Part of the reason attendances at the Bernabéu are down this season is simple: Real Madrid are not very goodSanti Solari was right, but he got it so very wrong. First they attacked him for what he said, then they attacked him for what he did. Others, meanwhile, just gave up and walked away, leaving him standing where Real Madrid managers so often stand: alone. On Saturday, two days after his team had been held 2-2 at Villarreal on their return from the winter break and winning the Club World Cup, the hounds released, Solari insisted that draws shouldn’t be “underestimated”; as if to prove the point, a prisoner of his words, the next day they were beaten 2-0 by...
In the past 10 years, any Premier League attacker who can maintain an A-list run has become a target of La Liga super clubs – but it would be a terrible idea for the Liverpool strikerIs English football in danger of losing Mohamed Salah to Real Madrid or Barcelona because he is now simply too good to stay?Mido certainly thinks so. Yes: that Mido. The same Mido who once issued a formal apology to Middlesbrough fans for being too fat. The same Mido who is, it turns out, a very good pundit these days and who raised a doubly interesting point this week about Salah’s trajectory in this, his second season of outright Premier League supremacy. Related: 11.7mm from glory:...
Press and possess is the method of many leading teams but Didier Deschamps’ side in Russia and Real Madrid before them picked up the biggest prizes playing in their own mannerThe same basics everywhere: it would be easy to believe that football in 2018 was about the victory of press and possess. Manchester City do it, Liverpool do it, Tottenham do it, Chelsea do it, Arsenal do it, Barcelona do it, Juventus do it, Napoli do it, Bayern Munich do it, Borussia Dortmund do it, even Paris Saint-Germain have been showing signs of doing it under Thomas Tuchel. Manchester United didn’t do it and José Mourinho was sacked after a grim opening to the season in which his ideas had...
Continuing our series of controversies that defined the year, Liverpool’s key player was fouled by Real’s controversial hard man in the 22nd minute of the Champions League finalIt was four minutes before the enormity of the situation truly sunk in and a communal gasp came from the sea of red inside Kiev’s Olimpiyskiy Stadium. Mohamed Salah was down for a second time in quick succession, only this time he was down and out of the Champions League final. A season of joy, brilliance and 44 goals had been brought to a premature, painful and tearful halt. Sergio Ramos shared a joke with an assistant referee as the idol of Liverpool and Egypt headed for the tunnel and the worst moment...
Barcelona finally shrugged off the ghost of Butarque but Atlético and Real had their own battles as La Liga’s threads all came together in Madrid“The Ghost of Butarque: that’s a good name for a novel,” Ernesto Valverde said. It was coming up to midnight three days after Halloween and, Barcelona’s manager admitted, “everywhere we turned the Ghost of Butarque appeared.” His team were back in Madrid for the first time since September, the final leg of a Grand Day Out in the capital – Leganés v Atlético at 1pm, Real Madrid v Valladolid at 4.15pm, Rayo v Barcelona at 8.45pm – and it was happening again: the same feelings, the same fears. Back then, Barcelona lost at bottom-placed Leganés, their...