Liverpool were knocked out by a team of big personality players who do the right things at the right momentsOn a night of steadily deflating momentum, Jürgen Klopp’s marauding Liverpool did their best Jürgen Klopp’s marauding Liverpool impression. And for a while it was tempting to believe.Anfield looked splendid under open blue cold skies, one of those nights when the wind comes scudding in off the sea and the place seems to boil and throb with, well, what exactly? Related: Liverpool rue missed chances as Real Madrid end Champions League hopes Related: Liverpool 0-0 Real Madrid (agg 1-3): Champions League quarter-final – as it happened Continue reading...
Chelsea’s manager set up his team in such a way as to give Porto no hope and can now picture a Champions League triumphAnd so the Tuchel revolution roars on. In a manner of speaking. The second-best thing anyone could say about the second leg of Chelsea’s 2-1 aggregate defeat of Porto in Seville was that it was, on balance, an act of cardiovascular exercise. Everyone involved burned some calories.The best thing – arguably the only thing – is that Chelsea cruised through without a scratch and will now take their place in the semi-finals of the Champions League, setting up a mouthwatering denouement to their own peculiar season of two halves. Related: Chelsea see off Porto despite Mehdi Taremi’s...
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...
The manager has copped stick for ‘parking the bus’, but a first Scudetto in 11 years is in sight after Inter’s 11th win in a rowAs Inter prepared to extend their winning run to an 11th consecutive match, one former employee was calling for the manager to be sacked. “They don’t play well!” protested Antonio Cassano during his weekly appearance on Christian Vieri’s Twitch channel, his anger escalating as he repeated the phrase three times.“Antonio Conte plays a 5-3-2, everyone behind the ball, everyone lined up in front of their own goal. He parks the bus, and you can’t get by. If I had a manager like this, I would go to the president and say: ‘Get rid of him.’”...
Hansi Flick brought in new faces with Tuesday in mind but dropped points gave hope to RB Leipzig belowHansi Flick’s biggest expression of frustration on Saturday afternoon was saved for five minutes from the end of normal time, when a dogged Union Berlin pilfered a hardly inevitable but not exactly undeserved equaliser at the home of the champions, as Marcus Ingvartsen’s scuffed effort rolled over the line. In tandem with RB Leipzig’s easy 4-1 win at Werder Bremen, it trimmed Bayern Munich’s lead at the top of the Bundesliga to five points – an inconvenience rather than a crisis – but the keenest suggestion from hearing Flick shout “Mann!” across the turf was less the effect of the goal itself...