Part of the reason attendances at the Bernabéu are down this season is simple: Real Madrid are not very goodSanti Solari was right, but he got it so very wrong. First they attacked him for what he said, then they attacked him for what he did. Others, meanwhile, just gave up and walked away, leaving him standing where Real Madrid managers so often stand: alone. On Saturday, two days after his team had been held 2-2 at Villarreal on their return from the winter break and winning the Club World Cup, the hounds released, Solari insisted that draws shouldn’t be “underestimated”; as if to prove the point, a prisoner of his words, the next day they were beaten 2-0 by...
Striker stuns San Mamés with remarkable penalty but a late collapse means the unthinkable looms for La Liga stalwartsIt was just a penalty, some might say, but it wasn’t. It was two, for a start. And two like that in a moment like this.Your club – and it is your club – is in the bottom three, the abyss opening: a first ever relegation, an end that feels like it really could be The End, changing everything for everyone. A club unlike any other, they’ve sacked their manager mid-season for the first time in over a decade, an interim board applying the clause that allows them to act only when “indispensable”, so bad have things become. The new man, Gaizka...
The Yellow Submarine are one of only six clubs whose salary limit is over €100m: they’re too good to go down. As in 2012Sergio Asenjo just sat there shaking his head. The goalkeeper who has suffered four cruciate knee ligament tears – three in his right knee, one in his left – was in no hurry to get up this time. “I want them to see what’s at stake in our eyes,” Villarreal’s new manager Luis García Plaza had said before the game against Huesca and they could certainly see it in Asenjo’s eyes now that it was all over. Slowly, he stood, went to the end where maybe 100 fans gathered stunned, silently handed over his shirt and turned...
This weekend Messi did something unusual: he did something he hasn’t done before, exceeding his own expectationsSunday morning and military machines rolled down the Castellana, armoured vehicles on the move. Snipers stood on roofs and helicopters circled. Something big was happening. “We’ll know how it feels,” Marca said, which they wouldn’t of course, but like everyone else they hoped to find out. And, like everyone else, they were trying. Politicians packed the place, more even than usual, and people arrived from everywhere, papers dedicating dozens of pages. Florentino Pérez left Real Madrid’s match at Huesca early to be there and the best player in the world was due as soon as he’d finished, his club mates too. The third best...
The 21-year-old has appeared disengaged and immature at Barça – but he has a habit of scoring when it mattersBy night, he plays video games and eats junk food; by day, he rides to the rescue, saving the same men who have been trying to save him from himself.Ousmane Dembélé’s national team manager says arriving late is “a little habit of his”, and it’s one that the manager of his club is trying to get him out of, his teammates too, but on Saturday he arrived just in time. Related: Ousmane Dembélé’s last-gasp goal saves draw for Barcelona at Atlético Madrid | GOAL! | ICE COLD OUSMANE DEMBELE ️The winger brings the Barcelona level against Atletico Madrid, 1-1! pic.twitter.com/bNXuwPOlEx| GOAL!...