by Sid Lowe | Sep 23, 2017 | Sports
London – Thirty-five different teams over 73 games stretching back almost 18 months had tried and failed to stop Real Madrid scoring. Real Betis went one better. Manchester United couldn’t do it, Manchester City couldn’t do it and Bayern Munich couldn’t do it....
by Sid Lowe | Aug 8, 2017 | Sports
London- Álvaro Morata is very nice. A buenaco (roughly, a lovely bloke), in the words of Diego Mariño, who played with him for Spain’s European Under-21 champions in 2013. There is, Mariño says, “no malice” to Chelsea’s new striker and talking to those who know him,...
by Sid Lowe | Jul 16, 2017 | Sports
London – Luka Modric went to lift the trophy but there was nothing in his hands, just a look on his face that said it all. Beside him, Gareth Bale was giggling. Real Madrid won the league, shouting, embracing and leaping around the pitch at the Rosaleda where...
by Sid Lowe | Jun 28, 2017 | Sports
London – “That’s not something I am contemplating.” The phrase was repeated often but that did not make it any more true. On Monday night Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, insisted he was not even thinking about a series of scenarios that he certainly...
by Sid Lowe | Jun 27, 2017 | Sports
London – There were around 40 people on the coaching course Mauricio Pellegrino took when he was a player at Valencia in 1999 and he wanted to know what it was that moved them to be there, so he did something he has done ever since football took him from his...