Barcelona made sure they will stay top of the Spanish La Liga with a 4-2 home win over Real Mallorca in the Camp Nou on Saturday.
Each week World Sport will be taking a look back at the best of the weekend's football action from around Europe.
Champions Barcelona bounced back from a dismal week to return to the top of the Spanish league with a 6-1 crushing of Real Zaragoza on Sunday night.
Nigeria kept alive their hopes of a World Cup finals place alive with a dramatic last-gasp goal to beat Mozambique 1-0 in African Group B on Sunday.
Sevilla ended Real Madrid's unbeaten start to the La Liga season with a 2-1 victory on Sunday which underlined the Spanish title race will be a three-horse race.
Pedro Rodriguez's superb first half goal gave Barcelona a 1-0 home win over Almeria to equal their best ever start to a Spanish league season.
Real Madrid coach Manuel Pellegrini has confirmed that winger Cristiano Ronaldo has been ruled out of his side's La Liga clash with Sevilla on Sunday with an ankle injury.
Big summer signings Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo were on target as Real Madrid maintained their perfect start to the Spanish season with a 2-0 win over Villarreal on Wednesday night.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored his fourth goal in as many La Liga outings as Spanish champions Barcelona matched their best start to season since 1997-98 with a 4-1 trouncing of Racing Santander, but the summer signing also suffered an injury blow.
Lionel Messi committed his future to reigning Spanish champions Barcelona by signing a new six-year contract with the Catalan giants.
Barcelona made sure they will stay top of the Spanish La Liga with a 4-2 home win over Real Mallorca in the Camp Nou on Saturday.
Each week World Sport will be taking a look back at the best of the weekend's football action from around Europe.
Champions Barcelona bounced back from a dismal week to return to the top of the Spanish league with a 6-1 crushing of Real Zaragoza on Sunday night.
Nigeria kept alive their hopes of a World Cup finals place alive with a dramatic last-gasp goal to beat Mozambique 1-0 in African Group B on Sunday.
Sevilla ended Real Madrid's unbeaten start to the La Liga season with a 2-1 victory on Sunday which underlined the Spanish title race will be a three-horse race.
Pedro Rodriguez's superb first half goal gave Barcelona a 1-0 home win over Almeria to equal their best ever start to a Spanish league season.
Real Madrid coach Manuel Pellegrini has confirmed that winger Cristiano Ronaldo has been ruled out of his side's La Liga clash with Sevilla on Sunday with an ankle injury.
Big summer signings Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo were on target as Real Madrid maintained their perfect start to the Spanish season with a 2-0 win over Villarreal on Wednesday night.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored his fourth goal in as many La Liga outings as Spanish champions Barcelona matched their best start to season since 1997-98 with a 4-1 trouncing of Racing Santander, but the summer signing also suffered an injury blow.
Lionel Messi committed his future to reigning Spanish champions Barcelona by signing a new six-year contract with the Catalan giants.
Champions League hopefuls Sevilla suffered a disastrous start to the Spanish season as striker Fredi Kanoute was sent off in the 2-0 defeat at Valencia on Sunday.
World-record signing Cristiano Ronaldo scored on his debut as Real Madrid kicked off the Spanish football season with a shaky 3-2 victory at home to Deportivo La Coruna on Saturday night.
Even the proudest of Spaniards had to accept defeat; even the most enthusiastic La Liga cheerleaders were forced to pack away their pompoms. The warm glow of the European Championship success still endured -- but the national team was one thing, the nation's teams quite another. The lineup for the 2008-09 Champions League semifinals brought Spain crashing back down to earth.
Real Madrid coach Manuel Pellegrini believes his squad is now "complete" and ready for the challenge of a new Primera Division campaign.
After an off-season of big-money transfers and endless speculation in Spain the focus finally turns to matters on the pitch. The first round of La Liga fixtures kick off this weekend and Fanzone details what to expect from the new campaign:
From Olympic-team starter to Serie B bench-warmer in less than 12 months, Danny Szetela may be one of the few American players whose move to Europe actually set him back in the national-team pool.
Manchester United and Liverpool fans dream of the arrival of superstar players ahead of a new campaign, but it seems the spending power of both Englsih giants could be on the wane.
A tight-lipped Shunsuke Nakamura left Japan on Friday ahead of his move to the Spain's La Liga with Barcelona-based Espanyol.
If Manchester United and Liverpool fans are expecting the arrival of superstar players ahead of the new season then they had better think again, as the cost of refinancing debt could significantly curb the club's spending power according to industry experts.
Real Madrid's incredible summer spending spree will go past $300 million this week as Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema sign on the dotted line at the Bernabeu.
Chilean coach Manuel Pellegrini has been unveiled at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium as the new coach of Spanish giants Real Madrid, signing a two-year deal with the side.
One is the kind of athlete you might design in a lab: tall, lean and muscular, with a seemingly inexhaustible arsenal of skills. The other is a throwback, a scrappy little player whose abilities are more difficult to pin down because they border on the metaphysical. At 6'1" and 172 pounds, Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo is soccer's Magic Johnson: a big man with skills usually associated with smaller players. At 5'7" and 148 pounds, Barcelona's Lionel Messi looks more like somebody's kid brother and plays like Pete Maravich, with an otherworldly touch that allows him to do the unthinkable with the ball.
"Relegation" is a word that is laced with horror for many football fans in European and Asian nations -- yet for others it remains a complete mystery.
If Rafael Benitez is a man who remembers his life by decades, it's likely he views the current decade as his greatest so far.
Diego Forlan dented Real Madrid's title challenge on Saturday when he earned city rivals Atletico a 1-1 draw at the Bernabeu -- allowing Barcelona to extend their Primera Liga lead to six points.
FIFA will announce its Player of the Year for 2008 at a ceremony in Zurich today, and here is a look at the leading contenders for the award.
One of my New Year's resolutions was to shed some of my soccer geekiness. No more whole Saturdays spent watching the English Premier League in the morning, Spain's La Liga in the afternoon, MLS at night. No more work e-mails ignored in favor of reading the du Nord blog. No more surfing YouTube for videos of goals interred in my memory.
It has been one of the busiest years in football ever, and 2008 has produced its fair share of great teams right across the globe.
Real Madrid coach Bernd Schuster has been given a vote of confidence by sporting director Predrag Mijatovic.
Spanish champions Real Madrid lost ground on La Liga leaders Barcelona after dropping two points in a 1-1 draw at Almeria on Sunday.
It's hard to believe nearly six months have passed since Spain began its title march at the European Championship and killing off one of the biggest jinxes in the soccer world. (Know the pheeling, Phillies fans?) Even today, despite a few nasty side plots, everything feels right on Planet Football.
Team of the week -- Barcelona Despite a faltering start to their La Liga campaign, this week Barcelona made it clear that they are a definite threat to opponents both in and out of Spain.
The warm glow of the 2008 European Championship continued to spread across Spain well into the summer. Even the transfer stories were set aside, for a while at least, in favor of the accolades. And when the screaming headlines and astronomical figures began once again to be splashed across the covers of the country's newspapers, there was something different about it.
English club Newcastle completed the signing of Argentina defender Fabricio Coloccini from Spain's Deportivo La Coruna on Friday.
American soccer's $10 million man is about to begin his Great Spanish Adventure.
After a lackluster 2-1 win over Peru last Saturday, Spanish national-team coach Luis Aragonés is likely to make several changes when his troops face the U.S. in their final pre-European Championship warm-up on Wednesday in Santander (live on espn360.com at 4 p.m. ET; on delay on ESPN2 at 5:30 p.m.).
Ronaldinho's agent has played down growing speculation that the Brazil forward will be leaving Barcelona at the end of this season.
I was recently scanning the rosters of the teams still involved in the Champions League. Did you know there are 53 countries represented on those rosters? There are players from all over the world -- Honduras, Congo, Belarus, South Korea even Angola.
When San Lorenzo kicked off 2008 -- its 100-year anniversary -- its players knew they would be expected to challenge for a major international title. The Argentine club targeted South America's ultimate prize, the Copa Libertadores.
Spanish leaders Real Madrid suffered a shock 2-0 defeat away to La Liga newcomers Almeria on Saturday night, giving second-placed Barcelona hope that the title race is not yet over.
Playing sports is good for your health. Playing professional sport often isn't.
Thierry Henry has pleaded for patience as he continues to adapt to life in Spain with Barcelona.
Real Madrid returned to the top of Spain's La Liga and maintained their unbeaten record but were made to work hard for their 2-0 victory by Real Betis in the Bernabeu on Thursday night.
Tim Leiweke, the man who landed David Beckham for the Los Angeles Galaxy, may well be the most powerful figure in Major League Soccer. And yet the more time I spend around Leiweke, the more I realize he has some truly radical ideas about how to grow the league and the sport of soccer in the United States.
Primera Liga Real Zaragoza made a double swoop on Saturday to acquire Argentine international central defender Roberto Ayala and Brazilian international striker Ricardo Oliveira.
Reprinted from SI Latino
Reprinted from SI Latino
World Sport reporter Pedro Pinto looks at the recent successes of Spanish team Sevilla, following their victory in the UEFA Cup final.
World Sport reporter Pedro Pinto reflects on Barcelona's rise and fall, following their shock cup defeat by Getafe.
In Akira Kurosawa's classic flick Rashomon, four different characters remember the same event in four different (and contradictory) ways.
Sevilla goalkeeper Andres Palop will not be fit to face Tottenham in their UEFA Cup quarterfinal second leg on Thursday, the Spanish club have said.
Sevilla's reward for their last-gasp escape act against Shakhtar Donetsk is a UEFA Cup quarterfinal draw with Premier League Tottenham Hotspur.
For me, ski trips are vastly important. Riding chairlifts affords me the time to solve today's universal riddles:
Ailing giants Real Madrid and Bayern Munich are hoping a return to the European stage in their last 16 Champions League showdown at the Bernabeu on Tuesday will spark a revival in their waning fortunes.
Valencia notched up their seventh win in eight league games and moved up to third in La Liga after a 3-1 win over Atletico Madrid on Saturday.
PARIS -- David Beckham coming to MLS hasn't gotten plenty of publicity, but he won't save the league. Let me explain.
Real Madrid president Ramon Calderon met coach Fabio Capello and sporting director Pedja Mijatovic for urgent talks on Monday after the team's second straight defeat in the Spanish league.
French winger Laurent Robert has signed a two-year deal with Levante, the promoted Primera Liga club said on their Web site on Wednesday.
Barcelona say that striker Samuel Eto'o will not hook up with the Cameroon squad for the African Nations Cup until after the La Liga game against Athletic Bilbao on January 15.
Leaders Barcelona established a club record 12 consecutive victories in all competitions, with a 3-1 success at Cadiz on Saturday.
Primera Liga side Real Sociedad are in danger of disappearing unless they can solve their debt problems, club president Miguel Fuentes has revealed.
The final CNN/World Soccer poll of the season sees Chelsea hang onto the number one ranking.
Record-breaking English Premier League Chelsea reclaim the top spot in the CNN/World Soccer Magazine Top 10 poll after two wins in a week.
Russian midfielder Alexander Mostovoi and Serbian striker Savo Milosevic will leave Celta Vigo in a summer clear-out of players, club president Horacio Gomez has said.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst has completed his permanent switch to Barcelona after signing a three-year deal with the Catalan giants for a fee of two million euros.
Barcelona announced on Tuesday that they had reached "the beginning of an agreement" with rivals Villarreal to sign Brazilian defender Juliano Belletti.
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