La Liga: Deportivo dent Barca’s title hope

Alex Bergantinos scored the winner as Deportivo La Coruna recorded a 2-1 win over Spanish champions, Barcelona, in Sunday’s La Liga clash at the Riazor.
The defeat was Barcelona’s first in the league since the start of October and while they remain top of the table, Real Madrid are now just one point behind Luis Enrique’s side and have two games in hand.
Despite Barcelona dominating the ball in the opening 10 minutes, the first shot of the match actually came from Deportivo – on-loan Stoke City forward Joselu testing the handling of Marc-Andre ter Stegen with a strike from just outside the box.
Joselu came close to sending Deportivo ahead in the latter stages of the first period when he angled one towards the bottom corner, but Ter Stegen was on hand to save. The Barcelona goalkeeper was at fault from the resulting set piece though as Joselu smashed home from close range to send Deportivo ahead after the German had fumbled a loose ball.
Andres Iniesta and Ivan Rakitic both went through energetic warm-ups at the interval, but Enrique resisted the temptation to make any half-time changes as he trusted those on the field to turn things around.
That trust was well-placed as less than one minute into the second half, Barcelona were level when Luis Suarez smashed the ball past Lux after a loose ball had fallen perfectly for the striker inside the Deportivo box.
Incredibly, Deportivo regained the lead in the 74th minute when Bergantinos rose highest inside the Barcelona box to head a corner past Ter Stegen, leaving Barcelona facing their first league defeat since October.
Barcelona pressed for a leveller and Gerard Pique just failed to collect a deep Messi cross inside the Deportivo box, before Roberto sent the ball over the crossbar after making contact on a cross from Luis Suarez.
Messi had the chance to equalise from a 25-yard free kick in second-half stoppage time, but the Argentine fired into the stands as Deportivo, who missed a wonderful chance to seal all the points when Fajr went through one-on-one with Ter Stegen late on, recorded their first win over Barcelona since 2008.