BARCELONA, May 22 — La Liga draws to a close this weekend with several matters still to be resolved, even though Hansi Flick’s Barcelona have already been crowned champions.

AFP Sport picks out five talking points ahead of the season finale.

Bernabeu departures

Last week Antoine Griezmann, Robert Lewandowski and others bid farewell to Atletico Madrid and Barcelona fans respectively.

On Saturday it will be Dani Carvajal’s turn to bow out at the Santiago Bernabeu.

The Spain international has won 27 trophies with Los Blancos since rejoining the club from Bayer Leverkusen in 2013, including six Champions Leagues and four La Liga titles.

Madrid coach Alvaro Arbeloa is also expected to be taking charge of his final game, with Jose Mourinho expected to be announced as his replacement next week.

In the other Bernabeu dugout, Ernesto Valverde will manage his final game in charge of Athletic Bilbao.

Keep an eye out too, for how Real Madrid fans treat striker Kylian Mbappe.

After Madrid finished the season empty-handed the French superstar was jeered by Madrid supporters who may still be upset with the former Paris Saint-Germain attacker for a perceived lack of commitment.

Relegation fear

Girona, who qualified for the Champions League in 2024 are 18th and face Elche, 17th, knowing the loser will be relegated.

“Girona have had many moments of this type and this is another of them, it’s a final to make history and stay in the top flight,” said coach Michel. “We will go for Elche, we will go for them.”

Mallorca, 19th, are in grave danger and need to beat already-down Real Oviedo and for other results to go their way to survive.

Osasuna and Levante are the other two teams who are still not safe yet.

The Pamplona side have a tricky clash with Getafe, who are chasing European football, while in-form Levante, who have suffered just one defeat in their last seven matches, travel to face Real Betis.

Final Euro spots

Celta Vigo, sixth, are guaranteed European football but it has not yet been decided if they will play in the Europa League or the Conference League.

Win or draw and they will reach the former, but if they lose against Sevilla, Getafe can claim that spot with a win against Osasuna.

This season’s Conference League finalists Rayo, and Valencia, are also still in with a reasonable chance of reaching that competition if results go their way.

World Cup concerns

Players head into the last round of games with differing concerns ahead of this summer’s World Cup.

Many will be hoping to avoid the fate of Barcelona’s Fermin Lopez, injured last weekend and out of the tournament this summer with a foot fracture.

If they play for a team with little on the line on the final day they may look to swerve participation.

Brazil winger Vinicius Junior did not train with Real Madrid on Thursday and could miss the clash against Athletic Bilbao.

On the other hand, other players will view this final round of games as a last chance to convince their national team coaches to call them up or show them they deserve a starting berth this summer.

Battle for third

The only match not taking place on Saturday night is Sunday’s battle for third-place, between Villarreal and Atletico Madrid.

They are level on points going into the final match. Villarreal must win to come third, while a draw would give Atletico that position on head-to-head after they beat the Yellow Submarine 2-0 in September.

If Marcelino Garcia Toral’s side can finish above Atletico, it will mark their highest placement for 13 years.

The Spanish coach is also set to depart at the end of the season despite his team’s strong domestic campaign. — AFP

MONTREAL, May 22 — World Cup fans are wielding artificial intelligence to mass-produce viral songs supporting their teams ahead of next month’s tournament.

As the fan-made football anthems are raking in millions of plays across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, experts say that the viral tunes raise questions about song ownership, artist compensation and the valuation of human creativity.

But many users do not appear to mind, with some even showing a preference for the AI-generated songs over an official anthem football’s world governing body Fifa commissioned from musicians Jelly Roll and Carin Leon.

A highly-anticipated World Cup track from Shakira was also released last week, but the fad of AI fan songs was still drumming up excitement on social media for the tournament taking place in cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July.

The trend appears to have started with a song dedicated to the French team, Imbattables, released in February by artist Crystalo, who is listed on Spotify as France’s “premier AI musical creator.” 

The song begins with a call-and-response listing the names of Kylian Mbappe and other star French national players.

A Brazilian anthem followed with a similar name-chanting format and a trending phonk melody that producer Guilherme Maia, who goes by the artist name M4IA, said he created by layering together different elements he had put together with the help of AI.

Tracks for top sides Portugal, Argentina and Germany, as well as many others, soon sprang up across platforms, garnering more praise from fans.

But while the Brazilian version closely resembled the French prototype, the later songs copied Maia’s format exactly. 

Each recycled the phonk beat and listed players’ names before calling for respect for the squad’s “king” — a feature reserved for the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo in the Portugal tune or Lionel Messi in Argentina’s version.

“What I see happening now is more about people following a trend or trying to recreate a feeling,” Maia told AFP, saying that artistic emulation has always existed in music.

While he was enthusiastic about the possibilities AI opened up for production, he acknowledged that the technology raises new questions about authorship and copyright.

“In music, there are clear rules. You can’t just copy someone else’s work or use samples without permission, even if AI is involved.”

Lack of credit 

Maia stressed that he built the track on his own and used AI as an assistant when creating certain elements, rather than asking a music generation tool like Suno to create a song with one prompt.

But, Jason Palamara, an assistant professor of music technology at Indiana University, said that with the way the models exist, there is a lack of clarity over how artists are credited if their copyrighted work is used to train them.

“It had to come from somewhere,” he said.

The inconsistencies that can appear in the AI-generated images can also pop up in music created with the technology.

For example, a fan-made World Cup song for Portugal was sung with a Brazilian accent, while a Colombian version read James Rodriguez’s first name with an English rather than Spanish pronunciation.

Music created with AI can also lack complexity, Palamara said.

“It’s one compact product, rather than a product where there’s multiple tracks that have gone into it, where it has more texture.”

Still, Morgan Hayduk, co-CEO of music rights software company Beatdapp, said that listeners enjoying the World Cup fan songs may not be seeking artistic complexity.

“There seems to be a cohort of people who actually don’t care,” Hayduk observed. “They like the music, and they like the back story that it came from a large language model and not a songwriter or a group.”

He said that despite concerns over how the industry will adapt to AI, quick-fix songs that can be chanted by fans or featured in advertisements are a clear use-case for AI-generated music in its current stage.

“Knowing what goes into a generative output, like a World Cup fan song, is the thorny Rubicon that the music industry has to cross now.” — AFP 

Manuel Gual posted a photo:

Surreal Everyday Absurdities: A Cinematic AI Portrait Collection

Description

A playful and cinematic portrait series exploring the strange poetry of everyday absurdity. Across these images, ordinary people are placed in wildly unexpected situations: a bearded elder blow-drying a marshmallow, a businessman serving cereal with a shovel, a red-haired traveler trapped inside a tiny vintage car with a giant flamingo float, a chef delicately gilding a LEGO brick, a neon punk grandmother playing an electric guitar, detectives investigating a fallen ice cream cone, a medieval king absorbed in a handheld game console, and a runaway bride jumping joyfully on a muddy trampoline at sunset.

The collection blends photorealistic lighting, wide cinematic framing, surreal comedy, character-driven storytelling, and vibrant visual contrasts. Each image feels like a still frame from an eccentric film where humor, irony, fantasy, and realism collide in unexpected ways. The result is a coherent visual universe of absurd portraits: funny, strange, colorful, theatrical, and emotionally expressive.

These images have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.

Manuel Gual posted a photo:

Surreal Everyday Absurdities: A Cinematic AI Portrait Collection

Description

A playful and cinematic portrait series exploring the strange poetry of everyday absurdity. Across these images, ordinary people are placed in wildly unexpected situations: a bearded elder blow-drying a marshmallow, a businessman serving cereal with a shovel, a red-haired traveler trapped inside a tiny vintage car with a giant flamingo float, a chef delicately gilding a LEGO brick, a neon punk grandmother playing an electric guitar, detectives investigating a fallen ice cream cone, a medieval king absorbed in a handheld game console, and a runaway bride jumping joyfully on a muddy trampoline at sunset.

The collection blends photorealistic lighting, wide cinematic framing, surreal comedy, character-driven storytelling, and vibrant visual contrasts. Each image feels like a still frame from an eccentric film where humor, irony, fantasy, and realism collide in unexpected ways. The result is a coherent visual universe of absurd portraits: funny, strange, colorful, theatrical, and emotionally expressive.

These images have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.

MONTREAL, May 17 — Canadian public health officials said Saturday a “high risk” passenger who was aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius tested “presumptive positive” for the Andes hantavirus.

The patient was one of four Canadians aboard the hantavirus-stricken vessel, which set sail on April 1 from Argentina on a course across the Atlantic Ocean until the outbreak of the rare rodent-carried disease.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said in a statement that officials from the western province of British Columbia “reported that one of the four high risk individuals who was self-isolating and being monitored for symptoms has tested presumptive positive for Andes hantavirus.”

The Andes strain of hantavirus is the only one known to spread between people.

Globally, the death toll remains at three.

The patient and their spouse, who reported minor symptoms, were transported to a hospital on Friday, where they will remain in isolation, officials said.

“Out of an abundance of caution, a third individual who was in secure lodging for isolation has been transferred to hospital for assessment and testing,” the statement said.

Results of tests to confirm hantavirus infection were expected in the next couple of days.

“The overall risk to the general population in Canada from the Andes hantavirus outbreak linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship remains low at this time,” the public health agency stressed.

No vaccines or specific treatments for hantavirus exist, but health officials have dismissed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic. — AFP

MADRID, May 14 — Real Madrid officially started their electoral process today, after president Florentino Perez announced his decision to call elections, in which he will stand.

There is a 10-day window, until May 23, for the submission of candidacies, Madrid said in a statement.

Among the requirements to be a candidate are having been a club member for 20 years and providing a guarantee of 187 million euros (US$219m), equivalent to 15 per cent of the club’s annual budget, which must be backed by personal assets.

Perez, who was re-elected unopposed in January 2025 for a four-year term, announced at a press conference on Tuesday that he will run again.

Spanish media report Enrique Riquelme, the president of the water and energy group Cox, is considering entering the race.

In a letter published by several outlets in Spain, the renewable energy businessman asked Perez for more time to potentially prepare a candidacy.

”When I ran in the 2000 elections, I didn’t ask for more time; I ran and I won,” said Perez in an interview on television channel La Sexta yesterday. 

If multiple candidates stand the electoral board will announce the date and place of the elections in due course.

If no one else comes forward, Perez, 79, would retain his post, as happened in the 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025 elections.

The Spanish businessman was first elected as Madrid president in 2000, overseeing the club’s Galactico era, and resigned in 2006.

Since Perez returned in 2009, Madrid have won five Spanish league titles and a remarkable six European cups, among other silverware. — AFP

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Preserved and full original

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