Stumbling La Liga champions Real Madrid slumped to a second defeat in three league games by losing 1-0 to Villarreal as their hapless title defence continued on a rain swept Saturday at a sparsely attended Santiago Bernabeu.<\/p>\n
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Zinedine Zidane’s side dominated the game but succumbed to an 87th minute strike from Pablo Fornals, who chipped over goalkeeper Keylor Navas on the rebound after a lightning quick counterattack as the visitors cleared a Real corner.<\/p>\n
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Madrid had a penalty appeal waved away in the first half when visiting defender Alvaro Gonzalez appeared to block a shot from Gareth Bale with his arm. Cristiano Ronaldo was thwarted from close range on the stroke of halftime by a breathtaking save from Villarreal goalkeeper Sergio Asenjo.<\/p>\n
Real remain fourth in the Liga standings on 32 points and are only one point and one place above Villarreal. They could be a stunning 19 points behind runaway leaders Barcelona if Ernesto Valverde’s side beat Real Sociedad on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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Later on Saturday, second-placed Atletico Madrid play away to Eibar while third-placed Valencia visit Deportivo La Coruna.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stumbling La Liga champions Real Madrid slumped to a second defeat in three league games by losing 1-0 to Villarreal as their hapless title defence continued on a rain swept Saturday at a sparsely attended Santiago Bernabeu. Zinedine Zidane’s side dominated the game but succumbed to an 87th minute strike from Pablo Fornals, who chipped over goalkeeper Keylor Navas on the rebound after a lightning quick counterattack as the visitors cleared a Real corner. Madrid had a penalty appeal waved away in the first half when visiting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13913,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13911\/revisions\/13913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}