LATEST SPORTS NEWS

At the final whistle, there was a scream that echoed around another empty arena in which Real Madrid had won and their players raised their arms. They had been made to suffer, more than they had expected after a seemingly perfect start, but they were safe now, so nearly there. Two early goals from Ferland Mendy and Karim Benzema had been enough – just – to take them to a ninth consecutive win, beating Granada 2-1, and within one win of winning the title with two games still to go. The longest league will be theirs, secured when it became the shortest: an intense summer tournament in which they never even trailed, let alone lost.

When the football restarted after almost a hundred days of lockdown, Madrid were second, a club that had won only two of the last 11 La Liga titles on course to miss out on another. But this eleven-game mini-league has been good for them. The Covid league, as Sergio Ramos called it, meant a tangible target laid before them, something to reach out and take. Zinedine Zidane’s team arrived here having won eight from eight and kept five consecutive clean sheets, leading Barcelona on the head to head record with a game in hand. They hadn’t even trailed yet. And didn’t here either.

Continue reading...

from Football | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2WfTQzS