Barcelona turned around a terrible start to end the year as the undisputed kings of Spanish soccer once more having sealed a second treble of La Liga, Copa del Rey and UEFA Champions League in just six years.
The Catalans lost their first game of the year to former Manchester United manager David Moyes’ Real Sociedad, sparking an internal crisis at the club.
Star player Lionel Messi refused to attend a training session with the club’s fans, while sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta was sacked and his assistant, club legend Carles Puyol, resigned in support.
Photo: Reuters
Coach Luis Enrique’s job was even thought to be on the line, but Messi’s relationship with Luis Suarez and Neymar blossomed in a period of 20 wins in 21 matches that took Barca to the brink of matching the most glorious season in their 116-year history under Pep Guardiola in 2008-2009.
Messi trumped Guardiola on his first return home as an opposing coach as the Argentine scored twice and set up Neymar for a third as Barca decisively won the first leg of their Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich 3-0, before progressing to the final 5-3 on aggregate.
A fifth La Liga title in seven years was swiftly sealed thanks to Messi’s winner against Atletico Madrid as a hitherto rampant Real Madrid floundered in the spring, albeit the final advantage was a mere two points.
More Messi magic delivered the Copa del Rey two weeks later. The four-time World Player of the Year scoring one of his most memorable goals ever as he somehow escaped the attentions of four Athletic Bilbao defenders to open the scoring in a 3-1 win.
Seven days later in Berlin, Messi was not on the scoresheet, but it mattered little as Barca saw off Juventus by the same scoreline to seal the treble and a fifth European Cup.
Suarez and Neymar netted the decisive goals against the Italian champions to take the trio’s tally for the season to 122.
In Spain, Madrid and Barca are a seesaw; when one is up the other is inevitably down. So it proved, as just a year after delivering the club’s treasured 10th European Cup, Carlo Ancelotti was sacked as Real Madrid boss for not delivering a major trophy.
The decision by president Florentino Perez was not a popular one among the players and fans.
The biggest embarrassment for Real Madrid came off the field. The richest club in the world were thrown out of the Copa del Rey earlier this month for fielding an ineligible player.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS