Barcelona opened up a nine-point gap at the top of La Liga with an astounding 3-0 victory over Real Madrid at the Bernabeu on Saturday. Real now trail the leaders by 14 points, a seemingly insurmountable margin when coupled with what transpired over the final 45 minutes in Madrid.
On Saturday, match week 17 in La Liga will boil down to one match and one match only: the El Clasico between Real Madrid and Barcelona at the Santiago Bernabeu. Though Barcelona dares not think about losing the world’s greatest rivalry game, manager Ernesto Valverde is obviously correct in saying, “I don’t think a Clasico victory will give us the title.”
A Spain World Cup ban is an unbelievable possibility. FIFA is very emphatic when it comes to football federations' independence: they simply will not tolerate any government – or any other third parties, for that matter – influencing national soccer federations.
Similar to the rumors warning that Peru was in danger of a similar ban a few weeks ago, now FIFA admittedly has Spain in sight.
Mexican international Hugo Sánchez held records only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have surpassed in recent years. One of Real Madrid’s best strikers of all-time, Sánchez was also key for Los Blancos when it came to playing El Clásico.
With El Clásico looming on the horizon, it's time to remember one of the most successful players to ever take part in Spain’s — and arguably the world’s — biggest clash.
Real Madrid welcomes Barcelona to the Santiago Bernabeu on Saturday, December 23, for the 175th league edition of El Clasico. The stakes couldn’t be higher with Real desperate to make up ground in La Liga, while a victory for Barcelona at the home of its greatest rival would effectively doom Zinedine Zidane’s men in their quest to defend the title.
If there’s one goal to summarize Barcelona’s 2017-18 La Liga season thus far, it’s this one from the club’s 4-0 defeat of Deportivo on Sunday — it even starts with a poor touch from Luis Suarez, something the Uruguayan has been uncharacteristically guilty of on a number of occasions this season.
However, that touch is followed by a sensational 14-pass move from Barca and finished by Suarez, giving him six goals in his last five league games, so the striker is really beyond criticism right now.
It’s not football’s best kept secret, but Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone has confirmed that much like Radamel Falcao and Diego Costa before him, 26-year-old center forward Antoine Griezmann will be allowed to leave the club for “a once in a lifetime chance to play for a certain team.”
A meeting between third and fifth in La Liga turned into a rout inside the first half with Real Madrid racing to a 5-0 lead on Sevilla inside the match’s opening 42 minutes. Nacho got the first, Cristiano Ronaldo added a brace on the day his fifth Ballon d’Or trophy was presented to the Bernabeu crowd, Toni Kroos struck the fourth and 19-year-old Achraf Hakimi scored his first La Liga goal for the club.