Romp in Malaga leaves brilliant Barcelona on top in Spain

Madrid - Barcelona romped to the top of the Spanish Liga on Saturday with a 4-1 rout down in rainy Malaga.

Euro 2008 star Xavi Hernandez led the way with two goals.

Barca are the form team of Planet Football at the moment, and have won their last 11 games in all competitions.

Their seventh successive Liga win leaves Barca with 22 points from nine games, one point ahead of Villarreal - who romped to a 4-1 win in Bilbao - and two points ahead of Valencia.

Valencia will regain top spot if, as expected, they beat Racing Santander at home later on Saturday.

The Malaga match was almost postponed due to heavy rain. The pitch started out fast and wet, but was soon muddy and heavy.

Barca coach Josep Guardiola started out with no less than seven players from the club's youth sections, and was rewarded after just five minutes, when Xavi broke the deadlock with one of his trademark free kicks.

Seven minutes later, Duda levelled for Malaga by turning in the rebound, after Barca keeper Victor Valdes had foiled Adrian Lopez.

Lionel Messi restored Barca's lead in the 19th minute with a fierce left-foot drive past sluggish local keeper Francesc Arnau.

The goal of the night came in the 53rd minute, when Xavi made it 3-1 with a handsome volley, after Thierry Henry had headed across goal.

10 minutes from time Malaga's Brazilian defender Weligton turned a long shot from compatriot Dani Alves into his own goal.

"It was a difficult game tonight because of the wet pitch," said Alves. "But we coped well with it, and got a good result."

Villarreal, meanwhile, were cruising to a 4-1 win of their own, against lowly Bilbao, with goals from Guiseppe Rossi, Robert Pires, Santi Cazorla and supersub Joey Altidore
- his first goal in Spain.

The latest defeat leaves Bilbao second from bottom with just five points - and coach Joaquin Caparros in big trouble.

Villarreal are now one point above Valencia and two ahead of fourth-placed Real Madrid, who are away to Almeria on Sunday.

Sevilla are fifth on 17 points. Then come Atletico Madrid, now on 13, after beating Mallorca 2-0 on Saturday with two early goals from Sergio Aguero.

Aguero, 20, has sat out Atletico's last three games with muscle problems - and Javier Aguirre's team failed to win any of them.

With Aguero - about to become son-in-law to new Argentina manager Diego Maradona - fit and keen, Atletico are a completely different side, as Mallorca found out to their coast. (dpa)

Rio ends up being Wayne Rooney’s barber!

London, Nov. 3: Fed up about being constantly ribbed about his thinning hair, England and Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney finally found a solution to his problem.

Roo, 23, told his England colleague Rio Ferdinand he was fed-up with being ribbed about his thinning hair. So, Rio, 29, got a pair of clippers and shaved off the striker’s few remaining locks before United’s 2-0 win over West Ham last Wednesday.

Rooney kept his bonce bald for the Red Devils’ 4-3 victory over Hull City on Saturday.

And, according to The Sun, it seems his wife Coleen, 22, is happy after he went “a stage further” from his previous short crop.

“We’re guessing it’s a big hit with Wayne’s missus because he kept it for the match against Hull,” a Manchester United source was quoted, as saying. (ANI)

Hamilton on his way to becoming one of the F1 greats

Hamburg - Lewis Hamilton's coronation as the youngest champion in the history of Formula following a nail-biting finale in the Brazilian Grand Prix has left racing audiences throughout the world crying out for more.

In an action-packed race Sunday, Hamilton exorcised the ghosts of a year earlier, when he threw away a 17-point lead in the final two races of the season to hand the title to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, by passing Toyota's Timo Glock on the last lap to secure the fifth place he needed.

Hamilton went into the race at Interlagos holding a seven-point lead over Ferrari's Felipe Massa, who needed both a victory and a Hamilton finish outside the top five to become the first Brazilian since the late Ayrton Senna in 1991 to take the title.

Massa duly raced to victory but the McLaren-Mercedes driver held his nerve during a late rain shower to snatch fifth and pip Massa to the title by a single point.

Hamilton's title win at the age of 23 years and 300 days has been greeted with euphoria in his native Great Britain with even Prime Minister Gordon Brown signing the driver's praises.

"I, like so many, want to congratulate him on becoming world champion. I think the whole country is thrilled by his exceptional talent," said Brown.

"The whole of Britain is now congratulating him, and is proud of the inspirational achievement of Lewis and the McLaren team."

Many in F1 believe Hamilton, who was born in in Stevenage, England on January 7, 1985, to a white mother and a black father, could have the same effect on the sport as Tiger Woods has had on golf.

"He has changed the grand prix world. His youth is the least if it. A frontier has fallen, the last great colour bar in mainstream sport shattered by a mixed race kid from Stevenage," wrote the Daily Telegraph.

While even seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher has gone on record as saying Hamilton could repeat the German's one-time total dominance of the sport, if anything the events in Sao Paulo show that F1 is more competitive than it has been for a long time.

Massa and Hamilton's season-long battle for the title shows there is very little in terms of performance between the McLaren and Ferrari teams while Renault's Fernando Alonso seems to finally have a competitive car once again as evidenced by the two-time world champion's two race wins and a second place in Brazil in the last four races of the season.

Sebastian Vettel also looks like having all the attributes necessary to become a future champion. The Toro Rosso driver became the youngest ever F1 race winner when he took victory in the Italian GP earlier this year and also came out on top in his battle with Hamilton at Interlagos.

The 21-year-old German replaces the now retired David Coulthard at Red Bull next season but is certain to be a target for Ferrari or McLaren if he continues his current rate of progress.

But whatever about the future, the present certainly belongs to Hamilton.

"We came, we saw and we did what we needed to do," he said. (dpa)