Big Week For Both Halves Of Madrid

To say it’s been a con­trast­ing start to the sea­son for the two major teams in Madrid would be a mas­sive under­state­ment. On one side, Real are already start­ing to look like the real deal and cur­rently sit top of the La Liga table with 11 goals and 9 points from their open­ing three matches. On the other side, Ath­letico are in tur­moil and are sec­ond from bot­tom with just a point to their name.

The vul­tures are cir­cling at the Vicente Calderon sta­dium and another defeat for Ath­letico on Wednes­day could be the final straw for man­ager Abel Resino. There were protests by fans after a dis­ap­point­ing home draw with Rac­ing San­tander and the mood has not been helped by a Cham­pi­ons League stale­mate with Cypriot min­nows APOEL, fol­lowed by a com­fort­able 5–2 reverse at Barcelona.

Atleti play host to Alme­ria on Wednes­day and may be with­out star striker Ser­gio Aguero who sus­tained a knock to the thigh on Sat­ur­day. How­ever the Argen­tine inter­na­tional is refus­ing to panic.

“The sea­son has only just started and there is still too much in front of us for every­one to start feel­ing sorry for them­selves” said Aguero.

Mean­while, neigh­bours Real face a dif­fi­cult trip as they take on new coach Manuel Pellegrini’s for­mer club, Vil­lar­real. Pel­le­grini worked won­ders at El Madri­gal but will be hop­ing for an away vic­tory on Wednes­day. Los Merengues appeared to step up a gear as they thrashed Xerez 5–0 at the week­end and £80million man Chris­tiano Ronaldo thinks that they can get even better.

“I don’t think it is a prob­lem of adapt­ing to a new sys­tem, we have to improve but we aren’t doing badly.” said Ronaldo after Sunday’s victory.

Else­where, La Liga cham­pi­ons Barcelona will be hop­ing to extend their 100% start as they visit Rac­ing San­tander and sur­prise pack­age Ath­letic Bil­bao will also be going for four wins out of four when they travel to Tenerife.