There's been an award for an Argentine player in MLS, a bucket-full of goals for Argentines in Italy, the captaincy of the national team bestowed upon Javier Mascherano in England, another goal for Fernando Cavenaghi in France, and plenty of goals in Mexico too. The headline act of the weekend, though, was in Spain: Gonzalo Higuaín continued [. Click to continue reading...

There is a school of thought that holds that the only objective in football is to score more goals than the opposition. Real Madrid's performance against Málaga was an exemplar of this, coming back after being down in the match three times, playing one man down for all of the second half, and still managing to win the game with all four goals scored by the same man: Gonzalo Higuaín. Click to continue reading...

Real Madrid put paid to a lacklustre last few games with a draw at Primera División newcomers Almería. This leaves them still lying in third place in the league standings, two points behind leaders Barcelona, who have had a particularly impressive run of form recently, scoring fifteen goals (including five against Almería) in their last four encounters. Click to continue reading...

Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm not fond of conspiracy theories (for my previous 'rant' on this issue, see the recent article and comments on Raúl). The latest one comes straight from the heart of Real Madrid Towers and revolves around dodgy refereeing decisions.

Pedja 'Brylcreem' Mijatovic left little of his state of mind (such as it is) to the imagination with statements like "we are worried. Click to continue reading...

Gonzalo Higuaín snatched all three points for Real Madrid with a goal from the penalty spot deep into injury time and extends his side's unbeaten run at the Vicente Calderon stadium to nine years. However, the true "star" of the show was, for all the wrong reasons, referee Carlos Clos Gómez. Two disallowed goals, two extremely rigorous sendings-off and one instance of not applying the advantage rule when it could have resulted in a goal mean that he will get significantly more column inches than any of the other 22 men on the pitch. Click to continue reading...

Real Madrid beat UEFA Cup and Supercup holders Zenit St. Petersburg 2-1 to win their first away game in Europe in two years. It was also their second successive win in Russia after beating Lokomotiv Moscow in 2003. The game was played at breakneck pace, especially in the first half, resulting in a very open attacking encounter with a large number of chances from both sides. Click to continue reading...

Poor Sporting de Gijón. Ten years out of the top division and on your return you have to face Sevilla, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Villareal one after the other in your first five weeks. On Sunday, Barcelona put 6 past them and on Wednesday night Real Madrid went one better, making them the worst defensive side in La Liga in over 50 years. Click to continue reading...

Real Madrid kicked off their league championship at home with a victory, but failed to convince the local fans that they have reinforced the squad sufficiently over the summer. They left the pitch to a mixture of boos and applause barely having managed to subdue a rival that has only just been promoted to the top division. Click to continue reading...

What some madridistas feared did not come to pass: Real Madrid came out to meet Barcelona with their minds fully on the task at hand and there was no indication that there was any residual hangover from the league celebrations on Sunday night. In fact, if anything, it was their rivals who looked a little lost at sea, though they had, in theory, more to play for. Click to continue reading...

Despite playing almost the whole of the second half with 10 men, Real Madrid managed to overturn a 1-0 deficit with less than 10 minutes to go and win their thirty-first league title. It's the first time they have won back-to-back titles since 1990 (though that was the last in a run of five consecutive champioships), when John Toshack was in charge. Click to continue reading...

The number two features highly following the league results at the weekend: two points out of the next four games are all that Real Madrid need to clinch their thirty-first league championship. Two is also the number of teams still in the race, as Barcelona dropped out of contention after going 2-0 in Riazor against Deportivo on Saturday. Click to continue reading...

The best Racing side in living memory went into their clash with Real Madrid on Sunday knowing that a win would lift them up to fourth in the table and into Champions League territory. Atlético's surprise defeat at home to Betis on Saturday motivated the Cantabrian side to come out all guns blazing, much like one of those Atlantic gales that regularly hit Santander. Click to continue reading...

Mallorca, the team responsible for dumping Real out of the first of three competitions this season, caused motormouth president Calderón to ask for help from on high (presumably the Spanish Federation and referees are not trustworthy enough): "I am afraid of all our opponents. It's very hard to win in Mallorca an I'm very happy with the draw because this point could prove to be very important at the end of the season. Click to continue reading...

Given the week-long gap between games at this stage of the season, press reports on Real Madrid during the greater part of the week have been concentrating on possible transfer movements during the summer. I normally don't bother reporting 90% of this stuff as it's more often than not concocted out of thin air, so I tend to wait till it's either officially announced, or the buzz is so insistent that there's a good chance it will happen. Click to continue reading...

The Madrid press was all abuzz with excitement following yesterday's 3-1 defeat of Sevilla. What with Barcelona throwing away a 2-0 lead at Betis the day before, they are now touting second-placed Villareal as the ones to watch in the run-in to the title. Without taking away from what was a much improved performance, it is still far too early to clay claim to the title, especially given how irregular Real has been in 2008 (won 9, lost 9). Click to continue reading...

It was a good week for Argentina's players in the European leagues, with important goals which will affect the title races of a number of Europe's bigger leagues and one or two eye-catchers further down the pecking order, too. And there were also a few expats on show on the opening weekend of Major League Soccer [. Click to continue reading...

The Argentine Olympic football squad had their first preperatory friendly under Sergio Batista's stewardship in the early hours (Argentine time) of Thursday morning, and easily beat Guatemala by five goals to nil. Accepting that their rivals will hardly be challenging for the title themselves, Batista none the less declared himself 'very pleased with the attitude' [. Click to continue reading...

It was not a classic performance by any means, but there were some positives to take away from Sunday's 2-0 win over Recreativo de Huelva. Real started the game at a much higher tempo than we have been used to and Raúl had a header for the opener within 13 seconds of the start. Robben seems to have reached full match fitness and his speed is causing problems for defenders on the wings. Click to continue reading...

It wasn't pretty, but it was a win. That's not a standard summary game review for last season, but a fair reflection of Saturday's outcome against Almería. The newly promoted side set out to prove that their 3-0 season opening win at Deportivo was no fluke and took the game to Real Madrid, who floundered for the first half hour or so.

Saviola, in for Van Nistelrooy who was presumably not 100% after his international duty for the Netherlands, had a goal disallowed for a clear offside before picking up a rebound off the post from a Raúl strike and neatly putting it away. Click to continue reading...

Two of Argentina's finest were yesterday celebrating their liberation from the shackles of oppression (in so far as anyone getting paid millions of pounds a year to play football can be said to be 'oppressed'). Javier Saviola played his first match for Real Madrid, after his free transfer from Barcelona, and scored in a 5-2 win [...] Click to continue reading...

Let's get the excuses out of the way first: It's only the preseason, the players have only been together for a week and some of them had not yet arrived from their holidays, Hannover kicks off in the Bundesliga in 10 days, whereas there are over 3 weeks to go to the start of the Spanish league.

The above are all valid, but they do not take away from the aptness of the saying pride comes before a fall. Click to continue reading...