La Liga leaders Barcelona saw their record winning run come to an end with a shock 1-1 draw at Sporting Gijon and it could have been worse had David Villa not scored a brilliant 79th-minute equalizer to salvage a point.
Barcelona had won 16 consecutive league games to beat the old mark of the great Real Madrid side of 1960-1961, but the champions saw their historical sequence broken and the two dropped points are a real boost for title rivals Real.
Barcelona are now eight points ahead of Jose Mourinho’s side having played a game more.
Photo: Reuters
Unfashionable Sporting, two points above the relegation zone, took the lead through David Barral after 16th minutes and Barcelona needed a delightful chip from Villa late on to snatch a point.
“We managed to get a draw and we have to be happy with a point,” Villa said. “Barcelona never settle for a draw because we always like to win, but it is true that Sporting were superior to us in certain aspects.”
It was the first away points dropped all season for Barcelona, who had won all 10 of their away games prior to the match, and coach Pep Guardiola will hope for a better display on Wednesday when his side travel to Arsenal for the first leg of their last-16 Champions League tie.
A fired-up Sporting started the better of the two sides and took a surprise 16th-minute lead when Barral cut inside from the left flank and left Gerard Pique in his wake, before firing low into the corner.
Barcelona don’t often go behind and they found it difficult to respond against hosts who defended deep in numbers.
Barca didn’t have a noteworthy effort on goal until just after the half-hour mark when Andres Iniesta shot across goal, but goalkeeper Ivan Cuellar saved well.
On 53 minutes, rightback Dani Alves nipped past his man and cut the ball back for Xavi, but the midfielder scuffed his shot and Cuellar smothered the effort.
Two minutes later, Lionel Messi was foiled by Cuellar at his near post and Alves almost scored a minute later.
Sporting could barely get out of their half, but Barcelona did not make the breakthrough until the 79th minute when Villa floated a delightful chip over Cuellar.
Villa did not celebrate the goal out of respect for his hometown club Gijon, where he began his career before going on to become a world superstar.
Elsewhere, the future of Atletico Madrid coach Quique Sanchez Flores was hanging by a thread after a Joaquin brace helped Valencia to a 2-1 comeback win at the Vicente Calderon on Saturday.
Joaquin scored an 86th-minute winner to punish Atletico, who have won just once this year under Flores, and Valencia move two points above Villarreal into third place.
Atletico are seven points off the top six, with the the pre-season target of Champions League soccer out of sight and Flores could face the axe with his old team Valencia, where he played for 10 years and who he managed for two seasons, possibly putting the final nail in his coffin.
“The fans cheer me up because they appreciate things and that’s why I will do everything I possibly can to turn things around,” Flores said.
Atletico got the perfect start when Jose Antonio Reyes put them ahead after just three minutes, but Joaquin leveled for Valencia on 41 minutes.
Diego Forlan missed a crucial penalty on 56 minutes and Joaquin scored a fine winner, curling in a right-footed shot from just outside the area with four minutes left.
It propelled Valencia into third and was the perfect preparation for their Champions League last-16 first-leg match at home to Schalke 04 tomorrow.
In Saturday’s other match, 10-man Racing Santander defeated Sevilla 3-2 in an enthralling match to give new coach Marcelino a winning start.
Substitute Manuel Arana scored a stoppage-time winner to lift Racing four points above the relegation zone.
Racing went two goals up inside the first 19 minutes, but goalscorer Christian Salas was sent off on 39 minutes for violent conduct and Sevilla leveled at 2-2, before Arana’s sensational winner.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier