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A brace for Rodrygo
Real Madrid won their 35th Spanish league title on Saturday when they comfortably dispatched Espanyol with a 4-0 victory, following a first-half brace from Rodrygo and two more from Marco Asensio and Karim Benzema in the second half. Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti also made history as the first head coach in the modern era to win a league title in each of European football’s top five leagues, having previously won the league in Italy, England, Germany, France and now with Los Blancos in Spain.
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£680.85m
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£110.25m
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£27.90m
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Carlo Ancelotti
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Vicente Moreno
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With a second leg Champions League semi-final against Manchester City to keep one eye on in midweek, Ancelotti made some notable changes to his starting XI by dropping Karim Benzema, Dani Carvajal, Toni Kroos, Ferland Mendy, Federico Valverde and Vinicius Jr following their 3-2 defeat in the first leg in England.
However, the capital side’s reserves proved to be more than a match for Espanyol. Rodrygo opened the scoring for Ancelotti’s side in the 33rd minute, when the forward was played through and showed excellent composure to tuck the ball into the bottom right corner. The Brazilian then doubled his and his side’s tally 11 minutes later when he capitalised on a mistake in defence to roll the ball into the back of the net.
Two more came in the second half to secure all three points and the league title for Madrid, when Asensio tapped home a short-range finish in the penalty box just 11 minutes into the second half, after Eduardo Camavinga set up the Spaniard with an impressive counter attack. Then, to top off the night, Benzema made a late appearance to bag a goal for himself, when he latched on to a pass and fired a first-time shot into the bottom left corner 10 minutes from time.
Ancelotti’s march to a fifth league title – in his fifth European nation
Ancelotti won his first league title when he became manager of AC Milan in 2001, when the Italian giants picked up the Serie A title in 2004, in a successful managerial stint which saw the club win two Champions League titles as well as the Italian Cup. His next league title came six years later, when Ancelotti took over at Chelsea for just two years but still managed to claim the Premier League title and the FA Cup.
Carlo Ancelotti has now become the first manager to win a league title in each of Europe’s top five leagues pic.twitter.com/ukI4Iu7pN1
— Transfermarkt.co.uk (@TMuk_news) April 30, 2022
The Italian manager’s next league title came in France, when Ancelotti swapped London for Paris and enjoyed a two-year stint at Paris Saint-Germain, which produced a single Ligue 1 title in the 2012/13 season. The Italian tactician was then tempted to Spain, but his first stint at Real Madrid failed to produce a league title, despite claiming a Spanish Cup and Champions League along the way.
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Following Los Blancos, Ancelotti then made the move to Germany, when he took over from Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich and duly won the 2016/17 Bundesliga title with relative ease, alongside two German Super Cups. However, like his time in London, Ancelotti didn’t stick around too long in Bavaria and left after just a year.
What followed was three years of relatively little success, where Ancelotti spent a season at Napoli and then at Everton, where it seemed as though his lust for league titles had finally met its match. However, following Zidane’s departure from Madrid in the summer of 2021, the Italian coach jumped at the chance to return to Spain for the one league title that had evaded him the first time. And now Ancelotti has finally been able to claim a fifth league title in as many countries.
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