Football is a fight for club’s legendary manager so who better to install the ‘balls, blood and mentality’ they need to survive?“I couldn’t sit at home with my arms crossed,” José Bordalás said, and so there he was standing in the pouring rain, soaked and angry again, glasses no good to him now. Sunday afternoon and the coach who took Getafe to primera in the first place had returned on a rescue mission to keep them there, swapping his sofa for the sideline. Where, officially just 27 hours into the job, he watched drenched as his team – well, it is now – lost 1-0 to Espanyol, their third consecutive defeat and a sixth game without winning dropping them deeper...
The result was seen as a formality when city officials moved Napoli’s kick-off time but it gave the visitors a point to proveYou would think the prefect of a city as superstitious as Naples might have worried a little more about tempting fate. To place a loaf of bread upside down on the dinner table is to invite bad luck on yourself in southern Italy, yet Claudio Palomba had no qualms requesting that the footballing calendar be flipped on its head so the home team could win Serie A at a more convenient time.Napoli were originally scheduled to host Salernitana on Saturday. Seventeen points clear at the top of the table, with seven games left to play, they knew a...
Two of the Bundesliga’s biggest clubs are staring relegation in the face once more but have given themselves fighting chances“On a day like today,” exhaled Stuttgart coach Sebastian Hoeness, “I told the boys they should go out to eat tonight, and they can have a beer as well. It’s part of letting your emotions out.” It was that kind of weekend at the bottom of the table, both for the Swabians and for Schalke, two huge clubs who have spent most of this campaign looking over their shoulders and not seeing much behind them – but two teams who, after this weekend, are very much alive and kicking.When the Bundesliga coins its marketing strapline “football as it’s meant to be”...
Napoli winning the Serie A title is a fait accompli but Juventus’s continuing legal issues leave so much else up in the airIt was not the goal that sealed Napoli’s third-ever Scudetto, but it sure felt like it, an emotion so overpowering that some players could not keep their feet. As Giacomo Raspadori’s volley skidded through Wojciech Szczesny’s legs and into the Juventus net, Piotr Zielinski simply collapsed on to his back, lying spreadeagled on the Allianz Stadium turf.Raspadori’s strike arrived in the 93rd minute, securing a 1-0 win. Napoli scarcely needed the points – they were already 14 clear of second-placed Lazio before kick-off – but five days removed from a Champions League quarter-final defeat to Milan, they needed...
Decision to sack Nagelsmann and bring in the former Chelsea manager has failed – Dortmund are top with five games to goThere was a sense in which you could argue that this was to be expected. This was, after all, the third time in successive seasons that Mainz had sent Bayern Munich home with a defeat in late April. “Oops, I did it again,” was the caption on the club’s social media post, featuring the inevitable Britney Spears mid-dance with the Mainz club crest on her jumpsuit.It was the only thing that was familiar about this scenario. More accurate was the later, second attempt from the wags doing the socials for Die Nullfünfer. It featured Homer Simpson coming home –...