Three and in – not just another football blog

Welcome to this week’s round of La Liga action from Week 2 and a look ahead to Week 3.  The headline story from last weekend is, of course, Barcelona’s 2-0 home defeat to league newcomers, Hércules, on Saturday night.  And to a lesser extent, the huge slice of humble pie I must now consume for being so quick to write the Alicante side off in last week’s blog.

In short, Hércules turned up at Camp Nou with a clear game plan and, through outstanding teamwork and unity, achieved a thoroughly deserved win.  There were no excuses for Barça, as was accepted by Pep Guardiola, who refused to blame Spain’s fixture in Buenos Aires the previous Tuesday, and simply admitted his side were unable to solve the problems Hércules caused them and that on the day “they were simply better”.  Paraguayan striker Nelson Valdez was the Catalan team’s nemesis, finding the net either side of half time, firstly with a clumsily struck volley which deceived his (almost) namesake Victor in the Barça goal, following some sloppy defending.  There were no debates regarding the intention, nor the quality, of the second goal however, when Valdez took advantage of the wealth of time and space Barça’s back 4 afforded him, to curl a delightful finish high into the net.  Following my admittedly rather patronising initial opinions on Hércules last week, I will now duly upgrade them to the ‘ones to watch’ category.  Granted, this is hardly going out on a limb, having just seen them pull off a sensational result that no-one else has managed in the league in 16 months, but the La Liga niños, led by Valdez, David Trezeguet (yep, that’s where he is now) and on-loan Royston Drenthe, will definitely cause problems for other teams this year, who have now been duly warned.  Either that or they’ll be complete toss for the rest of the season and make me look like an even bigger idiot than they did last week.  Time will tell, on both counts.

A few hours later, another historic win catapulted Real Madrid above the slain Catalans, Mourinho recording his first league victory in charge since moving from Inter in the summer, beating Osasuna 1-0 at the Bernabéu.  However, as anyone who witnessed the match will attest, it was by and large a dull, dreary affair and Real were far from prolific going forward.  It was left to Mourinho’s fellow Portuguese henchman Ricardo Carvalho to seal the points just after half-time, after a great run from Mesut Ozil teed up Ronaldo, whose shot Ricardo could only parry back to him.  Ronaldo decided to pass rather than shoot – seemingly for the only time on the night – leaving the unlikely hero, Carvalho with the simple task of side-footing into an empty net.

Real’s city rivals Atlético continued their strong start to the season, beating Athletic Bilbao 2-1 to go top of the table, in a niggly encounter in the Basque Country that produced 9 yellow cards, presumably as tempers flared over what the correct Spanish way of spelling ‘Athletic’ should be.  In amongst the acrimony, Forlan and Tiago scored for Atlético before Llorente grabbed a late consolation for the hosts (suspiciously, Forlan again celebrated with his shirt on – maybe he’s grown a third nipple over the summer).

Elsewhere, Valencia beat Racing 1-0 to propel themselves to second and Racing to second bottom in the table, Racing spared last place due to Levante’s 4-1 defeat at the hands of Getafe.  Ex-pat favourites Malaga beat Zaragoza 5-3 away from home, suggesting neither team will do much this season, with that sort of defending.  Conversely, what promised to be an interesting encounter between Sevilla and Depor ended anticlimactically in a goalless draw.

Former Manchester United Italiano Americano, Rossi scored twice for Villareal in their 4-0 defeat of Espanyol, proving himself to be anything but a sloppy Giuseppe (sorry…), with Espanyol having Chica sent off late on, for good measure.  Completing the round-up, Almeria drew 2-2 at home with Real Sociedad whilst Mallorca’s 2,000km round trip to Gijon saw them head back to the island with only air miles to show for it, suffering a 2-0 defeat to Sporting.  

In Week 1 of the Champion’s League, Barça demonstrated their bouncebackability on Tuesday when they began their bid to win their 4^th European Cup by destroying Panathinaikos 5-1 at home, in what was almost the performance of the week (come on, Arsenal were sublime).  With the home crowd fearing a repeat of events 3 days prior, when the Greeks opened the scoring, Lionel Messi decided he wasn’t going to miss out on 2 concurrent win bonuses and turned on the form once again.  Seemingly behind everything Barca did all night, the Argentine scored 2 and created the 5^th for Dani Alves with an exquisite spooned pass.  Despite this, he was still unable to avoid being labelled ‘rubbish’ in an amusingly honest, if not particularly insightful, piece of commentary from Sky Sports, after missing a penalty to complete what would have been his hat trick.  To be fair, it was a rubbish penalty.

Valencia also began their Champions League campaign with a 4 goal win, beating a poor Bursaspor side 4-0 in Turkey.  2 goals from Higuain was enough for Real to open with a 2-0 win at home to Ajax on Wednesday, though Ajax looked a shadow of their former selves.

In the Europa League, Atlético’s run of form seemed to desert them as they began their defence of the trophy with a 1-0 loss away to Greek side Aris Salonika, former Barcelona youth player Javito with the decisive strike to seal the shock result of round 1.  Villareal also lost, 2-0 away to Dinamo Zagreb, in a miserable night that saw captain Marcos Senna sent off for 2 bookings.  Sevilla lost 1-0 at home to Paris Saint-Germain, leaving it to Getafe to salvage some national pride on the night, producing a brilliant comeback to beat Danish side Odense 2-1, having trailed by a goal at half time.  Javier Arizmendi cancelled out his first half own goal soon after the break, before Pedro Rios scored a late free-kick to seal the victory.

So, looking ahead to this weekend’s action the fixtures are:

Espanyol v Almeria (Saturday, 5pm)
Mallorca v Osasuna (Saturday, 5pm)
Sporting Gijon v Athletic Bilbao (Saturday, 7pm)
Real Sociedad v Real Madrid (Saturday, 9pm)
Hercules v Valencia (Sunday, 4pm)
Levante v Villarreal (Sunday, 4pm)
Racing Santander v Real Zaragoza (Sunday, 4pm)
Atlético Madrid v Barcelona (Sunday, 6pm)
Malaga v Sevilla (Sunday, 8pm) 

The matches available on Sky are highlighted in bold.  Although, annoyingly, despite having no fewer than four dedicated sports channels to choose from, Sky appear to only be showing the 2^nd half of Atlético v Barça, preferring to subject us all to Andy Gray’s ‘last word’ on the weekend’s premiership action until 7pm instead.  I for one find it hugely insulting that Sky’s schedulers assume I’d rather watch Andy twat about with that touch-screen gadget that he still doesn’t seem to have familiarised himself with, rather than watch one of the biggest matches of the weekend happening anywhere in the World.  Even worse, the other Sky Sports channels available are showing yank football, a repeat of the 2005 Ashes and International Showjumping.  Showjumping for f*ck sake?!  Still, with any luck the first half might be available via the red button, as it should be a cracker of a game and the first real test of Atlético’s credentials if they aim to compete with the big two this season.

I’ll be back next week to review and preview.  Meantime, enjoy the weekend and what you can of the action from Spain.

¡Hola!

Welcome to the first of my weekly-to-be blogs covering all the ticker, tacker, olés and hankie waving of the Spanish football season.  I’ll be doing my best throughout the season to keep you up to date with all La Liga’s goings on, including pressing issues such as: how many consecutive hat-tricks Messi has scored; who Mourinho is mostly upset with; and how many Barcelona players have publicly outed themselves and declared their undying love for Cesc Fabregas.

Those of you with access to a televison and/or a calendar may have noticed that La Liga is already underway, with the LFP deciding to organise Week 1’s fixtures a fortnight ago, before taking a well earned rest for two weeks, to accommodate the international break.  In a fit of liberty taking akin to George Bush’s early days in the White House, I decided not to bother covering week 1 and simply await the return to action this weekend to post my thoughts.  So, to bring everyone up to speed, what have we missed?  Well, quite a bit actually… But if you’re reading it here for the first time, you really need to, erm, stay in more.  Nevertheless, to summarise;

Real Madrid have a new manager.  Some Portuguese chap – used to coach in England I think.  It is of course, ‘de uno especial’, Jose Mourinho.  Not wishing to overshadow his own arrival and share any limelight, Jose brought an end to the annual practice of signing overpriced, overrated prima donnas.  Instead, he chose – weirdly – to focus on team players with a strong work ethic, bringing in Germany’s World Cup stars Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira, from Werder Bremen and Stuttgart respectively.  Less surprising arrivals at the Bernabéu were Spanish child prodigy Sergio Canales (from Racing) and Portuguese elder statesman Ricardo Carvalho, from Chelsea, who despite saying he’d “swim to Madrid” to play under Mourinho again, probably just got a flight.  Especially when he glanced at a map and realised Madrid was some 400km from the nearest coastline.  Of the players leaving Madrid, Rafael van der Vaart was arguably the highest profile departure, taking a huge cut in wages (and standards) to sign for Spurs.

Barça also had an active summer, managing to finally rid themselves of Swedish youtube show-pony Zlatan Ibrahimovic, concluding a disastrous piece of transfer business, right up there on a Manchester City-esque scale.  Coach Pep Guardiola also finally landed David Villa from Valencia (pre-World Cup, wisely), Javier Mascherano from Liverpool and Brazilian defender Adriano Correia from Sevilla.  Rumour has it they were also involved in a clandestine and ultimately unsuccessful approach for a Spanish midfielder currently playing in the Premiership, but they kept their cards close to their chest on that one, so we can only speculate as to who that might have been…

Now, before anyone accuses me of ‘big two bias’, this blog will also give plenty of attention (or at least a proportionate amount) to the non-classico teams in the league.  I for one am particularly interested in following the fortunes of newly promoted demigods, Hércules CF, if only because they should provide at least a couple of occasions for me to use lazy journalistic clichés, such as ‘Herculean effort’, each time they achieve a decent result.  Don’t hold your breath for this in next week’s blog though – they’re off to Camp Nou this evening.

After winning the inaugural Europa Cup last year and beating Inter in the UEFA Super Cup, big things are expected of Atlético Madrid this year, despite the loss of Jurado to Schalke late in the transfer window.  World Cup Player of the Tournament Diego Forlán remains to lead the charge though – expect to witness many six-pack revealing goal celebration from him this season.  Seriously, I’ll be keeping tabs on how many yellow cards he picks up for this ridiculous exhibitionism throughout the season.  Jealous, me?

As for the other challengers… well, there aren’t really any title contenders but it’ll be interesting to see how Sevilla and Valencia cope with the loss of some major players and who the movers and shakers in the race for 3^rd place will be (sound familiar, Scottish readers?).

So, on to the football, the season’s curtain raiser, the Spanish Super Cup, saw Lionel Messi demonstrate that he has no intention of taking his foot of the gas, with a sensational hat-trick to almost singlehandedly turn round the tie in Camp Nou, after a first leg 3-1 away defeat to Sevilla.   Barça triumphed 4-0 on the night, 5-3 on aggregate.

In Week 1, Mourinho’s Madrid stuttered away to Majorca where, despite finishing with 5 up front, they failed to break down the islanders and had to settle for a 0-0 draw, giving Jose the perfect excuse to moan to his board about them not buying Drogba for him before the transfer deadline.

Barça started impressively away to Racing with a 3-0 win, Messi, Iniesta and Villa the scorers, with Victor Valdes keeping a clean sheet which included a tremendous penalty save to deny Mohammed Tchite, after a dubious decision to award a foul against Maxwell.

Atlético Madrid started strongly, beating a toothless Sporting Gijon 4-0, including two from Forlan (who celebrated with his shirt on for a change) and one for the soon to depart Jurado.  Simao added a 4^th in stoppage time.  Elsewhere, Espanyol and Valencia both started with 3-1 wins against Getafe and Malaga respectively.  Sevilla went one better away to Levante, coming back from 1-0 down to win 4-1.  A 1-0 home win for Real Sociedad against Villareal, a 1-0 away win for Bilbao at Hercules and goalless draws between Deportivo and Zaragoza, and Osasuna and Almeria, completes the round-up.

At this early a stage the table is still fairly meaningless so deserves little attention, other than to point out that Barça are 2 points ahead of Real, which, if the tight race between them last season is anything to go by, could actually prove to be quite significant later on.  Today’s fixtures include Barcelona v Hércules, Valencia v Racing (5pm GMT), Real Madrid v Osasuna (7pm) and Athletic Bilbao v Atlético Madrid (9pm).  The pick of Sunday’s action sees Villarreal host Espanyol at 6pm and Sevilla entertaining Deportivo immediately afterwards, at 8pm.  Sky are showing all 5 of the games, so there’s plenty to enjoy for the armchair aficionados.

So, that’s it for the for this week, I’ll be back next week to review this weekend’s action and look ahead to Week 3.  Hope you’ve enjoyed my inaugural blog, I look forward to reading any comments.  Unless you’re a pedant desperate to highlight a flawed translation or misplaced piece of Spanish punctuation, in which case – Me cago en tu leche…

Buenos diás.