On paper, Borussia Dortmund should have hammered Schalke but a 4-2 defeat has virtually ended their Bundesliga aspirationsIf it was going to fall apart maybe it was always going to be here, now and in this way. This was a Revierderby that looked as if it might be Schalke’s worst nightmare in a season full of them. The distance between them and arch-rivals Borussia Dortmund was 42 points at kick-off, a gap that had never been as pronounced at this stage of a Bundesliga season before. This looked like a Saturday afternoon in Westfalen – where Dortmund had been yet to lose in the league this season – in which clichés about derbies and form books could be safely left...
Inter v Juventus drew the focus but the cities’ other teams – Milan and Torino – played a more significant match“Game over.” The words stretched out across the second tier of San Siro’s northern stand on Saturday night in an epic display of schadenfreude. Juventus are champions of Italy for the eighth year running, yet their quest to conquer Europe for the first time since 1996 remains unfulfilled. No club’s supporters enjoy that truth more than those of Inter: the last Serie A team to lift the Champions League.Still, the mockery cut both ways. If the game is over for Juventus in Europe, then domestically it never even began. Inter, in their second season under Luciano Spalletti, were supposed to...
An unlikely dream of joining Europe’s elite were improved by a draw with Real but the fact they wanted more said muchThe first time anyone noticed Jaime Mata he was standing there half-naked and even then no one really cared for long. He was a galáctico, sure, but not that kind of galáctico. A university student studying business and international commerce, he was also a pretty average striker at his local club Pegaso Galáctico in Spain’s Tercera División, which despite its name is a long way below the third division: there’s a Second; a Second B, 80 teams spread across four regional divisions; and then Third, with 366 teams in 18 provincial groups. Pegaso were in trouble, so Mata and...
A frantic Russian roulette-style finale created madcap drama but the worst possible result for the relegation rivalsWith time and hope slipping away, the game changed. “There was nothing else for it,” said the Rayo Vallecano coach Paco Jémez, “so you go: ‘come on then, let’s play Russian roulette. See if we get lucky.’” A few metres to his right, standing by the bench beneath a blackening sky, Huesca manager Francisco Rodríguez had pretty much the same idea and so did the twenty-two desperate men before them, plus the 10,542 people watching from the stands, chests tightening. “The league was leaving us,” the Huesca manager admitted and they weren’t alone: the league was leaving them both, which is why they ran...
Exhilarating, passionate and very sevillano, Saturday’s derby saw Joaquín Caparrós oversee another triumph over BetisSomewhere in the middle of the smoke and the bodies, Sevilla’s bus began its 640-metre journey, slowly opening a path through the palms hammering at its side. Police vans escorted it along Calle Luis de Morales and, as the crowd parted, fireworks turning everything red, fans saw their manager sitting on the front row. Joaquín Caparrós wore a slightly manic smile, shook his fists, applauded, and thumped at the window. Outside, some ran to keep up. There wasn’t far to go: the bus turned left, left again and drew to a halt in front of the 480-square-metre, 200,000-tile mosaic, the finest façade in football, with its...