La Liga
Barcelona bid farewell to emotional Pique with Almeria win
Barcelona enjoyed a 2-0 win over Almeria on Saturday but the night belonged to defender Gerard Pique’s who was playing his last game at the Camp Nou after he announced he will retire from soccer when LaLiga breaks for the World Cup next week.
Barca, who won with second-half goals from Ousmane Dembele and Frenkie de Jong, climbed to the top of the standings on 34 points from 13 games, two ahead of Real Madrid who have a game in hand and will visit Rayo Vallecano on Monday.
After missing several chances in the first-half, including a penalty for a handball that Robert Lewandowski put wide, Dembele broke the deadlock right after the break, slotting a precise shot into the bottom corner from a counter-attack.
In the 62nd minute, De Jong was well positioned inside the area to score off a rebound from goalkeeper Fernando Martinez and wrap up the points for Barcelona.
At a sold-out Camp Nou where everything surrounding the game was about the long-serving Pique, including the Barca players’ shirts which carried the word “Sempr3”, “Forever” in Catalonian, with Pique’s number 3 replacing the letter E.
The 35-year-old Pique, who started the game as captain, won 30 trophies, including three Champions League and eight LaLiga titles, with Barca.
He played well and almost scored in the first-half with two towering headers from corners against a defensive Almeria side who only had one shot on target in the match.
Pique was substituted in the 83rd minute, walking off the pitch in tears to a standing ovation from the 92,605 fans – the highest attendance at the Camp Nou so far this season – who packed the stadium to say goodbye to a club great.
He was thrown in the air by his team mates at the end of the match and gave an emotional speech to the adoring crowd.
“After a relationship of so much love and passion, I think it was time to give ourselves some space,” Pique told the Barca supporters who stayed behind for several minutes at the end of the game to honour their idol as tears rolled down his cheeks.
“I am sure that in the future I will be here again. This is not a farewell, I already said it when I was 16 years old when I went to Manchester United and came back. As my grandfather says, I was born here and I will die here. Visca Barca!”
Pique joined the Barcelona academy when he was 10 years old but left as a teenager to join United, where he made his professional debut in 2004.
He played one season on loan for Real Zaragoza before going back to Old Trafford where he was part of the team who won the Champions League and Premier League double in the 2007-8 season before heading back to Barcelona at the end of that campaign.
In 15 seasons at the Nou Camp he has become the player with the fifth highest number of appearances in the Spanish club’s history (667) after Lionel Messi (778), Xavi Hernandez (767), Sergio Busquets (694) and Andres Iniesta (674).
Regarded as one of the best centre backs of his generation, Pique collected 36 trophies during his 18-year career, including a World Cup and European Championship with Spain.
-Reuters
It was mission accomplished, said Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti after his side fought back from two-goals behind to snatch a rip-roaring 4-4 draw on Tuesday for a 5-4 aggregate win that put them through to the Copa del Rey final.
Ancelotti brushed off questions about a sub-par performance by his side and praised his players’ effort in what he considered a highly entertaining encounter.
“We have achieved our goal today which was to reach the final and there is not much time to think about it,” Ancelotti told a press conference.
“It was an entertaining game with some mistakes and a lot of good things. It was fun and we are in the final.
“I never saw ourselves out of it because anything can happen at the Bernabeu. When we have to come from behind, we never give up. We never give up, especially at home, with the fans by our side.”
Ancelotti said David Alaba was not to blame after he deflected two balls into his own goal, calling it “bad luck” by the Austrian defender, but urged his defence to play with better focus moving forward.
“It’s not good to concede four goals in a game,” Ancelotti said.
“Right now we are a team that has a lot of effectiveness up-front, but little balance.
“However, we can’t ignore what we did in attack, scoring four goals against Real is not that easy. I think we are doing quite well.”
Real Madrid, who have won the Spanish Cup only once in over a decade, will play either Barcelona or Atletico Madrid in a mouth-watering final in Seville next month.
Atletico fought back to hold Barca to a thrilling 4-4 draw ahead of Wednesday’s second-leg in Madrid.
-Reuters
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Real Madrid’s legendary coach Carlo Ancelotti will go on trial next week for allegedly failing to declare income to Spain’s tax office, the Madrid court which will hear the case has said.
Prosecutors are seeking a jail term of four years and nine months for the 65-year-old Italian, accusing him of having cost Spain’s treasury more than one million euros ($1.1 million) in undeclared earnings from image rights in 2014 and 2015.
The trial will begin on Wednesday and it is expected to last two days, a spokesman for the court said.
Ancelotti, who as a coach has won a record five Champions League trophies including three with Real, must be present for the hearings, he added.
Prosecutors accuse him of only declaring in his tax returns the personal remuneration received from Real Madrid during those two years even though he himself declared himself to be a tax resident in Spain and indicated his home was in Madrid.
They accuse Ancelotti of allegedly setting up a “confusing” and “complex” system of shell companies to hide his extra earnings from his image rights as well as from other sources such as real estate.
A Spanish court in 2023 ordered Ancelotti to stand trial over the affair, but did not set a date.
Ancelotti dismissed the affair last year as “an old story that I hope will be resolved soon” when he was asked about the case.
He took over at Real Madrid in 2013, leaving in May 2015, before being appointed at Bayern Munich the following year.
The former Italy international midfielder, who as a player won the European Cup twice with AC Milan, later managed Napoli and Everton before returning to Real Madrid in 2021.
Aside from his success in the Champions League he has won domestic league titles with Madrid and Milan, in England with Chelsea, in Germany with Bayern Munich and in France with Paris Saint-Germain.
-AFP
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Spain’s former soccer chief Luis Rubiales told Reuters on Thursday he would appeal a court ruling which found him guilty of sexual assault for kissing player Jenni Hermoso without her consent.-
-Reuters
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