Real Madrid reserve team coach Zinedine Zidane has drafted his 19-year-old son Enzo into the side for a league match on Sunday, the club have announced.

An attacking midfielder already called up by the French under-19s, Zidane junior has until now been playing with Real Madrid's third team.

But on Sunday fans will be licking their lips to see if the old man gives his eldest son a run out for the second team, known as Castilla, against UB Conquense of Cuenca in Spain's third tier.

Zidane has four sons and Enzo, the eldest of them, has been on the books with the Madrid giants since 2004, while Luca (16), Theo (12) and Elyaz (8) are also on the books at Real.

Zidane senior, now 42, joined Real Madrid as a player in 2001 for a then record fee of around 75 million euros ($93m).

He had an immediate impact, scoring a wonder goal that delivered the 2002 Champions League in a 2-1 final win over Bayer Leverkusen.

He was appointed coach of Castilla in the summer but was last month banned for three months for not having the necessary qualifications to coach in Spain, only to be allowed to continue while he appeals the decision.


AFP

Barcelona suffered their first home La Liga defeat of the season as they were beaten by Celta Vigo at the Nou Camp.
The visitors took a surprise lead in the second half when Joaquin Larrivey finished after Nolito's backheel.
Luis Enrique's Barcelona side hit the woodwork four times, with Lionel Messi and Neymar both being frustrated twice.
Luis Suarez, making his home debut, had two chances to score an equaliser but missed with a header and had an effort saved by goalkeeper Sergio Alvarez.
It means Suarez has lost in both of the competitive matches he has played for Barcelona since joining from Liverpool for £75m.
After serving a four-month suspension for biting Italy's Giorgio Chiellini during the World Cup, the Uruguayan striker made his first appearance for Barcelona in their 3-1 El Clasico defeat away at Real Madrid last Saturday.
Barcelona missed out on winning La Liga by three points last season and will hope this result does not prove crucial at the end of the campaign.

Luis Suarez started for Barcelona after a four-month ban for biting and set up Neymar to arrow in the opener.
Barcelona's Lionel Messi spurned a glorious chance before Cristiano Ronaldo equalised with a penalty.
A powerful header from Pepe put Real ahead before they added to their lead when Karim Benzema finished a brilliant counter-attack with an angled shot.



BBC

(AP) — A Spanish nursing assistant appears to have recovered from the Ebola virus, authorities said Sunday, nearly two weeks after she became the first person infected outside West Africa in the current outbreak.

An initial test shows that Teresa Romero, 44, is now clear of all traces of the virus, the government said in a statement. She has been receiving treatment in quarantine at a Madrid hospital since then.

Romero had treated two Spanish missionaries who were brought back to Madrid for treatment at Carlos III hospital after contracting Ebola in West Africa. The missionaries, Miguel Pajares and Manuel Garcia Viejo, later died.

A second test in the coming hours is needed to absolutely confirm Romero's recovery, said Manuel Cuenca, microbiology director at Madrid's Carlos III hospital.

"I am very happy today, because we can now say that Teresa has vanquished the disease," said Romero's husband, Javier Limon, in a video recorded sitting on his hospital bed. He was put into quarantine after his wife became sick.

Health authorities euthanized the couple's pet dog named Excalibur on Oct. 8 instead of placing it in quarantine, creating outrage among animal rights activists. The next day, thousands of people gathered in more than 20 cities throughout Spain to show their solidarity with Romero and to protest against how Madrid authorities dealt with the dog.

A second nurse who had also treated Garcia Viejo was released from hospital on Oct. 11 after twice testing negative for Ebola.

Maria Teresa Mesa, a family friend who has acted as Romero's spokeswoman, told journalists outside the hospital that she had spoken with her Sunday.

"She's doing spectacularly well," she said. Mesa said Romero had also told her that at one point she felt she could have succumbed to Ebola.

Earlier on Sunday, a crowd of several hundred people had gathered in Madrid to protest against Health Minister Ana Mato and to call for her resignation.

Among those who have been monitored at the Carlos III — apart from Romero's husband — there have been five doctors, five nurses, three hairdressers who attended her at a beauty salon, a paramedic and a health center cleaner. None have shown signs of having been infected.

Spain, meanwhile, has agreed to allow the U.S. to use two military bases in the southwest of the country to support its efforts to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

A Defense Ministry statement said the deal permits U.S. armed forces to use the air base at Moron de la Frontera near Seville and the naval station at Rota on Spain's Atlantic coast to transport personnel and materials to and from Africa. Defense Minister Pedro Morenes sealed the deal with U.S. counterpart Chuck Hagel in Washington.

The ministry statement, released late Saturday, said the agreement will be reviewed and updated on a case-by-case basis.

(Reuters) - A Spanish nurse who is the first person to contract Ebola outside of Africa may have touched her face with the gloves of her protective suit while caring for a priest who died of the disease, a doctor treating her said on Wednesday.

The nurse, Teresa Romero, was being treated for the deadly infection at a Madrid hospital while Spanish officials launched an investigation into how she was able to contract Ebola despite strict protocols for handling contagious patients.

The virus, which the World Health Organization said had killed 3,879 people by Oct. 5 in West Africa since March in the largest outbreak of the disease on record, causes haemorrhagic fever and is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person.

A Liberian man who was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died in a hospital isolation ward on Wednesday and the U.S. government ordered extra screenings at five major airports.

The WHO said it saw no evidence of the disease being brought under control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, with neighbouring countries being told to prepare for the disease to spread across their borders.

Britain said it was sending extra troops, aircraft and a naval vessel to Sierra Leone to help stem the spread. The deployment will see 750 military personnel help set up treatment centres and a training facility. Three helicopters and a 100-bed naval hospital will also be sent to the region.

INTERNET DISCOVERY

While Romero is the only confirmed Ebola case in Spain aside from two priests who contracted the disease in Africa and died, more than 50 other people who may have had contact with the virus in the country are being monitored, including primary health care and hospital staff, European officials said.

"She has talked to me about the gloves, she touched her face with the gloves. That's what she remembers and what she has told me three times," German Ramirez, one of the doctors at Carlos III hospital where the nurse is being treated, told reporters.

The nurse took leave from work immediately after Spanish missionary Manuel Garcia died on Sept. 25. Wearing a full protective suit, she had entered the priest's room once while he was alive and once after his death to clean the room.

"I believe the error was made when taking off the suit," she told Spain's El Pais newspaper in a telephone interview published on Wednesday. "I see that as the most critical moment, when something could have happened. But I'm not sure."

Health worker union officials said Romero alerted hospital staff three times to say she had a fever and a rash, but because her temperature had not gone above 38.6 degrees Celsius the hospital did not see her as a risk.

Romero found out she had the disease by looking at the news on the Internet on her phone while she was waiting for the result of her test, she told Cuatro television station in a telephone interview.

"I asked the doctor for the result and he didn't answer in a very clear way and that's when I started to suspect," adding she then looked at her phone to find there was a positive case of Ebola in Spain.

Health authorities on Thursday put down the dog, a labrador-type breed called Excalibur, who lived with the nurse and her husband in a suburban Madrid flat, saying it posed a biological risk and there was evidence dogs could carry the virus.

The dog was taken out of the apartment block in a police-protected van with the windows blacked out and a driver in a protective suit while around 30 animal rights activists shouted "Murderers!".

The childless couple are two of six people under observation in the sealed-off sixth floor of the hospital in Madrid. The rest of the people, including other nurses who cared for the infected priests, have initially tested negative for Ebola, health authorities said.

Other people being monitored include two hairdressers who waxed the nurse as part of a beauty treatment, media reports said.

CALLS FOR CALM

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy defended his country's health authorities and urged people not to panic.

"We have to keep calm. It is extremely unlikely that this will turn into an outbreak affecting many people," he said.

Rajoy said he had created a committee to oversee co-ordination between the regional Madrid government, the central government and European institutions. He said Spain was in constant contact with the European Union and the World Health Organization.

"Let the professionals do their work," he said. "The Spanish health system is one of the best in the world."

He said the investigation into how the infection had occurred was a priority and was still under way.

Two experts from the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors disease in the region, have gone to Spain to help with the investigation, a spokesman for the European Commission said.

The spokesman said Spanish authorities had told the EU it was not clear at this stage how the infection had occurred, but it may have been due to "possible relaxation" of protocols for handling the corpse or for the disposal of medical waste.

The Commission's health security committee gathered representatives from all EU states, the ECDC and from the World Health Organisation's European regional headquarters to discuss the situation on Wednesday.

The WHO's Europe director Zsuzsanna Jakab told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday it was "unavoidable" that Europe would see more cases of Ebola within its borders because of busy travel links with Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

She stressed, however, that the continent was well prepared for handling Ebola virus disease, and said she did not expect to see any widespread outbreaks in European countries.

A new World Bank assessment of the potential impact of the epidemic estimated that if it spread wider from the three states into neighbouring larger economies, the two-year regional financial impact could reach $32.6 billion by the end of 2015.

(Reuters) - Cristiano Ronaldo kept up his rich La Liga scoring form as Real Madrid beat Villarreal 2-0 on Saturday to move up to fourth.

Villarreal were able to match Real’s slick passing for much of the game but their finishing let them down. Luka Modric gave the visitors the lead on the half hour with a drive into the corner from 20 yards.

Carlo Ancelotti gave his attacking players licence to exchange position and Karim Benzema, returning to the side, picked out Ronaldo to finish clinically in the centre of the penalty area five minutes from the break. It was his 10th league goal this season.

Villarreal continued to press forward after the restart with Mario Gaspar and Gabriel going close with efforts but following the high tempo of the first half both teams began to run out of steam.

"The best aspect is that we won a difficult game against a side that played very well," Ancelotti told a news conference.

"We controlled the game. We had to suffer at times and at others we were able to play our football. It was a good game from us where we had a good attitude and we deserved to win."

Real now have 12 points from six games, a point behind Valencia, Barcelona and Sevilla who are in a three-way tie for first place.

Later Barca, who dropped their first points in midweek with a draw against Malaga, take on Granada while champions Atletico Madrid face Sevilla.

(AP) — China and Spain signed business deals worth $4 billion on Thursday as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visited the Asian powerhouse to seek support for Spain's struggling economy.

Chinese premier Li Keqiang announced the deals just before holding talks with Rajoy in Beijing.

The state broadcaster China Central Television said the 10 deals included trade, finance, culture, telecommunications and energy.

Li said China hopes to see further cooperation with Spain in areas such as biology, medicine and aerospace.

Li said, "we hope to have more pragmatic cooperation with Spain, and look forward to expanding the number of people traveling between the two countries."

He asked the prime minister to help reduce the time for Chinese nationals to obtain visas to Spain.

Rajoy said the two countries have always enjoyed "friendly and effective" trade relations.

Two-way trade between China and Spain reached $24 billion last year.

AP) — Spain's film academy has selected the movie "Vivir es Facil con los Ojos Cerrados" (Living is Easy With Eyes Closed) about a Spanish man's quest to meet John Lennon as its entry for Best Foreign Language Film at next year's Oscars.

Director David Trueba's film, chosen Thursday, tells the true story of a Spanish English-language teacher who traveled to the southern province of Almeria in 1966 to try to meet late Beatles star, who was staying there.

The movie takes its name from lyrics in the Beatles song, "Strawberry Fields Forever" which Lennon began writing in Almeria.

The U.S. film academy will select finalists for the Oscar in January with the awards announced a month later.

Spain has won four Oscars for best foreign language film.