Valencia have changed everything from their players’ diets to the players themselves, and the revolution at the club has sent them second from topValencia’s players were hungry. It was two years since they’d had a decent run of results and it felt almost as long since they’d had a decent meal.For the 13th time in five years they were under new management and this time things were actually going to change. Not just the coach but the culture, everything from the president to the players to what was put on their plate. If you are what you eat, it was time to eat something good. At Paterna, the club’s training ground, food was prepared for them, but not much of...
It’s hard to know where to start with Real Betis 3-6 Valencia, the game that was always likely to be fun but proved to be even more fantastic“I’m too old for this,” Marcelino said and he’s only 52. Three weeks ago the Valencia coach, who once got cramp in a press conference, pulled a muscle celebrating a dramatic late winner at Anoeta. That night it was his hamstring that hurt; on Sunday night it was his heart. His head too. His and everyone else’s. While he might be an excitable bundle of energy, dashing and leaping and pointing his way along the touchline, he wasn’t alone: it wasn’t just his brain spinning or his sternum about to burst. Down at...
Harmony has broken out on and off the pitch, so much so that their coach referred to Sunday’s 2-2 draw at the Bernabéu as a ‘lovely spectacle’“Every time you looked left and the men in white attacked, you thought: ‘We could lose this,’” said the Valencia coach, Marcelino García Toral. “But every time you looked right, my good side, and we attacked, there were real chances to score.” So Marcelino looked left, right and back again while behind him everyone in the Santiago Bernabéu stand did the same, accelerating to the end. Left, where Neto pushed Karim Benzema’s header against the post on 92.38; right, where Simone Zaza wriggled into the area on 93.22, the winner there before him until,...
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...
With the La Liga club struggling, the local-born manager who took them back to the top has departed, saying the team do not reflect him any moreThe revolution ended in tears. “This is hard,” Abelardo Fernández said, voice breaking, fingers rubbing at his eyes and kneading at his temples while the president gently laid a hand on his neck. “I’m not crying because I’m no longer the coach of Sporting Gijón,” he insisted, “I’m crying because of the affection I have for everyone here.” Wednesday morning at Mareo in the green, rolling hills south of Gijón where cowbells ring, and the man who declared “Sporting are revolutionary, like Asturias” , who rescued and represented the club, who often seemed to...