La Liga 2009–2010: A Season Preview (Part One)

With the Span­ish foot­ball sea­son only two and a half weeks away, teams are fin­ish­ing their last pre­sea­son friend­lies and mak­ing their final changes in prepa­ra­tion for the La Liga sea­son.  There are many ques­tions con­cern­ing each of the twenty teams in La Liga, and this pre­view will explore the most impor­tant ques­tion for each La Liga team.  Today, this pre­view will dis­cuss seven teams, next Wednes­day will dis­cuss the next seven teams, and the Wednes­day before the start of the sea­son will dis­cuss the final six teams.  The pre­view will be in alpha­bet­i­cal order, so part one of the sea­son pre­view will include Almería, Ath­letic Bil­bao, Atlético Madrid, Barcelona, Deportivo La Coruña, Espanyol, and Getafe.

Almería

Who will accept the scor­ing bur­den that Álvaro Negredo shoul­dered?  With thirty-two goals in sev­enty matches for the past two years for Almería, includ­ing nine­teen this past sea­son, Negredo dis­played the tal­ent that Real Madrid saw in him when he came from Rayo Val­le­cano.  The next high­est goal scorer was Kalu Uche with only eight goals; only four play­ers even had more than one goal the entire sea­son.  Now that Real Madrid bought back Negredo and Almería accepted a €2.9 mil­lion bid from Ful­ham, Henok Goitom looks to be the man that Almería leans toward for this season.

A €2.2 mil­lion trans­fer from Real Mur­cia, he spent last sea­son on loan with Real Val­ladolid with ten goals in twenty-nine appear­ances.  Real Mur­cia had the option to buy back Goitom but decided to take the trans­fer fee from Almería.  Play­ing in the Segunda División, Real Mur­cia only fin­ished four­teenth out of twenty-two teams, and its forty-eight goals in forty-two matches did not sig­nal that a goal-scorer like Goitom would be sur­plus to their team, so on the sur­face, Real Murcia’s release of Goitom does not seem to be a ring­ing endorse­ment for him.  A phys­i­cal for­ward, Almería will most likely use him as a tar­get so that play­ers like Pablo Piatti and José Ortiz can run onto his passes.

Ath­letic Bilbao

Is Joaquín Caparrós cor­rect in keep­ing faith in his cur­rent group of play­ers?  Accord­ing to the Span­ish news­pa­per Marca, Caparrós said, “In terms of addi­tions, I don’t expect any­thing more.  We have a com­pet­i­tive work­force and there are guys like (acad­emy grad­u­ate) Iker Muni­ain who are strong and join­ing the first-team fold. My duty is to get the max­i­mum per­for­mance out of the play­ers we have.”

Led by tal­is­man Fer­nando Llorente and Bil­bao leg­end Joseba Etxe­ber­ria, Los Leones fin­ished a dis­ap­point­ing thir­teenth, only two points above pos­si­ble rel­e­ga­tion; how­ever, they enjoyed a suc­cess­ful Copa del Rey run, where they made it all the way to the final, only to be out­classed by Barcelona 4–1.  Bil­bao has a core group of vet­er­ans, such as Fran­cisco Yeste, Pablo Orbaiz, and Joseba Etxe­ber­ria, bring­ing in the Basque kids, such as Javi Martínez, Susaeta, and Fer­nando Amore­bi­eta.  The main prob­lem was the defense, who gave up sixty-two goals, third worst in La Liga.  While goal­keeper Gorka Iraizoz did not have a stel­lar sea­son by any indi­ca­tion, the Bil­bao defense left him out to dry too many times.  Bilbao’s con­ces­sion of thirty-five goals in the sec­ond half of games, includ­ing thir­teen in the final fif­teen min­utes, cost them a mul­ti­tude of points as they lost nine games by a one-goal mar­gin and had eight draws.  While Joaquín Caparrós’ con­fi­dence in his mid­field and for­wards is war­ranted, Caparrós might want to look into his acad­emy to replace some of his defense.

Atlético Madrid

Can Ser­gio Asenjo improve a mediocre defense?  Last sea­son, Atlético Madrid’s defense allowed fifty-seven goals, which was only eleventh out of twenty teams.  Apart from the sign­ing of vet­eran Real Betis defender Juanito on a free trans­fer and the releas­ing of Giourkas Seitaridis, the back four remains intact for the most part, which leaves the goal­keep­ing sit­u­a­tion where Atlético Madrid made their most sig­nif­i­cant changes.  Gré­gory Coupet only started six times in the league, and Atlético Madrid released him.  Leo Franco, the reg­u­lar start­ing goal­keeper, had a pedes­trian sea­son and after five years of ser­vice, Atlético Madrid released him as well.

Atlético Madrid then signed Ser­gio Asenjo from Real Val­ladolid for €5.5 mil­lion to be their goal­keeper for many years to come.  Asenjo is the start­ing goal­keeper for the Span­ish U-21 national team, hav­ing played in all three games of the 2009 UEFA U-21 Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships, and he is tipped to be the most likely suc­ces­sor to Iker Casil­las on the senior national team.  Because of these acco­lades, Asenjo will face the pres­sure of lift­ing the strug­gling Atlético Madrid defense.  If he is capa­ble of per­form­ing up to the vast tal­ent that he pos­sesses in the face of lofty expec­ta­tions, Los Col­choneros should fin­ish in a Cham­pi­ons League spot as well as con­tend in the later stages of the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League.

Barcelona

Will the switch from Samuel Eto’o to Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic improve a tre­ble win­ning team?  When a team wins every com­pe­ti­tion they enter, the ten­dency is to want to be the same team the next sea­son.  For the most part, Barcelona fol­lowed this pol­icy, but the trans­fer of Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic from Inter Milan to Barcelona in exchange for Samuel Eto’o and €46 mil­lion replaces a vital part of a Barcelona offense that scored an aston­ish­ing 105 goals in a thirty-eight match sea­son.  While Samuel Eto’o scored thirty goals and fin­ished sec­ond to Diego For­lán in the Pichichi tro­phy, he was not orig­i­nally in Pep Guardiola’s plans for last sea­son.  Guardi­ola said he had a change of heart after watch­ing Eto’o in the pre­sea­son, but there were many rumors sug­gest­ing that it was not a change of heart but rather a lack of suit­ors for Eto’o and an inabil­ity to find a suit­able replace­ment.  When Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic clam­ored to have a new chal­lenge and leave Serie A, Barcelona found the replace­ment for Samuel Eto’o.

The two play­ers are dif­fer­ent kinds of for­wards.  While Eto’o used his speed and poach­ing skills to become one of the top scor­ers in La Liga, Ibrahi­movic is more of a tra­di­tional num­ber 9, where he uses his height as a tar­get man as well as hav­ing amaz­ing tech­ni­cal skill.  For the blau­grana to repeat as La Liga cham­pi­ons, Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic must be able to adapt to the Barça way as quickly as pos­si­ble, as well as pro­vide the assists to his for­ward coun­ter­parts Thierry Henry and Lionel Messi to keep the Barcelona attack as potent as ever.

Deportivo La Coruña

Can Deportivo La Coruña crack the top six and earn a guar­an­teed place in a Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion?  Depor par­tic­i­pated in the UEFA Cup last sea­son but only through the UEFA Inter­toto Cup, which now no longer exists.  Since the 2003–2004 sea­son where they fin­ished third and made it to the semi­fi­nals of the Cham­pi­ons League, they have been a con­sis­tent top ten team apart from an anom­alous thir­teenth in 2006–2007 but not good enough to grab a direct spot in either the Cham­pi­ons League or the Europa League.  The depar­ture of Joan Verdú due to con­trac­tual dif­fer­ences with the team will hurt Depor’s mid­field, as he was the main play­maker that set up goals for Riki and Ángel Lafita.  For Depor to improve on their eighth place fin­ishes, Adrián will have to con­tinue his devel­op­ment as a striker.  He gained valu­able expe­ri­ence on loan with Málaga last sea­son, start­ing nine­teen matches with a team that con­tended for a Euro­pean spot all sea­son.  Riki has to increase the goal out­put, and expect the young French striker Las­sad Nouioui to be a sig­nif­i­cant part of the Depor attack.  These three will be vital for Depor to rise into Euro­pean competition.

Espanyol

How will Espanyol respond to the death of their cap­tain, Daniel Jar­que?  Los Perequitos had been fly­ing high since the begin­ning of April, when rel­e­ga­tion was a cer­tainty.  They went 8–1-1, includ­ing wins over Deportivo La Coruña, Valen­cia, and Málaga, and they rose from the bot­tom of the table to fin­ish an incred­i­ble tenth.  In the close sea­son, Espanyol acquired young Chelsea star­let Ben Sahar and Celtic star Shun­suke Naka­mura, and they named acad­emy grad­u­ate Daniel Jar­que as their new cap­tain.  They moved in to their new, mod­ern sta­dium, Estadi Cornellà-El Prat, and they chris­tened the sta­dium on August 2 with a con­vinc­ing 3–0 vic­tory over Liv­er­pool.  Then on August 8, the unthink­able hap­pens: their newly named cap­tain Daniel Jar­que dies of a heart attack while on a pre­sea­son tour in Italy.

Before the tragedy befalling Daniel Jar­que, Espanyol looked like a team that could con­tend with the likes of Deportivo La Coruña, Málaga, and Valen­cia for a top six fin­ish.  That season-ending run showed that when Espanyol scores, they are a daunt­ing team to play because of the defense led by Cameroon inter­na­tional Car­los Kameni and the cen­tral defense of Jar­que and Nicolás Pareja.   Is Espanyol still this same team now?  No team is the same when they lose a player and, more impor­tantly, a leader, like Dani Jar­que, but they will need to move on from this tragedy and pre­pare even more dili­gently for a phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally tough sea­son.  If Espanyol plays with a new sense of pur­pose and is inspired by the mem­ory of Dani Jar­que, they will be in con­tention for a Euro­pean spot.

Getafe

Will Getafe be able to rise from a team fight­ing rel­e­ga­tion to the mid-table team of pre­vi­ous sea­sons?  Sim­i­lar to Ath­letic Bil­bao, Getafe’s main prob­lem was giv­ing up late goals.  Getafe gave up four­teen goals in the last fif­teen min­utes of matches, and Getafe had eleven losses by one goal and twelve draws.  Roberto Abbon­danzieri started the first half of the sea­son as goal­keeper, but his rel­a­tively poor play and his move back to Boca Juniors in Jan­u­ary made the goal­keeper job open to Jacobo, who Getafe loaned from Real Val­ladolid.  Jacobo was not much bet­ter, and he was only tem­po­rary.  Oscar Ustari suf­fered a knee injury while with the Span­ish national team at the 2008 Bei­jing Olympics and was only able to start five matches.  With a healthy Oscar Ustari, he should be a boost to that strug­gling Getafe defense.  Another piece of the puz­zle added to the defense is the €2.5 mil­lion cap­ture of Mané from Almería.  A left back that is equally com­pe­tent in defense and in the attack­ing third, he will boost an oth­er­wise leaky defense.  Getafe’s prospects do not look promis­ing, but these improve­ments in defense should help in avoid­ing rel­e­ga­tion but not enough to be safe from the rel­e­ga­tion fight.

Tagged as: Almería, athletic bilbao, atletico madrid, barcelona, Daniel Jarque, deportivo la coruna, espanyol, getafe, henok goitom, oscar ustari, Samuel Eto'o, sergio asenjo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic