The club that reached the 2013 Champions League quarter-finals are in such a shambolic state that they had to release the Japanese forward before he played a competitive game“I’ll never forget Málaga,” Shinji Okazaki said, and that much at least was true. Alas, so much else wasn’t. The Spanish second division team announced the signing of the former Leicester City player at 3.04pm on 30 July; at six minutes past midnight on 3 September, as the transfer window closed in La Liga, they announced that they were releasing him. Amid a crisis that could yet have far more serious consequences, Málaga had been unable to register the Japan international because of the salary limit. He leaves without playing a competitive...
Málaga, Las Palmas and Deportivo La Coruña will almost certainly be relegated after Paco López returned to his boyhood club to mastermind their stunning surge towards safety“Keep calm,” Levante’s manager, Paco López, said but he knew better than anyone that it was a bit late for that. Maybe tomorrow. For now, Sunday lunchtime in the Valencian sunshine, it was time to enjoy it, like he’d said from the start. His players had thrown shirts into the crowd and turned the pitch into a mosh pit, pushing and pogoing, dancing round a circle, emotion escaping as they embraced and 24,001 red-and-blue flags waved: 24,000 around the ground and one high above them all. Along the east stand, the division’s team’s flags...
Barça’s fate was in their own hands, which as it turned out was the worst place it could be against Málaga, despite the draw by La Liga title rivalsBarcelona’s fate was in their own hands, which as it turned out was the worst place it could possibly be. Saturday’s story was the story of the season in Spain: everything changed to stay the same, the table remaining unmoved. Another dead ball, another defender leaping to score, another victory coming for Real Madrid, this time in the city derby – the game the front pages had declared “half the league” only that was not the half of it. Pepe’s header would have been an appropriate way to win their first title...
It was raining goals in Manchester on Tuesday but where does City’s 5-3 win over Monaco stand alongside other great Champions League nights?Dynamo Kyiv’s wonderful team of the late 1990s deserved a Champions League final – but on a pulsating night at a packed Olympiyskiy they threw away the best chance they would ever have. It was exquisite fare for much of the evening and, when Andriy Shevchenko squeezed in his second goal of the night two minutes before half-time, seemed to be going precisely as the old master Valeriy Lobanovskiy had designed. Moments later Michael Tarnat’s daisycutter of a free-kick restored some doubt but Vitaliy Kosovskiy’s 50th-minute goal – capitalising on some sloppy defending – suggested Dynamo would cut...