After a five-year stay sprinkled with fond memories, Levante’s relegation was confirmed via a 6-0 defeat at Real MadridAdrián Cordero Vega ended it a second too early and not a moment too soon. The clock said 89.59 when the referee blew but it had been over almost from the start, and not just last night. Levante were a goal down after 12:42 at the Bernabéu; they were down-down as well, no longer able to resist the inevitable, the fate they had fought. “We’ve been been given up for dead many times but keep rising again,” said Alessio Lisci, their third coach this season and the only one to win a game, but this was a resurrection too far. Now they...
Manchester City were the more coherent team but the white noise and white light of the Bernabéu was decisive in semi-finalWhen the moment came it seemed to strike Daniele Orsato like a surge of static energy. The referee had been phlegmatic at the Bernabéu. He shrugged. He jogged. But this place does something to you. As Karim Benzema fell, ankle tapped by a lunge from Rúben Dias, even before his body hit the turf Orsato’s arm was springing out from his side, ramrod straight, possessed with the voodoo of another of these absurd electrical storms, these nights of white noise, white light, where nothing is ever done until it’s done.Benzema stepped up and rolled the penalty kick into the empty...
Emotional and empathic manager galvanised a flawed team with an ageing midfield for a canter to La Liga crownThe season that ended early with Carlo Ancelotti becoming the only manager to win all five of Europe’s major leagues started with a phone call about something completely different. If this wasn’t exactly the way they had planned it, that’s because it was better. In late May last year Zinedine Zidane announced he was leaving Real Madrid, dropping a letter bomb as he went, and the sudden search for someone to replace him wasn’t going particularly well. Until one Saturday when, discussing other deals, they told Ancelotti as much, the conversation shifting from players to coaches, an idea forming. What about me?A...
Manchester City could have sent the visitors packing in the first hour but Karim Benzema’s Panenka sets up Bernabéu returnWith a quarter of an hour gone at the Etihad Stadium, on a night when this entire lighted stage seemed to ripple and shudder, Phil Foden did something lovely. Haring off in pursuit of a high, lost, floated pass destined for the bleachers, Foden scampered on, feet battering the turf, calibrating angles and arc, and pulled that floated pass out of the sky like a man charming down the moon with a stick.His first touch cushioned it, his second fizzed it the through the middle of the sea of lost souls previously known as the Real Madrid defence. A muddle of...
As this week’s semi-finals lineup shows, the Champions League is no longer a fair competition but in the grip of a few franchisesThe two best teams in Europe, the most successful club in the history of the competition, a gritty outsider – in some ways the lineup for this week’s Champions League semi-finals is perfect. Each offers in addition an intriguing subplot: Pep Guardiola fighting the curse of overthought, Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool chasing an implausible quadruple, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema raging against the dying of the light, the frankly hilarious prospect of Unai Emery returning to Paris for the final and making a point to Paris Saint-Germain, a club that never took him seriously (perhaps he could have...