Latest news with #Andalucía
CNA
4 days ago
- Sport
- CNA
Sevilla appoint former player Almeyda as manager
Sevilla have appointed Argentine Matias Almeyda as manager, the LaLiga club said on Monday, with their former player signing a three-year contract at the side which battled relegation last season. Almeyda spent one season at Sevilla when he joined from River Plate in 1996, before moving on to play with Lazio, Parma and Inter Milan in Italy. After ending his playing days back at River Plate, he began his managerial career there. The 51-year-old spent the last two seasons in charge at Greek club AEK Athens where he won the domestic double in his first campaign, having earlier parted ways with San Jose Earthquakes in the MLS. Sevilla avoided relegation by one point last season, with manager Garcia Pimienta sacked in April and Joaquin Caparros appointed until the end of the season, a campaign which saw angry fans storm the club's training ground last month.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Sevilla appoint Matias Almeyda as eighth head coach in three years
Sevilla have appointed Matias Almeyda as their new head coach. The 51-year-old Argentine, who played for Sevilla in the 1996-97 season, is the eighth Sevilla head coach since the start of 2022-23 and is the permanent successor to Javier Garcia Pimienta, who was dismissed in April. Almeyda has signed a three-year deal at Sevilla, who finished the 2024-25 La Liga season in 17th, just one point and one place above the relegation zone. Their 12th-place finish the campaign prior had been their lowest since relegation in 2000. Advertisement Sevilla have been regulars in the Champions League and Europa League in the last decade, but are now entering their second successive season without European football. The Argentine's coaching career has spanned 14 years, encompassing spells at River Plate, Banfield, Guadalajara, San Jose Earthquakes and AEK Athens. 🤝 Matías Almeyda, nuevo entrenador del #SevillaFC ⚪️🔴 ¡Bienvenido, Matías! #WeareSevilla — Sevilla Fútbol Club (@SevillaFC) June 16, 2025 Almeyda, who played 40 times at international level for Argentina, led AEK Athens to the Greek league and cup double in the 2022-23 season, but left the club in May after a second-place league finish, seven points behind champions Olympiacos. A former defensive midfielder, Almeyda's playing career encompassed spells at Lazio, Parma and Inter. (Angel Martinez – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
The Guardian
12-06-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Esther González: ‘Now girls can grow up in Spain knowing we have Ballon d'Or winners'
Esther González is at the top of her game. The 32-year-old striker's list of accolades – World Cup winner, three-time Liga F champion, NWSL champion, Copa de la Reina victor and Concacaf W Champions Cup winner – is matched by few in the sport. But as a young girl growing up in southern Spain, her path was uncertain, rife with obstacles: 'As a child, I dreamed of what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was a soccer player. But, let's say, circumstances didn't allow me to see women's soccer or anything close to women's soccer.' Growing up with three sisters, González's earliest memories of football were playing with her hermanas in their small village in Andalusia. She dreamed of being a footballer, but there wasn't a path before her. The shy young talent with a nose for goals would play with the local boys: they needed a goalscorer and she stepped in. As González grew, her father took her on car journeys of more than four hours each way to get to training. Today González and Spanish women's football are in a much different place: 'The change in mentality that took place in Spain was incredible, because until about five years ago the visibility we had was very low,' she says. 'So we really had to work hard and many times we had to work in the shadows. Girls can now grow up knowing that in Spain there are Ballon d'Or players who can become world champions.' Since the inaugural Ballon d'Or Feminin in 2018, four of six trophies have gone to two Spanish players, twice each to Barcelona's Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmatí. On the challenges they all faced, González says: 'I feel lucky because I am part of that transition, because I have lived the part from when, let's say, we had almost no opportunities to live … ' The drive to succeed despite inordinate obstacles is evident in the way González plays, and the unique journey she's taken. The 5ft 3in forward is skilled in the air despite her height, has a remarkable intuition for time and space, astutely adapts her game to the opposition, and contributes defensively. She left Real Madrid in 2023 as their all-time leading scorer, with 39 goals in 77 games, and co-leads the NWSL golden boot race with seven goals in 11 games. 'I'm not just a player, but a player who thinks a lot, who works hard on matches even before they start, because I try to determine who I'm facing and who I'm not.' This summer in Switzerland, González will be one of four Spain players from the NWSL at the Euros. Now at Gotham FC, she says the challenge of something new, something unique, was behind her move to the US. She was attracted to Gotham's ambitions, the league's competitive depth. 'When I left Spain to come here, I came to prove that I was also a much more complete player, better than the one who only knows how to touch the ball, than the one who also knows how to adapt.' González signed for Gotham FC in the summer of 2023, and quickly made an impact, scoring the winning goal in the NWSL Championship. In May in Mexico, she scored Gotham's winner in a 1-0 victory over Tigres in the Concacaf W Champions Cup, securing her second trophy Stateside. Two more goals followed for Spain in the Nations League, but González is not resting on her laurels. 'I hope I'm not in my best moment. I hope to have better moments, that the best is yet to come.' Ambitious, focused, invigorated by hard-earned achievements – just like her national team. After winning their first World Cup in 2023, and enduring the fallout from the Rubiales scandal, Spain's confidence in major tournaments has improved on 2022, when La Roja lost 2-1 to England in the quarter-final (that goal scored by González). 'In order to create things you have to first believe that you can achieve them,' she says. 'As a team, we believe we can achieve everything.' Of the Euros, where Spain share a competitive group with Italy, Belgium and Portugal, she adds: 'It will be difficult, tough, there will be times when we're tired, when there's also a lot of traveling involved, but to achieve things, you have to believe that you can achieve them. And so I believe and work to make that happen.' Is there anything you have always wanted to ask the USWNT and former Chelsea coach Emma Hayes? Then now is your chance. I was lucky to score a goal. It must be because I'm wearing Pernille Harder's shirt' – Christian Eriksen after scoring a goal for Denmark's men against Northern Ireland. The team wore women's jerseys in a friendly against Northern Ireland in Copenhagen. USL summit: The USA's second top-flight professional women's football league, the USL Super League, will have its first Championship final as a division one sports league on Saturday evening. The regular season's runners-up Tampa Bay Sun face fourth-placed Fort Lauderdale United. Bumpy ride: In Cary, North Carolina, a squad of USWNT veterans (including World Cup-winning legends such as Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Heather O'Reilly and Ali Krieger) teamed up with rising NCAA stars to win the TST Women's Tournament for a second straight year. The US team beat Bumpy Pitch FC 3-0 to claim the seven-a-side tournament's $1m prize. Over the weekend, the 25-year-old Chicago Stars forward Ally Schlegel scored her first goal of the year from 34.4 yards– that's a Chicago record. Arsenal have announced that all of the club's home WSL matches will be played at the Emirates next season. Suzanne Wrack has more. And if you missed Tuesday's edition of Moving the Goalposts, catch up on our interview with Aisha Masaka right here.
The Guardian
10-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
In Spain, a chat on the doorstep is a custom worth preserving in the digital age
The mayor of a small town in southern Spain felt compelled, a few days ago, to clarify that there is no new municipal ban on older women sitting out on the pavement in their own chairs. He was responding to a furious online backlash directed mostly at the town's police after they posted a message on social media urging the residents of Santa Fe to show 'civility' by not sitting in the streets in the late hours disturbing neighbours. This plea for respect for the public space was hardly a draconian law and order crackdown: it was a reasonably worded reminder. 'We know that putting chairs or tables outside the door is a tradition in many towns,' it said, 'but public spaces are regulated. If the police ask you to remove them, do so out of respect and in the interests of coexistence.' Unfortunately for the police, it was accompanied by a photograph not of 3am revellers or anyone engaging in antisocial behaviour, but six older women sitting outdoors on plastic garden chairs, enjoying what looks like a peaceful chat. The angry reaction ('Go and arrest drug dealers!', or 'All these women want is a quiet moment with their neighbours. Why don't you take care of real crimes!') was a reminder that in Spain, the authorities mess with community rituals involving older people at their peril. Perhaps the reaction also betrayed a sadness that the custom of sitting outdoors chatting, still practised in villages and some small towns, especially in the hottest months, is slowly fading as rural Spain becomes increasingly depopulated. In cities, you certainly don't see women or anyone else putting their own chairs on the pavement outside their front doors. But the routine of outdoor conversation and intergenerational use of public space is very much alive. Sitting and talking in public spaces is a tradition that dates back centuries and is closely intertwined with the history of women's rights in Spain. Women's search for independence and common spaces to talk outside the home can be traced to the middle ages – from separate bourgeois parlours to artisan work conducted outdoors. And it was not confined to regions with warmer weather. In León, a province in north-west Spain, people once gathered around the fireplace on bleak midwinter nights for the filandón, a session of storytelling named after the spinners who worked together while exchanging tales. This cherished oral tradition is now being revived in León, with local novelists holding events in nature reserves such as Babia, passing the filandón down to a new generation. In some villages in northern La Rioja, you still see women chatting as they sew espadrilles outside their shopfronts. It is only natural in the digital age that such ways of living and communing fade, but there is still a strong appreciation in Spain for the value of a neighbourly gathering, wherever it happens. In cities, it might take place in the lobby of an apartment building, often around the doorman. In mine, I find comfort in seeing the same older women and men, often with a dog in their midst, sitting on a bench by the mailbox almost every day. The daily chatter proved very useful during the recent blackout, as neighbours readily shared tips, food and information. One of the regulars is a retired engineer who once worked for a major power company, and he gave us the clearest explanation of how the outrage would be resolved. In town squares, it's common to see people of all ages sitting and chatting in the same space. Older women on the public benches, children running around them, teenagers kicking a football, all together and not necessarily drinking, as is often the case elsewhere. Summer heatwaves make late-evening gatherings outdoors a natural form of relief. Stepping outside for no particular purpose is often called tomando el fresco ('taking the breeze', if you are lucky to catch it). In the biggest Spanish cities, newly pedestrianised areas offer convivial shared outdoor spaces all year round. More modest than Barcelona's superblocks, the newly refurbished and pedestrianised Olavide Square in central Madrid, for example, has become a model of the ideal public space. It has teenagers playing ping pong, kids and dogs running about, people of all ages reading or scrolling on their phones in deckchairs, occasionally browsing from a public library stand, and of course older women deep in conversation until late. Even in shabbier squares, people of all generations still gather in proximity with ease. What is changing is that Madrid's conservative local government is increasingly promoting a privatised model of public space, with extended restaurant and bar terraces occupying most of the pavements, leaving little space for people to gather without being obliged to consume something. Respecting public space, as the Santa Fe police requested, means keeping it truly public. And that is key to fostering conversation not just with friends, but with neighbours, casual acquaintances and strangers. Conversation in public, shared spaces has a special power in these polarised, lonely, even dehumanising times. A sense of community requires much more than a few chairs on the pavement, but it is a good place to start. María Ramírez is a journalist and the deputy managing editor of a news outlet in Spain
The Independent
09-06-2025
- The Independent
PHOTO ESSAY: Spain's wildest pilgrimage, El Rocío, brings together faith, nature and partying
Hundreds of thousands of Catholic pilgrims slogged for days under a punishing sun through country roads, sandy paths, even a river ford to reach the tiny hamlet of El Rocío in southern Spain for Pentecost weekend. An icon of the Virgin Mary — La Virgen del Rocío — has been venerated in this remote area since the Middle Ages. Today, dressed in their finest but caked in dust and sweat, crowds jostle to be the first to pray and sing sevillanas — flamenco songs — before Mary in the white sanctuary by the wetlands where wild horses and flamingos roam. On the multi-day journey by foot, horseback or ox-driven cart, and in the houses that line the streets of the village, there's a lot of partying, drinking, music and laughter. But there are also solemn vows, hushed worship services, tears of thanksgiving by flickering candlelight. 'Since I was a little boy, the center of everything has been the Virgin,' said Javier Berjano, who walked from Sevilla with the Triana brotherhood, one of the oldest and largest of the more than 100 involved. 'The importance of the pilgrimage is not that it's easy or nice, but that it's worthwhile.' The pinnacle of the pilgrimage is the procession of the icon of the Virgin Mary in the overnight hours between Pentecost Sunday and Monday. Crowds jostle to reach the gold-covered image of Mary looking down at an infant Jesus in her lap, which is then carried through the sand streets and plazas to visit each brotherhood house. As the relentless sun and heat grew Monday morning, the pilgrims went back to celebrate, rest before the journey back — and start planning next year's romería to their beloved Mary, whose image almost all carry in medals hanging from their neck, and a few even tattooed on their bodies. ___ This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
