La Liga Roundup — Round 33

Ladies & Gen­tle­men, the chase for the title of Span­ish La Liga cham­pion just got more inter­est­ing. Round 33 came quickly after Round 32 fea­tured mid­week matches. Round 33 was a dream for Real Madrid fans as Barcelona finally dropped points to make Los Merengues chances for a 32nd La Liga title a strong pos­si­bil­ity. Barcelona needed an 86th minute goal from Thierry Henry to equal­ize 2–2 on the road against Valen­cia. The draw ended Barca’s 7 game win­ning streak and allowed Real to close to within 4 points of their lead.

Real Madrid got a hat trick by their icon, Raúl to beat Sevilla 4–2 on the road. The win extended Real’s amaz­ing run under Juande Ramos to 18 games unbeaten in La Liga with only 1 draw in that span. Real Madrid’s last loss in La Liga was the 2–0 defeat to Barca in the Camp Nou on Decem­ber 13th. Sevilla has lost 4 straight and lead Valen­cia by 1 point for 3rd place. The Barca draw & Real’s win set up an excit­ing and intense Span­ish Super­Clásico next Saturday.

Vil­lar­real moved back into a Euro­pean spot as they held off Getafe 2–1 on the road. The Yel­low Sub­ma­rine jumped out to a 2–0 lead on the strength of goals from Joan Capdev­ila and Joseba Llorente. Vil­lar­real now sits in 5th place just 2 points back of 3rd place Sevilla.

Espanyol con­tin­ued its inspir­ing climb from the bot­tom of the table to safety with an impor­tant 2–0 win over Real Betis. Barcelona’s other team is unbeaten in its last 5 matches hav­ing won the last 4 and are 2 points out of the rel­e­ga­tion zone with Valen­cia as their next opponent.

Here are the results and stand­ings after Round 33:

SATURDAY, APRIL 25th
Málaga 1 — 1 Deportivo La Coruña
MAL: Albert Luque (32′)
DLC: Ser­gio González (50′)

Almería 2 — 1 Numan­cia
ALM: Kalu Uche (6′) & Fer­nando Sori­ano (42′)
NUM: Asier Goiria (81′)

Valen­cia 2 — 2 Barcelona
VAL: Hed­wiges Maduro (43′) & Pablo Hernán­dez (45′)
BAR: Lionel Messi (24′) & Thierry Henry (86′)

SUNDAY, APRIL 26th
Ath­létic Bil­bao 2 — 1 Rac­ing San­tander
ATH: Fer­nando Llorente (22′) & David Lopez (pen 42′)
RAC: Pinil­los (pen 56′)

Espanyol 2 — 0 Real Betis
ESP: Luis Gar­cía (4′) & Román (84′)

Val­ladolid 0 — 0 Osasuna

Recre­ativo Huelva 2 — 4 Mal­lorca
REC: Sisi (48′) & Camuñas (81′)
MAL: Jurado (10′), Arango (15′), ‘Chori’ Cas­tro (76′), Keita (91′)

Getafe 1 — 2 Vil­lar­real
GET: Manu del Moral (pen 81′)
VIL: Joan Capdev­ila (16′) & Joseba Llorente (43′)

Sevilla 2 — 4 Real Madrid
SEV: Renato (16′) & Diego Capel (80′)
RMA: Raúl (45′, 63′, 66′) & Marcelo (92′)

Atlético Madrid 3 — 1 Sport­ing Gijón
ATM: For­lán (27′), Simao (41′), Kun Agüero (47′)
SPO: Mate Bilic (48′)

STANDINGS

Tagged as: La Liga, Week Scores