Madrid’s pre-season is over, just in time for Europe. The question now is whether it is in time for the league tooThe first time Vinicius Junior played against Atlético Madrid, they bit him; the third time, he bit back. If he didn’t do it the second time, maybe that’s because he wasn’t given the chance. A lot has happened in five months – a lot has happened in five weeks in fact, things changing fast – and few embody that better than the Brazilian dashing past Barcelona on Wednesday night and Atlético on Saturday afternoon. “He’s just a kid; some of us could have children his age,” his manager said, but he led Real Madrid to a 3-1 win, only...
Even if Dortmund being pegged back by Hoffenheim was a bolt from the blue, their uneven performance was notFor most of the season, Jadon Sancho has befuddled all comers in the Bundesliga, catching opponents on the hop much as his Borussia Dortmund team has done. As evening drew into Nord-Rhine Westphalia on Saturday, he was left scratching his head at the end of an extraordinary afternoon, the majority of which he had spent looking as if he was walking on water.The English teenager had been outstanding, again (albeit after a few fairly quiet weeks, by his now lofty standards), and Hoffenheim hadn’t got near handling him. In the first half he sizzled down both flanks, scoring the opener from an...
Away games against Milan are a daunting prospect at the best of times, let alone when you’re stuck in the middle of a protestIt began like so many other Saturdays at Cagliari’s practice facility, the manager Rolando Maran coming in from training to update reporters on the injuries and fitness concerns affecting his first-team squad. It took a turn towards atypical shortly afterwards, as players lined up in the street to kick over milk churns and spill their contents into the road.This was not on the schedule. After speaking to the press, Maran was supposed to board the team bus with his players and head to the airport for a flight to Milan – where they would play the following...
Slumping in La Liga, Villarreal have attempted to turn back time by re-hiring Javier Calleja 50 days after giving him the boot“I know it’s not normal, that it doesn’t feel right, but Fernando Roig does the opposite of everyone else,” Fernando Roig said – and this time at least the president of Villarreal wasn’t wrong. Tuesday morning at the old orange grove they made their home and Luis García was packing up after training, worried about the situation his team was in but satisfied with the session and sure they could survive, when his phone rang. “Things have to change,” he’d said two days before, and things were about to change. Just not that much. And not how he hoped....
It feels absurd to say of a team that has dropped six points in 22 games, but Juve have not been playing well for some timeNine points clear at the top of Serie A, Juventus are on the cusp of a crisis. Well, that’s what the papers say. Even La Repubblica, typically a sober voice in Italian sports coverage, applied the ‘c’ word to the Bianconeri on Sunday’s front page.Hyperbole? Certainly. But Juventus had conceded six times in the space of four days. A 3-0 defeat to Atalanta in the Coppa Italia was followed by a 3-3 draw at home to Parma in Serie A. Worse, they let a two-goal lead slip inside the last 20 minutes against the Ducali....