La Liga Final Roundup — Week 38

My Cata­lan isn’t great but I believe the pic­ture says “Play­ers, Fans, Every­one United Makes Strength, Thanks To Every­one” Barcelona wrapped up its 19th La Liga title and all the Euro­pean cup spots are pretty much sewn up. The final week of the La Liga sea­son still has some drama left with 5 teams still fight­ing to avoid relegation.

Amaz­ingly Sport­ing de Gijón will remain in La Liga after they defeated Recre­ativo Huelva 2–1 at home. Sport­ing trailed 1–0 at half­time but scored twice in the 2nd half includ­ing the rel­e­ga­tion avoid­ing goal by Luis Morán in the 67th minute.

With Recre­ativo & Numan­cia already on the way down it came down to Getafe & Real Betis for the last rel­e­ga­tion spot. Getafe drew 1–1 on the road against Rac­ing San­tander and Real Betis drew 1–1 at home against Val­ladolid. Both sides were even on 42 points but Getafe stayed up because of the head to head tiebreaker. The 2–2 aggre­gate of the 2 Getafe-Real Betis matches favored Getafe because of the road goals. It turns out that the 2 goals Getafe’s Ikechukwu Uche scored in their Feb­ru­ary 1 match in Sevilla would be what sent Betis down to Segunda División.

Other matches of note, Espanyol’s final game at the Mon­tjuic wit­nessed a mag­i­cal hat-trick by Espanyol icon Raúl Tamudo as they defeated Málaga 3–0. Espanyol looked rel­e­gated 2 months ago but a run of 8 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss in their last 10 matches to helped Espanyol fly into the Top 10.

Diego For­lan wrapped up the Pichichi with his 32nd goal in a 3–0 home win against Almería. The win clinched 4th place and the last Cham­pi­ons League spot as Los Col­choneros won 8 of their last 9 includ­ing 6 straight to end the season.

Here are the results & final standings:

SATURDAY, MAY 30th

Deportivo La Coruña 1 — 1 Barcelona
DLC: Rodolfo Diaz Bod­ipo (31′)
BAR: Samuel Eto’o (89′)

Mal­lorca 2 — 3 Vil­lar­real
MAL: Aritz Aduriz (35′) & Pierre Webó (89′)
VIL: Cani (28′) & Joseba Llorente (40′& 52′)

Valen­cia 2 — 0 Ath­letic Bil­bao
VAL: David Villa (7′ & 90′)

Atlético Madrid 3 — 0 Almería
ATM: Kun Agüero (19′), Raúl Gar­cía (27′), Diego For­lán (49′)

SUNDAY, MAY 31st

Espanyol 3 — 0 Málaga
ESP: Raúl Tamudo (7′, 45′, pen 56′)

Numan­cia 0 — 2 Sevilla
SEV: Emil­iano Armenteros (88′) & Juan Car­los Moreno (og 91′)

Osasuna 2 — 1 Real Madrid
OSA: Jaroslav Plasil (15′) & Juan­fran (60′)
RMA: Gon­zalo Higuaín (11′)

Rac­ing San­tander 1 — 1 Getafe
RAC: Toni Moral (34′)
GET: Granero (38′)

Real Betis 1 — 1 Val­ladolid
BET: Ricardo Oliveira (49′)
VLD: Mar­cos Aguirre (46′)

Sport­ing Gijon 2 — 1 Recre­ativo Huelva
SPO: David Bar­ral (58′) & Luis Morán (67′)
REC: Ersen Mar­tin (23′)

STANDINGS

Barcelona, Real Madrid, & Sevilla qual­ify for 09–10 Cham­pi­ons League group stage
Atlético Madrid qual­ify for Cham­pi­ons League play­off round

Vil­lar­real & Valen­cia qual­ify for 09–10 Europa League play­off
Ath­letic Bil­bao qual­ify for Europa League 3rd qual­i­fy­ing round

Real Betis, Numan­cia, Recre­ativo Huelva are rel­e­gated to Segunda División

Tagged as: La Liga, Week Scores