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.
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‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
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