Barcelona threw away two vital points in a 1-1 home draw with Racing Santander on Saturday as the Spanish giants slumped to their worst league start in 35 years.
Argentine winger Lionel Messi converted a 70th-minute penalty, but Barca failed to take advantage and Jonathan Pereira equalized six minutes later to deny the hosts victory.
One point from six is a woeful start for coach Pep Guardiola who will expect better when Barcelona start their Champions League campaign tomorrow with a home match against Sporting Lisbon.
PHOTO: AP
“I can’t criticize the players as I am very happy with their attitude,” Guardiola said. “Football is the only sport where you can win without having any real shots on goal. Our opponents [Numancia in the first game and Racing] have hardly threatened our goal, but have still taken five points from us.”
Guardiola was clearly unhappy with the opening 1-0 defeat by Numancia and showed he is not afraid to make big decisions by dropping Thierry Henry.
Bojan Krkic, Andres Iniesta and Messi all started on the substitutes bench — probably because of their international exertions — making way for the lesser known Sergi Busquets, 20, and 21-year-old striker Pedro “Pedrito” Rodriguez.
Gerard Pique, recruited from Manchester United in the summer, also made his debut in defense.
Substitute Messi — recently criticized by his hero Diego Maradona for being too greedy — broke the deadlock with a spot-kick.
However, Pereira restored parity, deflecting in a drilled free-kick to prompt jeers at the Camp Nou.
Atletico Madrid are also in Champions League action tomorrow at PSV Eindhoven — their first game in the competition since the 1996-1997 season — but their preparations were spoiled by a 2-1 defeat at 10-man Valladolid.
“We committed two errors that were avoidable and they led to two goals,” Atletico coach Javier Aguirre said. “It is a step backward, but we have to forget it and start from scratch again to focus on Tuesday’s match.”
Atletico Madrid paid the price for the international break with Uruguayan Diego Forlan unavailable after arriving back late from the World Cup qualifiers.
Defender Jonny Heitinga was also injured on international duty with the Netherlands, forcing Aguirre to ring the changes.
Valladolid took full advantage of Atletico’s makeshift side scoring after just three minutes through Vivar Dorado.
On 21 minutes Valladolid had Pedro Lopez sent off for two cautionable offenses, but the hosts still went two goals up seven minutes later through a penalty.
Substitute Kun Aguero pulled one back, but Valladolid bravely held on.
Sevilla nudged Atletico from top spot after a superb 4-3 victory over Sporting Gijon in Saturday’s late game.
Sporting went 2-0 up inside the first 20 minutes, but Sevilla stormed back with quick-fire goals from Ernesto Chevanton after 21 minutes, Freddy Kanoute in the 36th minute and Enzo Maresca a minute later, to put the hosts in front.
The scoring did not end there though, with Mate Bilic converting a penalty close to halftime for his second goal as a thrilling goal-packed half ended 3-3. Kanoute scored the only goal of the second half to push Sevilla to the league summit.
“It was a crazy game, but it is an important three points for us and that is what matters,” Kanoute said. Spanish La Liga TEAM P GD PTS 1 Sevilla 2 1 4 2 Atletico Madrid 2 3 3 3 Valencia 1 3 3 4 Almeria 1 2 3 5 Deportivo La Coruna 1 1 3 6 Getafe 1 1 3 7 Espanyol 1 1 3 8 Numancia 1 1 3 9 Recreativo Huelva 1 1 3 10 Valladolid 2 0 3 11 Racing Santander 2 0 2 12 Osasuna 1 0 1 13 Villareal 1 0 1 14 Barcelona 2 -1 1 15 Real Madrid 1 -1 0 16 Real Betis 1 -1 0 17 Sporting Gijon 2 -2 0 18 Athletic Bilbao 1 -2 0 19 Mallorca 1 -3 0 20 Malaga 1 -4 0
When Paddy Dwyer arrived in China in 1976, crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of him and his companions — the first Western soccer team to play in the country. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and on the brink of market reforms that would take the country from economic stagnation to explosive growth. “All we could see was lines of people running beside our bus, trying to look in the windows, to see their first visual of a white person,” he said. “It was all bicycles,” he said. “There were very few cars to be seen.” Dwyer,
A new NZ$683 million (US$404 million) stadium that was a symbol of Christchurch’s struggle to rebuild after a deadly earthquake struck the New Zealand city is to host its first match tomorrow in front of a sellout crowd. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 185 people in February 2011 and toppled or damaged buildings, including the city’s old Lancaster Park. The stadium, which hosted international rugby and cricket, and was home to the Canterbury Crusaders, was badly damaged and never reopened. It was bulldozed in 2019 and turned into sports fields, leaving the Crusaders without a permanent home. Government funding for a new stadium was
Some of Clearlake Capital Group’s largest investors are growing increasingly concerned about how much time the company’s co-founders are spending on sports investments as they have struggled to complete the fundraising for the private equity firm’s latest flagship fund. One of Clearlake’s co-founders, Behdad Eghbali, has been spending what some investors described as a disproportionate amount of time on the firm’s investment in Chelsea Football Club in recent months. Now, co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, are nearing a record US$3.9 billion deal to acquire the San Diego Padres. That personal investment by Feliciano has set off the latest
The Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburg Penguins on Wednesday put a squeeze on the penalty box in Game 3 of their NHL playoff series — with 11 players cramped inside their designated punishment areas. Each could have snapped a team photo after a melee broke out in the second period of the Flyers’ 5-2 win over the Penguins in their Eastern Conference first-round series. “It was a party in there,” penalized Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler said. The celebration extended into the joyous locker room after the Flyers took a 3-0 series lead. Penguins forward Bryan Rust slammed Travis Konecny to the ice behind the
RSS