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 4th 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 5th 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 2nd 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.




