An icy flight across Spain was in vain for Madrid as they were held in Pamplona while Atlêtico’s games in hand rack upAthletic Club Bilbao parked the bus but couldn’t land the plane. The driver arrived early and waited outside Barajas Terminal Four on Friday evening while thousands of feet above him the pilot bringing the team to Madrid to play Atlético circled the city before giving up and going home. At around the same time Real Madrid’s players were sitting in another plane on the runway, watching snow fall and time pass. To the south, Rayo Vallecano’s footballers got off the coach and helped push stranded cars along the road, or tried to. “Do you think we should be...
With not much money but spirit to burn, the club are using footage of fan power to drive their La Liga returnBack in the summer, when the recently promoted Osasuna were building a squad for their return to La Liga, they sent videos to the players they were trying to persuade to join them. They didn’t have much money – only three teams have a smaller budget – and they didn’t have success to sell, either: the second division title is the only thing they have won, and they had just done that for the first time in 58 years. But they could offer something different.When the tapes went out, sales pitches carefully edited in-house, they weren’t filled with 101...
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...
Unexpected promotion meant Osasuna were always going to struggle in La Liga this season. Now, with 12 games still to go, that struggle seems overEnrique Martín Monreal was in Madrid when his club called, the phone ringing as he headed back to the hotel from an awards ceremony held by Marca in early November. He hadn’t won – the award for the second division’s best manager in 2015-16 went to Leganés’s Asier Garitano – but he had been a candidate, having unexpectedly brought Osasuna back up to primera, and that was quite something. Besides, he was there representing the club and in the absence of the president, Luis Sabalza, who had a cold, there could be no one better. Represent...