Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola said the pressure was now on Real Madrid after his side beat Recreativo Huelva 2-0 at the Camp Nou on Saturday to open up a nine-point gap at the Spanish League summit.
For Barcelona, keeping players fresh seems the main concern for coach Guardiola, who rested Carles Puyol, Xavi and Samuel Eto’o against Recreativo to give them a breather in the season run-in.
Uruguayan Martin Caceres started in defense against his old club, while Bojan Krkic replaced Eto’o in attack.
PHOTO: AP
After watching Barcelona smash four goals past Bayern in the first half in midweek, Huelva, third from bottom, would have wanted to keep things tight, but it didn’t work out that way.
Thierry Henry used his pace to get in behind the defense and his cut back was slotted in by Andres Iniesta with just 46 seconds gone.
Victor Valdes was then called upon to make a great save to foil Sebastian Nayar in the sixth minute.
Barcelona were controlling proceedings and Lionel Messi thought he had doubled the lead minutes before the interval, only for Nasief Morris to block his goal-bound shot.
An own-goal provided Barcelona with the second they craved as the sliding Morris diverted Iniesta’s cross into his own net. Lionel Messi missed a penalty late on, but it proved irrelevant.
Spain’s other Champions League hopefuls, Villarreal fell to their third league defeat in four games with a 2-0 home loss to Malaga on Saturday.
Worryingly for Villarreal, Marcos Senna, club captain and the main playmaker, was taken off with a knock in the closing stages.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB