A macabre final day in La Liga ended with a Hitchcock-style twist and horror for the most unlikely relegation candidates “Hitchcock could have written this,” Sergio González said when it was all over. Cádiz’s coach was shattered, soaking wet and could hardly walk, T-shirt muddy and back gone, but he’d do it all over again. Even the bit where, liberated at last, he threw himself through the rain and on to the grass at the feet of his players and their fans. Especially that bit: this was a team picture they had desperately wanted to take, the photo of a first division side. It had hurt, the man who hid his fears from those he led struggling to get up...
After a five-year stay sprinkled with fond memories, Levante’s relegation was confirmed via a 6-0 defeat at Real MadridAdrián Cordero Vega ended it a second too early and not a moment too soon. The clock said 89.59 when the referee blew but it had been over almost from the start, and not just last night. Levante were a goal down after 12:42 at the Bernabéu; they were down-down as well, no longer able to resist the inevitable, the fate they had fought. “We’ve been been given up for dead many times but keep rising again,” said Alessio Lisci, their third coach this season and the only one to win a game, but this was a resurrection too far. Now they...
No one older had ever ever scored twice in La Liga. But that didn’t stop Molina and Granada leaving Mallorca in a hole“This was life or death,” Jorge Molina said and he had chosen life again, clinging on to primera, his place. It had taken him until he was 29 to reach the first division, finally making it around about the time a career in the lower leagues should have started winding down, eight seasons, five teams, three tiers, more than 250 games and a hundred goals after he had begun in Benidorm. Twice it had been taken away from him, twice he returned, fighting back when he was supposed to be finished, and there was no way he was...
Emotional and empathic manager galvanised a flawed team with an ageing midfield for a canter to La Liga crownThe season that ended early with Carlo Ancelotti becoming the only manager to win all five of Europe’s major leagues started with a phone call about something completely different. If this wasn’t exactly the way they had planned it, that’s because it was better. In late May last year Zinedine Zidane announced he was leaving Real Madrid, dropping a letter bomb as he went, and the sudden search for someone to replace him wasn’t going particularly well. Until one Saturday when, discussing other deals, they told Ancelotti as much, the conversation shifting from players to coaches, an idea forming. What about me?A...
To follow PSG and Chelsea, Sevilla were the latest team to suffer from Carlo Ancelotti’s men’s powers of recoveryIn the middle of it all, someone fetched David Alaba a chair. It was late, it had been a long week, his legs were weary and everyone were making a lot of noise, but this seat was not for sitting. This was for celebrating, his thing now, and so he took it and lifted it above his head. Back by popular demand, he emulated what he had done after that absurd comeback against Paris Saint Germain, a cheer went round the dressing room and his team-mates started singing: “That’s the way Madrid win!”They had only gone and done it again, and this...