Real Madrid and Barcelona meet in the league without either Sergio Ramos or Lionel Messi involved for first time since 2005Eduardo Iturralde González could see it coming. “I saw Sergio Ramos running towards Leo Messi and I thought: ‘He’s going to whack him,’” the referee recalled – and he was right. It was late on a Monday night in November 2010, Messi was left on the floor, a fight started and Ramos was sent off. On Saturday afternoon they should have been preparing for the latest chapter in a seemingly never-ending story. Instead, though neither had exactly planned it this way, they found themselves at Camp de Loges, north of Paris. Together.No one has played more clásicos than Ramos or...
An exhilarating 2-0 win against Manchester City showed flickers of what Paris Saint-Germain and Messi 2.0 can do togetherAnd so it came to pass. With 73 minutes on the clock, He finally turned up.Lionel Messi had done very little for the previous 20 minutes at Parc des Princes. A promising first half had given way to one of those extended periods where Messi resembles a man maintaining a pretence of polite interest while milling around a notably disappointing flea market. Continue reading...
The travails of the traditional European elite as new money dominated the transfer window suggest things have changedIn times of crisis, the winners are usually the rich. As clubs across Europe continue to struggle against the financial impact of the pandemic, the lesson of this transfer window is that the powerful are mopping up. Or at least they are if they are well-run, which rules out the two Spanish giants and several clubs in Italy.The transfers of the two players who have defined football for a generation understandably generated great excitement, with fans camping out at the airport in Paris to welcome Lionel Messi and queuing round the block to buy a shirt with his name on the back while...
Ligue 1 looks unhealthily one-sided and it is not alone: the domination of the game’s super-clubs is only just beginningIt gets to Sunday evening. You’ve done your chores. You’ve had your dinner.You’re tired. You have work on Monday. You just want something to stick on the telly while you flick through the papers or doze on the sofa. These days you have choices. Next Sunday, for instance, if you have a comprehensive satellite package, you could watch Levante against Real Madrid, Roma against Fiorentina or Nice against Marseille. Which are you going to choose? Related: Grealish and Lukaku deals expose inequalities of the Premier League Continue reading...
Lionel Messi and Sergio Ramos are gone, while Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid will fancy their chances of back-to-back titlesZinedine Zidane was the first one out, so early it feels like a lifetime ago. Then Sergio Ramos departed, the full-time whistle finally catching up with him. Now Lionel Messi has gone, flying back into Barcelona to find the contract he had come to sign was no longer there. Arguably the three most significant men in Spanish football over the past decade, along with Cristiano Ronaldo, all gone in a single summer. And Ronaldo had already left three years earlier.This week, Ramos contacted Messi to say he could stay at his place if he liked. There was always respect there – well,...