What a week in the Champions' League! Real Madrid were clear favourites to go through against Monaco, and when Raúl increased their overall lead to three goals in the Principality it appeared to be all over. However as everyone surely knows, Morientes led a comeback against the side who pay part of his salary to dump the "Galacticos" out of the competition. And with everyone expecting Spain to be unrepresented in the semi-finals, Deportivo came back from a 4-1 first leg defeat against reigning champions AC Milan to win 4-0 and make it to the last four for the first time in their history. Pandiani, Valerón, Luque and Fran will go down in the record books as a result.

The midweek results in Europe had a knock-on effect in the league at the weekend, with Madrid losing disastrously at home to Osasuna and Deportivo winning 0-2 at Villarreal, Pandiani opening the scoring and the forgotten man Diego Tristán coming on at half time to score the goal of the weekend. Meanwhile Barcelona kept up their push for the title with a 1-3 win at Valladolid, Saviola getting the first and setting up Ronaldinho for the second. And at the other end of the table, two goals from Real Sociedad's Nihat and one from Mallorca's Eto'o helped the two sides move away from the danger zone. (12.04.04)