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Team Focus: How Enrique's Barca Treble Hopefuls Compare to Pep's Strongest Sides

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Team Focus: How Enrique's Barca Treble Hopefuls Compare to Pep's Strongest Sides “Barca open a new chapter,” wrote AS’ Alfredo Relaño in his editorial on Sunday morning, after Barcelona had beaten Athletic Bilbao 3-1 in the previous night’s Copa del Rey final, sealing the sixth Liga and Copa double in the Catalan club’s history.Relaño ...

Player Focus: Rakitic Tasked With Evolving Barca Where Fabregas Failed

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Player Focus: Rakitic Tasked With Evolving Barca Where Fabregas Failed In summer 2011 Barcelona's big midfield summer signing was supposed to add more direct passing and make the team's build-up play less predictable. Three years later the Cesc Fabregas 'experiment' has been widely deemed a failure, but Ivan Rakitic is now arriving to do more or less the very same job....

Player Focus: Thiago Alcántara - The Rightful Heir to Xavi's Throne

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Player Focus: Thiago Alcántara - The Rightful Heir to Xavi's Throne It is rare for a youngster to feature with much regularity at the various youth levels for their country and go on to be a real success for the full international side. James Milner leads England's Under-21 caps chart and the next three are Tom Huddlestone, Fabrice Muamba and Michael Mancienne. Muam...

League Focus: Europe's Flops of the Season

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League Focus: Europe's Flops of the Season Over the course of 12 months, a player can see his form rise significantly, making himself one of Europe’s most courted footballers, or drop markedly, seeing potential interest from big name teams cool as a result. Be it fewer goals scored, an increase in goals conceded or fewer passes complet...

Player Focus: The Most Accurate Passers In Europe

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Player Focus: The Most Accurate Passers In Europe As the game has developed, the onus on ball retention and the recycling of possession has increased significantly. Teams are no longer looking towards the utilisation of a powerful target man as a battering room through the opposition defence as managers will often require their players to hold onto...

Euro 2012 Focus: The Final - Spain vs Italy

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Euro 2012 Focus: The Final - Spain vs Italy So, it's decided. Spain will face Italy in the final Euro 2012 after many believed that Germany were shoe-ins to progress past the Azzurri. Much of the credit should go to Cesare Prandelli for the Italian's surprise appearance in Sunday's showdown, with the former Fiorentina boss taking a team who h...

Euro 2012 Focus: Player Stats Leaderboards

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Euro 2012 Focus: Player Stats Leaderboards With Euro 2012 just days away, we thought we'd give you an idea of the players to look out for in a number of statistical categories before we begin our live coverage, with all the up-to-date figures and frontrunners throughout the tournament. Using last season's stats from each of Europe's top 5 le...

Player Focus: Impact on Team - With & Without

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Player Focus: Impact on Team - With & Without Throughout a season, debates will rage amongst fans as to who exactly is responsible for their side’s peaks and troughs in form, yet it is often very difficult to ascertain exactly who should be credited. With each of Europe’s top 5 leagues now completed, hindsight gives us a frustrating...

Stats Analysis: WhoScored's Top Rated Centre-Midfielders

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Stats Analysis: WhoScored's Top Rated Centre-Midfielders WhoScored continues our series of articles focusing on the top five players per position across Europe’s top five leagues. Having run the rule over the goalkeepers, full-backs and centre-backs already, we turn our attentions to the central midfielders. Four of the top divisions are represented...

La Liga Team of the Season at the Halfway Stage

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La Liga Team of the Season at the Halfway Stage After a well-earned winter break, teams from the Serie A and La Liga are readying themselves for action again this weekend so we take the chance to analyse each of the league's best XIs of the season thus far, starting in Spain.It will come as no surprise to learn that the best possible side accordi...