nine Scudetti could not content themselves with barely scraping into the top four. Antonio Conte’s separation from Inter was another matter. After Inter raised the Coppa Campioni d’Italia on Sunday, the club president, Steven Zhang, had told reporters that their...
La Liga’s title race went to the last seconds of the season, as the winning manager had always said it would When at last it was all over Diego Simeone let everyone in on a little secret. With four or five games to go and Atlético Madrid on edge, anxiety gripping and their pursuers closing in, he got together the physios, staff and the people on the gates at the Metropolitano and Cerro del Espino – the first faces the players see every day – and told them to change. Related: Juventus thank their lucky stars as ‘Fatal Verona’ hand them a lifeline | Nicky Bandini pic.twitter.com/WwXXYlzDTcCongrats, @atletienglish ⚪ Atlético are #LaLiga champions for the 11th time, pipping rivals Real...
The Bundesliga giants can no longer cling to the past after they were relegated in humiliating style on the season’s final day In some ways, it was like so many other key moments in the history of Werder Bremen. It wasn’t supposed to happen now, though, and not like this. Thomas Schaaf was on the touchline, a reassuring silhouette in cap, glasses and beard but having presided over so many life-affirming moments that gave the team from the Weser worldwide renown, this time he was stuck, left holding the baby.At the end of an agonising Saturday afternoon the shock and horror was real, after defeat at home to Borussia Mönchengladbach condemned Werder to a second-ever relegation, and their first for...
Cristiano Ronaldo could only watch as Juventus squeaked into the Champions League thanks to Napoli falling at the lastJuventus spent the final seconds of the 2020-21 season huddled around a mobile phone they had borrowed from a journalist. After nine consecutive Serie A titles, the team that hoped to play a leading role in a breakaway European Super League had been reduced to waiting and watching somebody else decide whether they could finish among Italy’s top four. Related: European roundup: Lille win at Angers to seal first Ligue 1 title in 10 years Kessie from the spot again! Milan secure Champions League qualification and second place in Serie A to go with it! ⚫Juventus grab the final Champions League place...