MADRID - Barcelona restored their two-point lead at the top of La Liga when Lionel Messi finished a slick move to fire the champions to a hard-fought 2-1 home win over Malaga on Saturday.
Pep Guardiola's side were under pressure after Real Madrid's in-form striker Gonzalo Higuain had struck twice to lead them to a 5-1 win at Tenerife in the earlier kick-off.
Real's sixth straight victory briefly sent them a point clear at the top on 59 points from 24 matches before Barca replied by seeing off stubborn Malaga.
The Andalucians were pinned back from the start at the Nou Camp where Argentina forward Messi and Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic having early chances.
Ibrahimovic flashed a long-range free-kick just wide of the post in the 24th minute and Messi shot wastefully over the bar five minutes later.
The visitors defended resolutely, with Weligton in the thick of the action, and the Brazilian cleared an Ibrahimovic header off the line just before the hour.
Pedro, in the starting lineup in place of France forward Thierry Henry, finally broke the deadlock in the 68th minute with a superb long-range strike but Valdo stunned the home side with a breakaway equaliser in the 81st.
Malaga looked to have secured an unlikely point before Spain midfielder Xavi split their defence with a perfectly weighted pass for right-back Daniel Alves and the Brazilian squared for Messi to tap in an 84th-minute winner.
BLUSTERY CONDITIONS
Second-from-bottom Tenerife started brightly at a blustery Heliodoro stadium and Real defender Raul Albiol did well to block a close-range Alejandro Alfaro volley in the first minute.
The home side's resistance lasted until just before the half-hour mark when defender Marcelo played the ball into space and Argentina striker Higuain arrowed a low shot past goalkeeper Sergio Aragoneses.
Central defender Ezequiel Garay made a rare foray forward to set up Real's second in the 42nd, Higuain timing his run perfectly to sweep his compatriot's centre into the net from the edge of the penalty area.
Higuain's double gave him 16 league goals this season, one short of top marksmen Messi and David Villa of Valencia.
Midfielder Ayoze pulled one back for Tenerife a minute after the break before Brazilian playmaker Kaka restored Real's two-goal advantage two minutes later.
Cristiano Ronaldo netted a penalty, his 13th league goal of the season, with 10 minutes remaining and substitute Raul glanced in Real's fifth in added time.
"Things were working for us virtually the whole time," Real coach Manuel Pellegrini told a news conference. "However, you always need to improve and we're still not the perfect team."
LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) - Stoke City fans have had precious little to celebrate in 122 years but victory at Chelsea on Sunday would put them one game away from reaching the FA Cup final for the first time while reviving some painful memories.
Having already knocked out Manchester City and Arsenal this season another upset against the holders is entirely possible and the Stamford Bridge clash (1600GMT) has set the Potteries abuzz with nostalgia.
Stoke were founder members of the Football League in 1888 yet their only-ever trophy is the 1972 League Cup when they beat Chelsea in the final.
That success came in their all-too brief "glory years" and was sandwiched by two controversial extra-time FA Cup semi-final defeats by Arsenal that still hurt to this day.
In 1971 Stoke led 2-0 at Hillsborough only for Arsenal to make it 2-2 with a penalty after a then-unheard of five minutes of injury time and win the replay 2-0 en route to the Double.
The following year they drew again - despite Arsenal having to play the last 15 minutes with striker John Radford in goal after an injury to Bob Wilson.
Stoke led in the replay only for Arsenal to level and then win the game with a goal by Radford. Local legend has it that Radford was miles offside but that the linesman mistook a white -coated programme seller for a white-shirted Stoke defender and allowed the goal.
"It beggars belief," former Stoke winger Terry Conroy recently said of the incident. "I look back on my career with no regrets apart from those two games - it would have meant so much to the club and the area."
Stoke never reached even the quarter-finals again until this season and although the Cup has nothing like the prestige it carried in those days, victory on Sunday would be huge.
At 83 years Reading's wait for a sixth-round appearance has been far longer and the only non-Premier League side left in the competition will hope to match their 1927 achievement of reaching the semis by beating visiting Aston Villa on Sunday.
Despite struggling near the foot of the Championship (second division) they have accounted for Liverpool, Burnley and West Bromwich Albion this season.
Villa, beaten in the League Cup final by Manchester United last weekend, will be desperate to secure a return to Wembley, where both semi-finals are played.
Portsmouth, adrift in the Premier League and in debt-ridden administration, can briefly forget their woes when they host Birmingham City in the first of the quarter-finals on Saturday (12.30).
The 2008 winners had a morale-boosting 4-1 win over local rivals Southampton in the last round and a place in the semi-finals would be a fitting reward for the fans who have been so impressive despite the chronic mismanagement of their club.
Fulham host eight-times winners Tottenham Hotspur in an intriguing all-London clash on Saturday (1720) when Roy Hodgson's improving side will hope to do better than at the same stage last season when they were thrashed 4-0 at home by Manchester United.
THERE was a free admission from an England player yesterday, and for the first time in weeks the question that provoked it had nothing to do with sleaze or scandal.
Instead, Wayne Rooney served to provide a timely antidote to a poisonous period in the national team’s recent history.
“I am in the best form of my life,” said striker Rooney. “I hope I can make a difference for England at the World Cup. I know that if I have a good World Cup, we will have a chance of doing well.”
It was a powerful statement of intent, but one which offered a revealing insight into Rooney’s positive frame of mind.
A Carling Cup winners’ medal may have been swinging round his neck following his latest heroics with Manchester United at Wembley on Sunday, yet Rooney’s thirst is for English, European and then world domination over the course of the next four-and-a-half months.
Even if Sir Alex Ferguson would disagree with the continued exposure Rooney has been getting when on international duty, he would doubtless concede that it was a smart move by the Football Association to push him into the media spotlight yesterday. For the best part of a month, England have been painted as a squad imploding , with injuries and illicit rendezvous conspiring to knock a group of players off course just when they appeared capable of amounting to something under Fabio Capello.
And yet here was the man of the moment countering that stark portrayal, and insisting he has no qualms in carrying the hopes of a nation in South Africa.
‘Roo-mania’ is coming to a place near you soon, an even more intense fix than in 2006 when his fight for fitness in the build-up completely overshadowed England’s preparations for the tournament.
The player at the centre of the hype and hysteria will display the same sense of calm that has helped him plunder 28 goals for United already this season.
“I am ready [for all the attention],” said Rooney, who sat out training yesterday after a scan revealed some bruising to his knee but is expected to join in today ahead of the testing friendly with Egypt.
“It cannot be as bad as before 2006. It was a bit weird then. The team were preparing for the tournament and most days the focus was on whether I would be fit.
“I don’t feel any pressure or burden really. To be honest, I have probably had pressure since I was 16, so it is something you get used to and deal with in your own way.
“I have done that. It is not something I’m going to get concerned about now. There have been a few injuries with big players for us. Hopefully, Ashley Cole comes back from his ankle injury in time and we can get Rio Ferdinand back fit.
“Aaron Lennon is a massive player for us. He is a great outlet and he can carry the ball and put opponents under pressure.”
And the atmosphere inside the England camp in the wake of the tawdry John Terry-Wayne Bridge saga? “Since we met up it has been no different really,” said Rooney.
“I don’t think it will have an effect. The players are professional enough to do a job on the pitch and that is the main thing.”
It is a sign of Rooney’s growing maturity that he neatly sidestepped questions on Terry and Bridge without any anxiety. Likewise, that he was one of the first players to seek out Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross yesterday morning and reassure him following the challenge that has left Aaron Ramsey nursing a broken leg.
The best barometer of how his influence has spread, however, remains in his endeavour on the pitch. Having scored only four headers in his first 343 senior games for Everton and United, eight of his last nine goals have come with his head. If Theo Walcott can mimic Antonio Valencia’s delivery, then England have a new facet in Rooney’s game to exploit.
He has managed just one goal in his past five games for his country but the only question mark is whether his form can last until the summer.
“I hope so,” he said. “Obviously there are going to be some games, like the one I had against Everton, when I wasn’t too great. But I hope I can keep my form up and take it into the World Cup. If I can do that, I will be really pleased.”
The coaches of England’s rivals in South Africa lined up in Sun City last week to bestow plaudits on Rooney with Germany’s Joachim Low describing him as “unstoppable”.
He reacts to the accolade with a shrug of the shoulders. “I do feel unstoppable,” he said. “I feel good. I feel every game I play I am going to score.”
The world has been warned.
People say
A blessed KISS is on HEAD
A sweet KISS is on CHEEKS
A passionate KISS is on LIPS
A romantic KISS is on NECK
But seriously
HOTTEST KISS is on
Iron
Try it:p
In post-war Italy, the northern city of Milan became synonymous with modernity, as the city's fathers set about rebuilding the bomb-damaged city with functional high-rise blocks rather than restoring historic buildings, as many other Italian councils chose to do. The result is that, 50 years on, Milan is one of the country's less aesthetically pleasing cities.
The busy Milanese have no time to worry about that, however, and for the first-time visitor, the city offers much to admire. Most visitors make time to see the beautiful Romanesque church of Sant'Ambrogio, visit the Brera art gallery and check out the designer stores clustered into the Quadrilatero d'Oro area.
The city's one jaw-dropping monument is the Gothic cathedral, and the long queues for the city's other major attraction, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, mean that it's really only for tick-box tourists who "do" cities.
For nightlife, the once-bohemian Navigli district, the Brera neighbourhood and the up-and-coming artisan's quarter, Isola Garibaldi, are well worth visiting.
The city has a fair claim to being the birthplace of modern Europe as it was in Milan, during the fourth century, that the Romans finally embraced Christianity. The powerful Visconti and Sforza dynasties ensured its pre-eminence through medieval and Renaissance times and today the city is Italy's capital of commerce, the fashion industry, and, of course, football.
Silvio Berlusconi, the cruise-line crooner turned real-estate salesman turned former prime minister, owns slick, successful AC Milan. His divisive, Thatcherite politics whilst in power mean that the club is widely disliked in Italy despite having produced some of the country's most entertaining teams, notably the Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello sides between 1987 and 1996. The present team, under coach Carlo Ancelotti, has been Serie A's most fluid passing outfit for several seasons, and won the Champions League, beating Liverpool in the final, in 2006-07, the club's seventh such success.
Internazionale, by contrast, were widely viewed as perennial underachievers up until 2005, having won practically bugger all since their 1960s heyday under catenaccio merchant Helenio Herrera. But two successive Serie A titles have finally got that particular monkey of the club's back.
Up until then, Inter president Massimo Moratti had shot a £500m wad buying some of the world's greatest players but had just one UEFA Cup to show for it before handing over the reins to Giacinto Facchetti in January 2004. The club should be embraced by football romantics the world over for demonstrating that money can't buy success, but instead people just snigger.
AC Milan fans were once drawn largely from the city's working classes and Inter's from the suburban bourgeoisie but it's hard to detect any demographic differences these days. The rivalry between the two sets of fans is more Liverpool-Everton than Celtic-Rangers - families often have divided loyalties - so trouble between the teams is rare.
