Sniping comments between Jose Mourinho and members of the Real Madrid squad have caused president Florentino Perez to make a rare foray into the limelight to call for unity at the club during the season run-in.
The nine-time European champions host Malaga in La Liga today in a rearranged fixture due to their involvement in the May 17 Copa del Rey final against Atletico Madrid.
Second-placed Real must win to make leaders Barcelona wait to be crowned champions, as they trail Tito Vilanova’s side by 11 points with four games left.
Anything less than a win would gift Barca a fourth league crown in five years without having to play.
Speculation over Mourinho’s future has gone into overdrive since Real were denied a place in the UEFA Champions League final by Borussia Dortmund last week and the Portuguese has done little to quash it.
Instead, Mourinho stirred up simmering divisions at the club last Friday by having a dig at popular club captain and goalkeeper Iker Casillas, who he has dropped in favor of Diego Lopez recently.
The Santiago Bernabeu cheered Casillas’ name when it was read out among the substitutes at the stadium before their 4-3 La Liga win over Real Valladolid on Saturday. Mourinho’s name was whistled by a large section of the crowd.
Pepe, regarded as a Mourinho favorite, and Sergio Ramos have since made comments in support of Casillas in local media.
“We have two big challenges in front of us with the Euroleague [basketball] Final Four and the Copa del Rey final,” Perez told reporters on Monday. “We should be united for the fans and give our all. Our players will do that.”
Real’s league challenge is effectively over, but they defend a 42-match unbeaten record in all competitions at the Santiago Bernabeu against a side suffering similar end-of-season symptoms, Malaga.
Since their Champions League quarter-final exit, also to Dortmund, Manuel Pellegrini’s side have steadily slipped out of contention for a top-four finish.
The Costa del Sol club are sixth with 53 points and are beset by rumors over the future of coach Pellegrini and possibly even their Qatari owners.
“We have to finish the year well so as not to spoil the season we have had,” Malaga’s Brazilian forward Julio Baptista told reporters. “It would be a shame not to get the points that would earn us a place in Europe. Although it is tough, we must forget about what is happening off the pitch. There are lots of non-football related issues, but the most important are the football ones.”
Third-placed Atletico Madrid visit relegation-threatened RC Celta de Vigo today looking to make the last automatic qualification berth for the Champions League mathematically safe.
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