Search: ' La Liga'

The killing of two fans in Turkey put Leeds United under intense scrutiny. Mark Rutter says its response shows how far the club has come

“Welcome to civilisation.” So read the banner displayed outside Elland Road before Leeds United’s UEFA Cup semi-final second leg against Galatasaray. Produced for the benefit of the TV cameras as a barbed message to watching Turks, this bold claim to the moral high ground must have caused a few raised eyebrows among English fans who have visited this part of west Yorkshire at various times over the past 30 years.

Read more…

Having won the Premiership for the sixth time in eight seasons, are Manchester United in a (European) league of their own?

­So, another stroll to the title for Manchester United with records broken in the process for the number of goals scored and the points margin ahead of second place. Is it all getting a bit too easy? The Sunday Times thinks so, suggesting they “are on the threshold of the sort of monopoly Rangers enjoy in Scotland”.  The relative ease with which United won their sixth title in eight years has been contrasted with more closely contested championships elsewhere, with Lazio still pushing Juventus in Italy, Bayer Leverkusen leading Bayern Munich going into the final fortnight of the Bundesliga and as many as four teams with a realistic chance of winning the Spanish league with three games left.

Read more…

Everyone agrees top footballers are playing too many games, except Roger Titford, who can remember when they endured far more without whining. Phil Ball and Neil McCarthy sum up the situation in Spain and France

England
Once again, the top clubs are calling for a reduction in the number of fixtures. Arsène Wenger (31 players used already this season) is to the fore of the com­plaints, while Alex  Ferguson’s strategy for managing his club’s 60-game workload is plain to see. “The recovery time is too short,” Wenger said after Arsenal’s defeat at Middlesbrough in March, which followed a midweek UEFA Cup match. “It is nonsense to have only two and a half days of preparation.”

Read more…

Football in Greece is turning increasingly ugly, tainted by both hooliganism and corruption. Paul Pomonis reports

When fans of Olympiakos used stones, lumps of wood and petrol bombs to attack a bus carrying AEK Athens supporters to their Greek Cup semi-final second leg last month, there can have been few in Greek football who were either shocked or surprised. Violence and corruption have been escalating for years and the AEK-Olympiakos feud is the  most poisonous of all in the festering domestic game.

Read more…

Cris Freddi reflects on a stunning win for Norwich City in their UEFA Cup run of 1993

Bayern were at home, where they had never lost to a British team. Their last three results in the Bundesliga were 4-0 against Hamburg and Cologne and 3-1 against a “masochistic” Mönchengladbach. They were playing their 185th European match, Norwich their third. Morten Olsen, coach of Cologne, regarded them as the best team in Germany: “Their blend of youth and experience is exactly right.” Bayern’s team sheet included more than a few familiar names, including Matthäus, Jorginho, Scholl, Wouters, Helmer and Ziege. Norwich boasted Prior, Culverhouse, Butterworth and Newman. And yet Norwich were not written off beforehand, at least not in England.

Read more…