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Real Madrid in late push for title

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(CNN) -- Spanish football fans dismayed by their country's failure to produce a single Champions League semifinalist for the second time in three years do at least have the distraction of an enthralling battle for the Liga title to look forward to.

And while nobody would argue that this has been a vintage season for Real Madrid, the Merengues' thrilling 3-2 win over Sevilla on Sunday, which lifted them above their opponents into second place, has raised hopes of an end to four trophy-less seasons at the Bernabeu.

Featuring five goals and four red cards, the absorbing encounter offered a reminder of why the Spanish league is widely considered home to the most entertaining attacking football in the world.

With five games left, Real's win kept them just two points behind Barcelona as they seek to shake the misfiring Catalans' two-year hold on the title.

It is barely two months since Madrid were being written off as a club in terminal crisis, having won just one league match in six and gone out of the Champions League to Bayern Munich in the first knockout round.

But Real's fortunes started to turn in March with a 3-3 draw against Barca at the Nou Camp, when defeat would have established a near-insurmountable eight-point gap between the two, followed by six wins in seven matches that suggests they have found their best form with perfect timing.

With Fabio Capello brought in at the start of the season to instil a new toughness into a side which, through the rise and fall of the Galacticos, had become a study in hubris and nemesis, Madrid are unlikely to win many plaudits for their style of play.

Nevertheless, Capello has steered them to a club record 10 wins away from home this season; evidence of a new resilience that has given them the confidence in recent wins over Sevilla and Valencia to display flashes of the sort of brilliance their fans once took for granted.

In reality, the break with the big spending era of Zidane and Figo is more one of presentation and attitude than substance; Real still spent some $130 million at the start of the season on players including Italy's world footballer of the year award-winning defender Fabio Cannavaro.

But these days the emphasis is on the less flashy talents of the likes of Ruud van Nistelrooy -- with 18 goals this season -- and the midfielders Mahamadou Diarra and Emerson.

It is noteworthy as well that Madrid's best performances this season have coincided with the thaw in relations between Capello and David Beckham.

The Italian has been distrustful of Brand Beckham since his arrival and vowed the player would never play for Madrid again after he announced that he would be leaving to join the Los Angeles Galaxy in the summer.

But the English midfielder's basic attributes of hard work and application in fact have proved a perfect match for the sort of commitment that Capello routinely demands of his players.

Beckham may yet be spared the ignominy of leaving Madrid without a single trophy to his name in almost four years, but even a Spanish championship may not be enough to keep Capello in a job.

He would not be the first Madrid coach to lose his job in a title-winning year, and, having remoulded the club into a winning force again, Real's micromanagement-prone directors, may feel the time has come to restore some of the club's sparkle as well.


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Beckham's return to favor has coincided with Real Madrid's revival.

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