The 3-1 loss might have drawn conflicting conclusions but instead brought a consensus: Barcelona aren’t all that goodWhen at last it was all over, Joan Laporta stood up, shook hands with Florentino Pérez and slipped out. For the second time in five days Barcelona’s president had sat front row centre watching things fall apart. He had listened to the Real Madrid supporters he had been so looking forward to seeing again launch into olés, laugh their way through ironic pleas for his coach to stay and invite him to enjoy Thursday nights in the Europa League, and now it was time to leave. He went down the stairs, past the statue of Sotero Aranguren and Alberto Machimbarrena cast in bronze...
A ‘glass jaw’ at the back and profligacy up front has left Julien Lopetegui’s side with their worst start to a season in 41 yearsCaptain Ivan Rakitic gathered his men and turned to the north. A couple of hours earlier, a banner had been hung across that end declaring “unity makes strength”, their version of the Marseillaise thundering round, and they were still singing in there now. Sevilla’s exhausted players stood before the fans, all those swirling flags, and listened. It was 11 o’clock and it was loud but the lyrics weren’t the same now and they hadn’t come to celebrate; they had come to apologise. “We had to,” Rakitic said. They had been beaten again, this time by Barcelona....
After a Saudi takeover helped propel them back to La Liga, the minnows pushed the European champions all the wayFor an hour, the 15,238 Almería fans in the Horse Power stadium might have wondered if the almighty was on their side after all. The man who had begun the night floodlit out on the field, collecting the final few shares he didn’t already own from the founder of the club, certainly did. Or so it goes. Almería had returned to primera for the first time since 2015, faced Real Madrid in their opening game, and proprietor and president Turki Al-Sheikh, the minister in charge of entertainment at the Saudi royal court, didn’t have much faith. Not in his footballers, at...
Barça are spending money recklessly to maintain a myth, but in the modern superclub era it is unlikely to cost them dearlyRobert Lewandowski has signed a four-year deal with Barcelona, which means he probably has a good 18 months before they ask him to take a wage cut. Give or take. Naturally a good deal depends on how much deeper into their financial quarry Barcelona have managed to dig themselves in the meantime. Perhaps, alternatively, Lewandowski will be asked to defer a portion of his salary, or maybe amortise it into 420 easy monthly instalments, or accept payment in the form of $BAR fan tokens.This is the perk of being the world’s biggest and most incoherent club: there is always...
Carlo Ancelotti completed football with Real Madrid, while there was drama at the bottom if not so much at the topIt started in tears. Lionel Messi touched down on the evening of 4 August, flying into El Prat especially. Officially unemployed, he had come to sign the contract that would see him play a 17th season at Barcelona but by the time it began he was gone, like Zinedine Zidane and Sergio Ramos before him. Three of the most significant men in Spanish football over the last decade had departed in a single summer. Yet at his presentation in Paris just two days before it all started at Mestalla, on a day that felt all wrong then and feels a...