Ask any Spaniard who Barcelona should be most afraid of when they face Manchester United on Saturday, and the most likely answer is not Wayne Rooney or the hugely admired Ryan Giggs but the man they call .
" was one of the best goal scorers in Mexican football history and during his time in Madrid he was a nightmare for Barcelona. Now, the son of one of his former team-mates could be the man to beat Barcelona," wrote the Spanish football magazine Don Balon a week ago.
No regular watcher of the Premier League needs me to tell you why Barca should fear Javier Hernandez - the offspring of former Mexico striker Javier Hernandez Gutierrez - when he's on the field.
The debate in Spain about who Sir Alex Ferguson will field at Wembley sees almost every pundit believing Barca stand a better chance of beating United if the Premier League champions opt for the more conservative 4-5-1 formation, with Rooney as the sole front man to start with.
Read the rest of this entry
Can Cristiano Ronaldo be the first man to reach 40 goals in a La Liga season?
Lionel Messi got plenty of deserved plaudits a few weeks ago when he became the first player to , so it's only appropriate that due recognition is paid to Ronaldo now that he has also reached that memorable milestone.
Ronaldo's two fantastic goals, both free-kick thunderbolts, in Real's 3-1 win at Villarreal on Sunday took his tally to 38 league goals for the season and 51 in all competitions, adding to the seven he has got in the Copa del Rey and six in the Champions League.
It is his La Liga statistics that stand out even, though his extra-time header in the Copa del Rey final, which gave Real a 1-0 win over Barcelona and , may go down as his most significant strike of the season.
Read the rest of this entry
, although they are still well adrift of the 27 titles won by Juventus.
The Rossoneri are generally considered to be worthy champions and you will not hear too many complaints from fans of other teams that they were robbed.
Yes, reservations have been aired about the quality of football at times during the course of this Serie A campaign - and Inter must have wished it could have been extended another month or so after their terrific run over the second half of the season.
In truth, however, their chance of winning a sixth successive title really came to an end .
The understandable elation in the red and black half of the city has yet to subside but Milan and their president Silvio Berlusconi have already taken stock of the situation.
Read the rest of this entry
always seemed to be grinning when the TV cameras panned to him sitting in the Camp Nou executive box on Tuesday night.
However, I wonder what grim thoughts were really being formed behind that famous pronounced forehead and bushy moustache as he witnessed the Champions League semi-final second leg between Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Did his remaining hair turn just a little greyer over the course of those 90 minutes, to the or was it my imagination?
Read the rest of this entry
Hi, I'm Phil Minshull. I've lived in Spain since 1997 and covered Spanish football since the first day I got here. My blog aims to provide some insight into what's happening in La Liga, and there is much more to it than only Real and Barcelona, as well as elsewhere around Europe.
