Date:16/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/16/stories/2008091660802000.htm

Sport - Football

Real Madrid picks up its first win

AC Milan in crisis after its second defeat in the Italian league

MADRID: Real Madrid got its title defence up and running on Sunday grinding out a 4-3 home victory over newcomer Numancia, which shocked the reigning champion by taking the lead twice in the Spanish football league.

In the Italian league, AC Milan, with superstars Kaka, Ronaldinho and Andriy Shevchenko in its line-up, lost 2-0 at Genoa.

It was Milan’s second defeat in the opening two games of the Serie ‘A’ season following a 2-1 home loss to Bologna.

Giuseppe Sculli opened the scoring for Genoa after 30 minutes with Diego Milito adding an injury-time penalty to give the home side its first win over Milan on its own soil since 1983.

Meanwhile, it was a first win of the campaign for Real following its 2-1 loss at Deportivo de la Coruna.Stand-in captain Guti scored Real’s 5,000th league goal to equalise before Gonzalo Higuain netted and Rafael van der Vaart scored his first goal in a Real jersey.

An own goal from Domingo Cisma proved decisive as Real registered its first three points of the campaign — something its rival Barcelona is yet to achieve. Spanish international Santiago Cazorla scored the decisive goal on 27 minutes with a fierce left-footed shot to fire his team to the fourth place. Real was less convincing against Numancia, on a high after defeating Barcelona, which took a sixth-minute lead with Juan Moreno arriving at the back post completely unmarked to head home. Guti equalised on 18 minutes with the help of a huge deflection, but Jose Barkero put Numancia back in front with a terrific 21st minute long-ranger.

Higuain equalised for Real four minutes later and van der Vaart caught the goalkeeper off guard to put Real in front before an own goal handed Real a 4-2 lead at the interval.

Moreno scored a fantastic free-kick to make it 4-3.

Lazio on course

In Italy, Lazio scored its second win in two games with a 2-0 win over Sampdoria. Mauro Zarate (seventh) and Goran Pandev (72) on target.

The results:

Spanish league: Malaga 0 drew with Athletic Bilbao 0; Recreativo 0 lost to Espanyol 1 (Garcia 84); Getafe 0 drew with Real Betis 0; Villarreal 1 (Cazorla 27) bt Deportivo de la Coruna 0; Real Mallorca 1 (Aduriz 15) drew with Osasuna 1 (Portillo 84); Real Madrid 4 (Guti 18, Higuain 25, van der Vaart 33, Cisma 39-og) bt Numancia 3 (Moreno 6, 56, Barkero 21); Almeria 2 (Piatti 20, Negredo 39) drew with Valencia 2 (Alexis 35, Villa 68).

Serie ‘A’ (Italian league): Bologna 0 lost to Atalanta 1 (Tiberio Guarente 9); Genoa 2 (Giuseppe Sculli 30, Diego Milito 90-pen) bt AC Milan 0; Lazio 2 (Mauro Zarate 7, Goran Pandev 72) bt Sampdoria 0; Lecce 2 (Fabio Caserta 47, Jose Castillo 82) bt Chievo Verona 0; Napoli 2 (Marek Hamsik 47, Christian Maggio 70) bt Fiorentina 1 (Adrian Mutu 41); Reggina 1 (Marco di Loreto 43-og) drew with Torino 1 (Nicola Amoruso 13); Siena 2 (Emanuele Calaio 11, Abdelkader Ghezzal 90) bt Cagliari 0; Juventus 1 (Amauri 67) bt Udinese 0. — Agencies