La Liga Weekly

The league lead changed hands today with a come from behind win by Real Madrid at home over Sevilla. The madridistas are over the moon, I’m surprised they aren’t climbing the fountains as we speak, I mean they won a game, but is it decisive? Is this where they win the league?

The Barcelona fans will point to the shocking refereeing at Almeria that got both Pep Guardiola and Zlatan Ibrahimovich sent off, as well as leaving the blaugrana a man down for much of the game, and Lionel Messi did lead them back but it was all too little too late. They’ll blame the treatment of Thierry Henry or you might see some calling for a return of Samuel Eto’o, but again, nothing is set in stone. Yet.

It was a decisive day no doubt, but not all of it could be tagged on bent referees or gritty performances spurred on by some “Spirit of Juanito” mumbo-jumbo. First of all, to answer the Guardiola sending off: he had a right to be angry. Messi was fouled by Juanma Ortiz as he was diving for a low cross and it should have been a penalty, but he should have been more careful. It looked early on that the calls weren’t going to go Barca’s way. Pep should have measured himself. Then again, Barca looked sluggish and he might have been frustrated by their lack of passion, so he got himself sent off for it? Doubtful. Just as an aside: the Villarato? It’s most worthless talking point in La Liga today. There’s no Barcelona favoritism in refereeing. If anything, the Madrid press use it to bend the referees away from showing favoritism.

Which leads into that Zlatan red-card. Away from the ball, Zlatan battles with Cisma for space in front of goal, the hand goes up, he rakes Cisma but the Andalusian makes a meal of it. He goes down immediately as if he had been shot, he rolls away from the direction he had been pushed, and then the Almeria defenders start in on the ref, raising imaginary red cards to get Ibra sent off. Despicable I’d say, but prevalent as we’ve seen in the past few weeks, they might have put Perez-Burrull in the freezer but they left alot of rank meat still out on the pitch.

All of this would have been moot, if Barcelona had just played from the start in the same manner that they played after Zlatan left. Now, that could be that it’s a psychological thing, that they expect to win therefore they don’t play well unless they give up a goal and are really imperiled, but I’m of the opinion that the reason is staring right at us. Barca play well inspite of Zlatan. Now, I’m no hater, he’s one of the greats in world football, but in the manner in which the blaugrana like to play, he’s an anomaly. He slows them down, like Fat-noldo used to with Real Madrid, and Raul does so today. They need a quick, darting center-forward like David Villa, to play off of the midfielders and not a lumbering, red-card magnet. They need someone like, well like Samuel Eto’o. Imagine that, so no excuses cules. You’ve made your beds.

Onto the Real Madrid match. My Real Madrid friends, some of which will write their columns for this website in particular, will call it “the greatest performance in the history of all performances.” I’m just kidding, but I actually did read that on twitter today as the whistle blew at the end. Seriously though, it may not have been a great performance but they’d be justifiably happy at their gritty and emotional performance, but they shouldn’t get complacent.

There are plenty of problems covered up by this decisive victory. For 20 minutes of the first half, the only decent player wearing white (Marcelo) had corn rows and deeply rooted psychological scars from madridistas deriding him. Sergio Ramos looked lost on the wing and up-front it also looked like the space hadn’t been invented which allowed Kaka, Cristiano and Higuain to play together on one pitch. Pellegrini noticed though, that after Sevilla went up 0-2, they basically shut-up shop. Jimenez took off Capel and ceded their advantage on the wings, bringing in Kanoute to help an atypically lost Negredo up front, and then obviously conceded the apparent draw by bringing in the man-once-known as Aldo Duscher, the living legend, and mullet-man extraordinaire. For the home-team, the Engineer brought in Guti and Van der Vaart to link up play and brought in Raul to camp out in goal. Sevilla looked stretched. If you didn’t know before, you knew after today that Manuel Pellegrini is a bigtime coach and Manolo Jimenez is not. Period. You may not have liked Juande Ramos, Sevilla or Real Madrid fans, but he at least would have attacked the leaky, Real Madrid defense.

Now Barcelona start a run of games that almost killed them last year, the elimination rounds of the Champions League, and the final turn toward the league title. Real Madrid enter a stretch much easier than their rivals, with a larger squad, rested and much more prepared for the title race it seems than Barca. Still, as we have seen with most weeks when Real Madrid have impressed, they have an all-too apparent knack of shooting themselves in the foot against the unlikeliest of opponents. I said I would join the bandwagon when they beat a top team in the league and they have, but I’ll reserve judgement just yet. I’ll believe it when they remove the jinx off their back and they beat Lyon at home, qualifying for the next round in the Champions League. Is this the year they get la decima? I’m predicting a much closer game than people think at the Bernabeu.

Either way, the league is still a long way from being decided. Hala-peanutbutter-sandwiches!