{"id":605,"date":"2014-01-20T03:01:34","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T03:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=605"},"modified":"2014-01-20T07:25:37","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T07:25:37","slug":"barca-atletico-drop-points-as-madrid-close-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/barca-atletico-drop-points-as-madrid-close-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Barca, atletico drop points as Madrid close gap"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<div id=\"article-wrapper\" data-component=\"Article:in body link\">\n<div id=\"article-body-blocks\">\n<p>Atletico Madrid and Barcelona stumbled to draws on Sunday, tightening the Spanish league title race, with Real Madrid only one point behind the joint leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Barcelona&#8217;s potent attack, led by Lionel Messi, was held 1-1 at Levante, leaving the door open for Atl\u00e9tico to claim sole possession of top spot later but they conceded a second-half penalty at home to\u00a0Sevilla\u00a0to finish 1-1 as well and squander the chance to lead the standings for the first time since September 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Atl\u00e9tico started brightly when David Villa rifled in a clearance by the Sevilla goalkeeper Antonio Bastos in the 18th minute at Vicente Calder\u00f3n Stadium. They did not seriously threaten to extend their advantage and were undone when the defender Juanfran Torres pulled down the striker Carlos Bacca by his shirt. Ivan Rakitic fired the spot-kick into the corner of the net, just out of the reach of Thibaut Courtois, for the 73rd-minute equaliser.<\/p>\n<p>Real and Bar\u00e7a, the world&#8217;s two richest clubs by income, have dominated\u00a0La Liga\u00a0over the past decade but Atl\u00e9tico have emerged as title contenders this season under their Argentinian coach, Diego Simeone.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier on Saturday, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema took Real Betisapart to give Real Madrid<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>a resounding 5-0 victory that put them level on 50 points with Barcelona and Atl\u00e9tico Madrid at the top of La Liga.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Atletico Madrid and Barcelona stumbled to draws on Sunday, tightening the Spanish league title race, with Real Madrid only one point behind the joint leaders. Barcelona&#8217;s potent attack, led by Lionel Messi, was held 1-1 at Levante, leaving the door open for Atl\u00e9tico to claim sole possession of top spot later but they conceded a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,81],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":607,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}