After Saturday’s incident involving Iñaki Williams, there is still a lingering sense that racism is not being taken seriously enoughIñaki Williams had just begun the long walk to the bench when he heard something. There were 20 minutes left and Athletic Bilbao were drawing 1-1 at Espanyol, but that didn’t matter much any more. He was heading towards where Iker Muniain was about to take corner, yet his mind was elsewhere now. Barely a metre from Muniain as he ran up and bent the ball into the box, the pair crossing paths, his attention was drawn to the stands instead. Williams slowed slightly, head turned, hearing it more clearly now. He couldn’t tell how many, but it was too many....
Internazionale were held at home, but Lazio failed to capitalise in the Rome derby before Juve were rocked in NaplesOn his first weekend playing in Serie A, Ashley Young brought Inter back within touching distance of league leaders Juventus. OK, maybe that’s oversimplifying things a smidge. There were twists and turns galore on a weekend when the top four sides picked up three points between them, scoring fewer goals collectively than Atalanta managed on their own.Still, let’s begin with Young, and Inter. They were first to act in the title race, with a Sunday lunchtime kick-off at home to Cagliari. It felt like an opportunity to put pressure on Juventus and Lazio before they played at Napoli and Roma, respectively,...
The Bundesliga leaders sleepwalked to defeat and now have Bayern, Mönchengladbach and Dortmund hot on their heelsThis week Julian Nagelsmann had his players sit through a presentation on the importance of good sleep to athletic performance. Some supporters might have felt RB Leipzig had already overindulged on that score during the Bundesliga’s hibernation period, with only a couple of high impact contributions from the red-hot Timo Werner rousing them from their slumbers against Union Berlin last week to take the points that maintained a healthy lead at the top of the table.Seven days later and Leipzig were still having trouble switching on for the full duration of proceedings, although the order of service was inverted this time around. Nagelsmann’s team...
Against Granada it was very Setién. It was also very Barcelona, in a move driven by nostalgia, but with a glimpse of the futureNine hundred and ninety-eight … 999… 1,000. And still it went. Jordi Alba played the ball to Riqui Puig, who played it to Sergi Busquets, who played it to Arthur Melo, who played it to Sergi Roberto, who played it to Gerard Piqué. Who, finally halted on 100, didn’t get the chance to play it to anyone else. Half an hour before his first game as coach of Barcelona, Quique Setién had sat on the bench alongside his assistant Éder Sarabia, empty seats rising around them, still barely able to believe they were here, and silently contemplated...
The Norwegian became the Bundesliga’s second-youngest hat-trick scorer, and the first substitute to score three timesIt felt like a regular, gentle Sunday morning in Brackel, the district to the east of the centre where Borussia Dortmund train. The reserve team trained and senior squad strikers Paco Alcácer and Erling Braut Haaland joined them, to get an extra few miles in their legs. Midfielder Julian Weigl, who recently joined Benfica, dropped in to say hello, bringing a gift of his shirt from his new club for his friend Axel Witsel, with the former now wearing the No 28 that the latter also wore in his own spell at Estádio da Luz nine years back.Just as Weigl had gone from tempest to...