Manuel Pellegrini’s brilliant side are dreaming of Champions League football after a fourth win on the bounceThere were some people on the pitch. Some Pokémon too and some bunnies and some bears. Lots and lots of bears. Lots of goals, too. At half-time in Real Betis’s final home game of 2021, on the night when they sang and danced and hugged and finished the year in a position higher than they have finished any season since 1935, a party breaking out in Heliopolis, it started raining cuddly toys. An annual tradition now, fans had been asked to bring theirs to the ground – no bigger than 35cm please, and no batteries included – and throw them from the stands, flying...
Real Madrid’s manager knows it will be tough to beat Atlético on Sunday but the Italian is serene in his second spellHello again. The day that Carlo Ancelotti returned to Real Madrid, a chance conversation about something completely different unexpectedly bringing him back to Spain six years later, he looked around Valdebebas and saw familiar faces everywhere, comfort in the lack of change. “The same physios, the same kit men, the same journalists, the same vision, the same demands of greatness,” as he put it. “Everything is immutable: the only thing that changes is the coach.”It is there, anyway. Since he left, Madrid have been through five of them: Rafa Benítez, Zinedine Zidane, Julen Lopetegui, Santi Solari and Zidane again....
Serbian outcast had played only 81 minutes all season but was brilliant after leaping off the bench to replace injured talismanKarim Benzema was down on one knee which meant Real Madrid were down on theirs, or so it goes. Saturday had been good to them until then – Barcelona had lost at home to Real Betis and Atlético Madrid had been beaten by Real Mallorca with on-loan Take Kubo slipping past Jan Oblak in the last minute at the Metropolitano – but this was bad news, its significance expressed simply. A couple of words and a couple of explanation marks would do: Benzema and off. It was cold, wet, noisy and 0-0 at Real Sociedad where no one had won...
Brazilian’s rocket against Sevilla took Madrid top and suggested he is now among an elite group of game-changing players“Vinícius has a motorbike beneath his boots,” Carlo Ancelotti said last week. What the Real Madrid manager didn’t know was that he has a traction engine down there too. But late on Sunday night there it was, when they needed it most. Madrid were entering the 87th minute against Sevilla, the score even and a place at the top awaiting the winner, when a long ball from Eder Militao dropped from the sky by the left touchline. Vinícius chested past Lucas Ocampos, controlling and coming inside in one move, dropped his shoulder, went beyond Gonzalo Montiel and sent the ball tearing through...
Club legend twice rejected offers but finally he is coming back as a defender of the faith and symbol of hope for the futureOn Xavi Hernández’s last night as a Barcelona player, he walked out of the Olimpiastadion in Berlin carrying the European Cup in his right hand. It was the 25th trophy he had won with the club and it was over, but only for a little while. He had arrived aged 12 from Terrassa, where the square he played in now has a sign up banning football, and although he was leaving 23 years on he was already planning his return, eventually made on Friday.At Xavi’s farewell, Andrés Iniesta gave a speech in which he thanked him for...