Real Madrid’s third home league defeat of the campaign leaves them level on points with Barcelona, but 10 points adrift of leaders AtléticoRonald Koeman didn’t intend to speak for both of them and plenty thought he shouldn’t have spoken at all, but as it turned out that’s exactly what he did. It was just after midday on Saturday when the coach said Barcelona “are not in a position to win much” and just before 6pm when Real Madrid showed nor are they.By the following night, the greatest rivals in sport couldn’t be closer: same points, same wins, same draws, same defeats, same goals conceded. But if a battle is building, it’s not for anything that matters much, and the team...
The popular CEO cooled his rift with the president as VfB’s exciting side assembled by Sven Mislintat registered a first home winIt was a weekend for calm and reflection, a weekend in which, as the end of Holocaust Memorial week, Bundesliga clubs paid tribute to those persecuted for their sexuality and gender identity by the Nazis, with captains wearing rainbow-coloured armbands. VfB Stuttgart wore a specially produced shirt, the normally red central hoop on white replaced with a rainbow one.In the bare stands at Cannstadt the club’s chief executive, Thomas Hitzlsperger, stood with the short and a rainbow club scarf on, the face of the club’s stance, posing for a photo he later published on his Twitter account. It might...
Defeats for Dortmund, Leverkusen and Leipzig opened up yet another clear path to the Bundesliga titleThey did what they always do, and it was rarely in doubt. Schalke resisted as best they could, had their moments and were several steps forward from the meek strugglers who have filled the royal blue shirts for a large part of this season. Bayern Munich, however, were always going to get it done, and not just because this was their 10th straight win over the Gelsenkirchen club. Even if the late goals by Thomas Müller and David Alaba added a slightly unfair sheen to the scoreline for the champions, their total superiority couldn’t have been clearer. Related: Ilicic puts Atalanta in title race and...
A shock for the ages provided the happiest night in the life of what, right now, might be the saddest city in Spain“Javi Antón is crying,” said Vicente Parras, and he wasn’t the only one. The manager of Club Deportivo Alcoyano looked across the pitch at El Callao with its whitewashed walls, “Morale” splashed alongside the little blue door in the corner and saw his players still on the grass long after the final whistle. Some of them held white shirts, most of them held phones. “They’re all out there calling home,” he said: endless messages and dozens of conversations starting the way his had a few minutes before. Parras’s son couldn’t come to the game; no one could. “I...
The pressure on Andrea Pirlo’s team to deliver in the Supercoppa had been intense. Juve’s talisman carried out the delivery Andrea Pirlo used to love winding up Gennaro Gattuso. In his autobiography, the now Juventus manager described his former teammate as “my favourite target … despite the fact that he tried on numerous occasions to kill me with a fork”. Pirlo recalled bursting out of Gattuso’s wardrobe to scare him in the middle of the night and stealing his phone to message a Milan director with an offer to swap his sister for an improved contract.It is one thing to tease, though, and another to defeat. If Pirlo derived any additional pleasure from claiming the first trophy of his managerial...