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...
An icy flight across Spain was in vain for Madrid as they were held in Pamplona while Atlêtico’s games in hand rack upAthletic Club Bilbao parked the bus but couldn’t land the plane. The driver arrived early and waited outside Barajas Terminal Four on Friday evening while thousands of feet above him the pilot bringing the team to Madrid to play Atlético circled the city before giving up and going home. At around the same time Real Madrid’s players were sitting in another plane on the runway, watching snow fall and time pass. To the south, Rayo Vallecano’s footballers got off the coach and helped push stranded cars along the road, or tried to. “Do you think we should be...
Gaizka Garitano was dismissed despite victory over Elche, but if the timing was a surprise the board’s decision was notPretty much the last thing Gaizka Garitano did as coach of Athletic Club Bilbao was say how happy he was. When the final, final whistle went he embraced assistant Paxti Ferreira, put his arm around Yuri Berchiche and ducked out of the cold and pouring rain and into the tunnel at San Mamés beneath the bust of Pichichi. Iker Muniain’s 25th-minute strike and Óscar de Marcos’s last-minute goal-line clearance had been enough to equal their best winning run – one – defeat Elche, and overcome another ultimatum. Or so they thought. Inside in the dry, the manager was asked how big...
The final round of 2020 had a 1-0 win for the leaders, Iago Aspas tearing opponents apart and Barça underwhelming“We’ve had spectacular 2020,” said Koke Resurrección, which might not have fit the public mood exactly but maybe that was because there was still no public at all. There hadn’t been since the time they went to Liverpool nine months earlier, a night so good that Marcos Llorente got a puppy and called it Anfield. Since then, there had been silence. The very next afternoon, the doors closed, staying that way for 93 days. And although they reopened for the players, sent into a strange, sterile new world, they didn’t for the people, some of whom would never come back. Some...
Coaches whose ideas were considered almost extinct have re-emerged as teams battle fatigue and a lack of training timeFor football, this was the year evolution went backwards. It began with further victories for the high press, with Hansi Flick’s Bayern Munich surging to the Champions League and the Bundesliga, and Jürgen Klopp’s side giving Liverpool their first league title in 30 years, but it ended with a widespread reversion to a more cautious style.A dozen years ago, Pep Guardiola led the rise of press-and-possess football; recently, the pressing element has come to be prioritised – and then Covid-19 arrived. There are those who will dismissively point out we had pressing in the 80s. And we did – we’ve had it...