It’s been a busy week again, with the midweek fixture list generating some interesting headlines and leaving little as the Champions League resumes on Tuesday with three Spanish sides (Barcelona, Atlético and Valencia) in action, and Real Madrid and Sevilla both playing on Wednesday. Such a congested glut of games tends to throw up unpredictable events which ultimately impact the next stage of the season – or shall we say for the next eight weeks during which Leo Messi will be sidelined due to knee ligament injury. Madrid-based tabloid ‘Marca’ – which has spent the last week frantically informing its readers that Catalan independence from Spain would mean the end of ‘El Clásico’ (one wonders under whose orders they were asked to do that) – went on to shed some inevitable crocodile tears over Messi’s injury. Since Real made a hash of their home game against Málaga, Marca decided to lead its Sunday cover with a picture of Messi agonizing on the pitch under the headline ‘El crack de La Liga’. One of the paper’s poorer puns, the word ‘crack’ in a Spanish football context means ‘genius’ – but here was meant to resemble the sound Messi’s knee made on impact.
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Of course, with Catalunya going to the polls on Sunday to elect its autonomous government’s representatives – a poll widely seen as the final indicator of whether the region should subsequently push for secession from Spain as of 2017 – Marca was in no mood to be nice to Barcelona, and the champions’ rather muted display against recently-promoted Las Palmas only increased their desire to further push the thesis that the team is about to fall into some Messi-less disarray. The Argentine might not make it back for the clásico, scheduled for the weekend of November 21st in the Bernabéu. As you can imagine, Marca’s white-shirted scribes were positively rubbing their hands in glee, but that’s football nowadays. Messi himself would be suspicious if the mood were any different, but it should be noted that the Argentine has not, in general, had the sort of injury-strewn career so far that one might have imagined, given his style of play and his physical stature. His longest spell out of action was a three-month lay-off back in 2006-2007, when he was sidelined with a metatarsal injury suffered against Zaragoza. In 2012 he was out for eight weeks with a nagging injury to his left leg, but most of the predictions made about him when he first burst onto the scene. People believed Messi would be kicked off the park every weekend but largely defenders have struggled to get close enough to him and he has shown to be physically stronger than he appears to be. Still, it’s more bad news for the club, adding to the season-long injury to Rafinha and the unavailability of Arda Turan and Alex Vidal until January.
Last Wednesday Barcelona were hammered 4-1 at Celta Vigo, a defeat always possible given the Galician’s current run of form, but no-one expected it to be quite so comprehensive. Celta have been playing their own brand of attractive possession football for over a season now and with Barcelona’s current inability to pressure their opponents as of yore, a side like Celta was always going to cause problems. With Nolito and Iago Aspas up front, and the busy Fabián Orellana in midfield, the visitors were overwhelmed, and on the back foot from the start. Celta then travelled to Eibar on Sunday hoping to go top of the league but were held to a 1-1 draw. I watched the game and it was probably Eduardo Berizzo’s policy of rotation that blew the evening’s romance, leaving Aspas and Wass on the bench for the first half. Once they came on the game changed and with Eibar tired, Celta could have won it. Meanwhile, Nolito is a wonderful player, a slow-fast-slow winger who brings to mind John Robertson (minus beer belly), the Nottingham Forest winger from Brian Clough’s European Cup winning team. He looks slightly ungainly, but uses guile and close control to continually threaten defenders. Give him space (as Eibar did in the second half) and he murders you. Their other stand-out performer over the two games was right-back “Jonny” Jonathan Castro, a home-grown player who seems to be coming of age. Spain boss Vicente del Bosque is a notable admirer.
Real Madrid had not been top for 7 months, and were thus pretty pleased with themselves after beating Athletic Bilbao 2-1 in San Mames on Tuesday night, because it’s never an easy game up there. But Saturday’s match at home to Málaga was just one of those days when keeper Idriss Kameni decided to play a blinder, as he has done before at the Bernabéu. Madrid huffed and puffed (30 shots) but failed to blow the house down. Perhaps more significantly, Málaga once again failed to score, which means they’ve gone their opening six games without doing so. That’s a record too, beating the previous worst set by Xerez in 2009-2010 and they are now 540 minutes without a goal and counting. Manager Javi Gracia did point out that they’d kept a clean sheet though. Talk about waving your credentials in the dark.
So Real stayed top for all of three days, to be replaced by Villarreal whose 1-0 home win against Atlético means they are still unbeaten and have won five consecutive games since their opening-day draw with Betis. Oddly enough, despite their surprising and excellent new-kids-on-the-block stuff in the early years of the millennium, this is the first time in their history that they’ve sat atop La Liga. Founded in 1923, this is only their 16th season in the top flight, but for a side that reached the Champions League semi-finals in 2006, the table-topping stat still surprises. They seem to have always played good football, produced good players or revived flagging ones, and generally been a model club – backed by a small population of some 50,000 people. Speaking of revived players, Roberto Soldado seems to have woken up after his hibernation period at Spurs, while the match winner on Saturday, Leo Baptistao, is actually on loan from Atlético but was under no contractual obligation not to play against them.
Villarreal 1-0 Atletico Madrid FT: Shots: 5-9 Pass accuracy: 80%-78% Crosses: 6-30 Clearances: 43-11 pic.twitter.com/qyj1EWq0NE
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I went to the late match on Sunday night, which was the Basque derby between Real Sociedad and Athletic. Like the five derbies that preceded it, the game ended in a draw (0-0) but was not without excitement. Sociedad won 3-0 at Granada in midweek to kick-start their season, but have failed to score in four of their six games. Contrary to the rumour mill, David Moyes is not really under pressure, but does seem to have lost sight of the fact that it is very important to immerse yourself in the culture of your new surroundings. You need to learn the language and actually live in a flat or house, go and shop in the supermarket, and so on – instead of isolating yourself every night in a five-star hotel, and going on long scouting missions with sidekick Billy McKinlay. At the minute Moyes seems cocooned by English inside a car, rather than actually talking to locals, who know the league, the players, the language. For such an intelligent man, it’s an odd stance to take, and his players probably think the same. However, it remains early days for Moyes, and his team is showing signs of improvement. Next week they travel to Málaga, which could be many things but probably not a goal-fest. Elsewhere, Atlético and Real meet in the Madrid derby, which should be an interesting indicator of the way both sides are shaping up this season.
