Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Abdullah Al Ahmed Al Thani could have done anything with his time, and with all of his responsibilities on his docket, president of a football club would seem to be near the bottom of his list.  Born from Qatari royalty, the Sheikh billionaire currently sits on the Board of Directors of Doha Bank and the Qatar Equestrian Federation as well as running a business empire including but not exclusive to hotel chains, shopping malls, and cellular phone companies.

Sheikh Al Thani, however, worked and negotiated to buy Málaga Club de Fútbol for a price of €36 million in June with then-owner Lorenzo Sanz and president Fernando Sanz, while devoting and extended four to five months to this acquisition.  Foreign ownership has become the rage throughout Europe, but La Liga, and Spain in general, has historically kept ownership and president roles to Spanish citizens only.  When the Sheikh took over Málaga in June, he opened the old boys’ club and became the only non-Spanish owner in the top flight of Spain.

Whereas most of the new crop of foreign owners in Europe keep to the matter of their own clubs and merely worry about big-money signings, Sheikh Al Thani put his nose into the internal issues of Spanish football.  Aside from the historical teams in Spain, the rest of the clubs usually have little say when it comes to the RFEF (the governing body of football in Spain), but Al Thani cared little for the normal protocol when the issue of revenue sharing came to light.

The new TV deal will come into effect starting in the 2014-15 season, and according to the contract, Real Madrid and Barcelona will take 34% of the pot, Atlético Madrid and Valencia will garner 11% of the money, 1% will be held for those who get relegated to the Segunda División, and the rest will be split among the remaining La Liga teams.  Several of the clubs symbolically spit on this contract, Sevilla president José María del Nido leading the charge.  While Málaga agreed to the terms of the deal, Sheikh Al Thani still voiced a dissenting opinion concerning the future TV contract:

“The situation now honestly is not good, regarding the TV rights,” he said, according to Reuters.  It’s not good for the clubs, because only the two big teams are leading the whole issue.  We wish to have the same system as they have in England because it’s much more fair.  There are some clubs at the bottom, they have some financial problems.  It doesn’t make for fair competition.”

While these statements might come off as a tad (or completely) hypocritical since he has the billions to pay for any player in the world, his sentiments are no less correct or meaningful.  Usually, any new owner, whether domestic or foreign, wants to assimilate himself into the league and the other owners before speaking out on important football issues, but Sheikh Al Thani has been a trend-breaker in his business career, and his association with Málaga has not changed the way he operates.

One of the trends, however, that he has followed has been the tendency for new owners to make an immediate impact with a multitude of new signings.  Sheikh Al Thani was not shy in splashing the cash during the summer transfer window, but knowing Málaga’s modest standing in Europe and Spain’s pecking order, Al Thani did not immediately start with huge, mega-million Euro bids like what Sheikh Mansour executed when his Abu Dhabi United Group purchased Manchester City in 2008.  The club spent a relatively middling €16.15 million on eight different players, the two most expensive being €4 million striker from Banfield, club-record signing Sebastián “Seba” Fernández, and €3.5 million striker from Las Palmas, Salomón Rondón.

With this infusion of new players, Jesualdo Ferreira replaced incumbent Juan Ramón López Muñiz as manager of Málaga, and the new dawn was supposed to rise on the Costa del Sol.

Nine matches into this season, with losses in their first five home matches and a grand total of seven points earned, Sheikh Al Thani fired Ferreira, who José Mourinho described as “a story of a donkey who worked for thirty years but never became a horse.”  Seba found it hard to adjust to life and football in Spain, a goalkeeping crisis hit the club with three different goalkeepers having to start within those nine matches, and the defense leaked an astonishing twenty-one goals in that short nine-game span.

Sheikh Al Thani’s experiment was blowing up in his face, but he made a big and surprising splash with the hiring of former Villarreal and Real Madrid manager Manuel Pellegrini to replace Ferreira.  Unfortunately, for Pellegrini and Málaga, the situation did not improve significantly as los boquerones only gained six points in seven matches to end 2010, and if there were one owner in Spain to mark as the wheeler and dealer of the January transfer window, Sheikh Al Thani was the odds makers’ favorite.

Six new players joined Málaga in January, and while new club-record signing and Pablo Piatti clone Diego Buonanotte will arrive in the summer, the other five players can be sorted into two different groups: the has-beens and the could-bes.

If this were 2005, Martín Demichelis, Enzo Maresca, and Júlio Baptista would have been quite a triumvirate of transfers.  Baptista signed from Sevilla for €20 million to Real Madrid, Maresca joined Sevilla from Fiorentina for €2.5 million and became a staple in the attacking midfield for los nervionenses, and Demichelis established himself as an ever-present in the Bayern Munich central defense, with whom he was a part of three Bundesliga titles, three DFB-Pokal (German Cup) crowns and a finals appearance in the 2009-10 UEFA Champions League.  Now, these three are in the twilight of their careers, hoping to recapture the magic they wielded in the past.

Ignacio Camacho and Sergio Asenjo were supposed to be the future of both Atlético Madrid and the Spanish national team.  Camacho rose through the ranks of the Atleti cantera to the first team while captaining the Spanish under-17 team to a European Championship in 2007.  He could not supplant the likes of Paulo Assunção, Tiago, Raúl García, Cléber Santana, etc., so Atlético let go their once promising midfielder to Málaga for a bargain-basement price of €1.5 million.

Asenjo was presumed as the heir to Iker Casillas in the Spanish national team.  He was the first-choice goalkeeper for the Spanish under-21 team at the 2009 European Championships and the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup, and when he supplanted both Ludovic Butelle and Alberto López as the undisputed number one goalkeeper for Real Valladolid at the end of 2007, he became the youngest starting keeper in La Liga at the tender age of eighteen.

Atlético thought so highly of Asenjo that they let go of Grégory Coupet and long-time starter Leo Franco and brought Asenjo from Valladolid for €5 million in the summer of 2009.  A nervous start and some unforgivable gaffes saw his grip on as first-choice Atlético keeper loosened completely with Roberto Jiménez taking over, and eventually David de Gea rose above both Roberto and Asenjo with Asenjo relegated to third choice, a stunning and immediate fall from grace.

Manuel Pellegrini drafted all five of these players directly into the starting eleven, but circumstances had not improved.  Four points out of five matches in January, including conceding a late goal that lost a match 1-2 to relegation rivals Real Zaragoza, had the Andalucian club at the foot of the table, four points below the safety line.  So when Málaga traveled west to their provincial rivals Sevilla on Sunday afternoon, the gloaming looked to continue los boquerones.

Málaga had conceded forty-seven goals in La Liga prior to Jornada 22, eleven more than any other team in the Primera División, and with a rojiblanco team loaded with talented attacking players like Frédéric Kanouté, Luís Fabiano, Jesús Navas, etc., it was not a question of if but how many would they allow.

Sevilla trainer Gregorio Manzano, however, strayed from the normal 4-4-2 and employed a 4-2-3-1 with Fabiano as the lone striker up front in order to shore up a midfield that had given up a plethora of scoring chances in the past few weeks.

Manuel Pellegrini changed his tactics for this match by closing his open, attacking style and employing Eliseu Pereira, the attacking left winger, at left back ahead of the incumbent Patrick Mtiliga.  Pellegrini’s strategy worked to perfection, as his team allowed only one scoring chance and gave up three shots, only one of which was on target, in the first half.  Eliseu bottled up Jesús Navas on the right wing for the most part, and while Eliseu could not bomb forward because of the Navas threat, he unearthed defensive acumen that apparently Pellegrini only saw.

The match did not perk up that much in the second half, and Málaga nearly stole the three points in the fifth minute of stoppage time.  In the last action of the match, Eliseu whipped in a free kick into a host of bodies in the box, and Weligton got a surprisingly unmarked header on target.  Andrés Palop, who had little to do for the whole match, came up with a flying parry that saved the draw for Sevilla, and Seba Fernández fluffed a potential reply from Palop’s save as it screwed miles wide of the right near post.

0-0 fulltime, and Málaga could not be more pleased with a boring, tedious draw.

Málaga fully deserved to come out of the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán with at least a point, and while the match was a snoozer for the neutral and a frustration for the Sevilla fans, this match was a very positive sign for Málaga, not only because they got a point in the middle of a relegation battle against a European-caliber team but also because they kept a clean sheet for only the third time all season.  While Pellegrini will likely not apply this type of defensive strategy too often, he made a point of making Sevilla have to penetrate a Fort Knox-like team to signal to his players that they are capable of playing well defensively while limiting the egregious turnover and mistakes to a minimum.

If Pellegrini can keep his team this organized while opening up a little more to allow Baptista, Rondón, and the other attacking personnel to express themselves in the final third, they should rise above the bottom three by the end of the season.  Pellegrini’s main objective is to keep Málaga in La Liga, and if he accomplishes this task, Sheikh Al Thani has shown that he is fully invested in all facets of this club besides player transfers but will also provide all the funds necessary for Pellegrini to craft this team in the way Pellegrini wants.  Bright days are ahead of this club that has been known as the classic yo-yo team, bouncing up and down from the first division, and if Málaga becomes a mainstay in La Liga, what player would not want to play in a beautiful city on the Costa del Sol that is bankrolled by a billionaire?

Fueras de Juego

- Villarreal must have assumed that playing at El Madrigal against a modest Levante team would require little effort, but their sleepwalking performance inspired Levante to channel this disrespect into a positive outcome, and Levante shocked their Comunitat Valenciana neighbors 0-1, handing Villarreal only its first loss at home all season.  With Valencia comfortably handling Hércules 2-0 at the Mestalla in the other Comunitat Valenciana derby on Sunday, Valencia is only one point behind Villarreal for third in the table, and the Yellow Submarine will regret their arrogant attitude against Levante if Valencia and they remain close together at the end of the season.

- Many assumed Osasuna would experience a massive letdown after the physical and emotional nirvana of defeating Real Madrid 1-0 at the Estadio Reyno de Navarra last weekend in front of their ravenous home faithful, but while they only managed a 1-1 draw at home to Mallorca to remain one point above the relegation zone, Osasuna performed with a surprising vim and vigor throughout the ninety minutes, scoring within the first ten minutes from a Miguel Flaño goal.  Six of Osasuna’s next seven fixtures feature teams tenth or below in the standings, so the gorritxoak could sew up top-flight football for another year in this stretch.

- FC Barcelona won their sixteenth consecutive La Liga match on Saturday, breaking the 1960-61 Real Madrid record of fifteen, and Lionel Messi scored another hat-trick to raise his total to a mere twenty-four goals in nineteen starts in the league and thirty-seven goals in thirty-one appearances in all competitions.  What is new?  Not much, and that is the brilliance of this streak.  They have had more 5+ goal victories (Sevilla, Almería, Real Madrid, and Real Sociedad) than one-goal victories (Valencia and Levante) during this run, and besides the occasional knocks and niggles, the squad has been healthy for the most part.

Real Madrid kept pace to stay seven points behind Barcelona after they cruised to a 4-1 victory over Real Sociedad, but to expect Barcelona to drop points in three or four matches in order for Real Madrid to catch up seems improbable at this point.  With the Champions League returning next week, that might provide the only plausible avenue for Barcelona to drop points, balancing La Liga and the Champions League with possible squad rotation and general fatigue.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Abdullah Al Ahmed Al Thani could have done anything with his time, and with all of his responsibilities on his docket, president of a football club would seem to be near the bottom of his list.  Born from Qatari royalty, the Sheikh billionaire currently sits on the Board of Directors of Doha Bank and the Qatar Equestrian Federation as well as running a business empire including but not exclusive to hotel chains, shopping malls, and cellular phone companies.

Sheikh Al Thani, however, worked and negotiated to buy Málaga Club de Fútbol for a price of €36 million in June with then-owner Lorenzo Sanz and president Fernando Sanz, while devoting and extended four to five months to this acquisition.  Foreign ownership has become the rage throughout Europe, but La Liga, and Spain in general, has historically kept ownership and president roles to Spanish citizens only.  When the Sheikh took over Málaga in June, he opened the old boys’ club and became the only non-Spanish owner in the top flight of Spain.

Whereas most of the new crop of foreign owners in Europe keep to the matter of their own clubs and merely worry about big-money signings, Sheikh Al Thani put his nose into the internal issues of Spanish football.  Aside from the historical teams in Spain, the rest of the clubs usually have little say when it comes to the RFEF (the governing body of football in Spain), but Al Thani cared little for the normal protocol when the issue of revenue sharing came to light.

The new TV deal will come into effect starting in the 2014-15 season, and according to the contract, Real Madrid and Barcelona will take 34% of the pot, Atlético Madrid and Valencia will garner 11% of the money, 1% will be held for those who get relegated to the Segunda División, and the rest will be split among the remaining La Liga teams.  Several of the clubs symbolically spit on this contract, Sevilla president José María del Nido leading the charge.  While Málaga agreed to the terms of the deal, Sheikh Al Thani still voiced a dissenting opinion concerning the future TV contract:

“The situation now honestly is not good, regarding the TV rights,” he said, according to Reuters.  It’s not good for the clubs, because only the two big teams are leading the whole issue.  We wish to have the same system as they have in England because it’s much more fair.  There are some clubs at the bottom, they have some financial problems.  It doesn’t make for fair competition.”

While these statements might come off as a tad (or completely) hypocritical since he has the billions to pay for any player in the world, his sentiments are no less correct or meaningful.  Usually, any new owner, whether domestic or foreign, wants to assimilate himself into the league and the other owners before speaking out on important football issues, but Sheikh Al Thani has been a trend-breaker in his business career, and his association with Málaga has not changed the way he operates.

One of the trends, however, that he has followed has been the tendency for new owners to make an immediate impact with a multitude of new signings.  Sheikh Al Thani was not shy in splashing the cash during the summer transfer window, but knowing Málaga’s modest standing in Europe and Spain’s pecking order, Al Thani did not immediately start with huge, mega-million Euro bids like what Sheikh Mansour executed when his Abu Dhabi United Group purchased Manchester City in 2008.  The club spent a relatively middling €16.15 million on eight different players, the two most expensive being €4 million striker from Banfield, club-record signing Sebastián “Seba” Fernández, and €3.5 million striker from Las Palmas, Salomón Rondón.

With this infusion of new players, Jesualdo Ferreira replaced incumbent Juan Ramón López Muñiz as manager of Málaga, and the new dawn was supposed to rise on the Costa del Sol.

Nine matches into this season, with losses in their first five home matches and a grand total of seven points earned, Sheikh Al Thani fired Ferreira, who José Mourinho described as “a story of a donkey who worked for thirty years but never became a horse.”  Seba found it hard to adjust to life and football in Spain, a goalkeeping crisis hit the club with three different goalkeepers having to start within those nine matches, and the defense leaked an astonishing twenty-one goals in that short nine-game span.

Sheikh Al Thani’s experiment was blowing up in his face, but he made a big and surprising splash with the hiring of former Villarreal and Real Madrid manager Manuel Pellegrini to replace Ferreira.  Unfortunately, for Pellegrini and Málaga, the situation did not improve significantly as los boquerones only gained six points in seven matches to end 2010, and if there were one owner in Spain to mark as the wheeler and dealer of the January transfer window, Sheikh Al Thani was the odds makers’ favorite.

Six new players joined Málaga in January, and while new club-record signing and Pablo Piatti clone Diego Buonanotte will arrive in the summer, the other five players can be sorted into two different groups: the has-beens and the could-bes.

If this were 2005, Martín Demichelis, Enzo Maresca, and Júlio Baptista would have been quite a triumvirate of transfers.  Baptista signed from Sevilla for €20 million to Real Madrid, Maresca joined Sevilla from Fiorentina for €2.5 million and became a staple in the attacking midfield for los nervionenses, and Demichelis established himself as an ever-present in the Bayern Munich central defense, with whom he was a part of three Bundesliga titles, three DFB-Pokal (German Cup) crowns and a finals appearance in the 2009-10 UEFA Champions League.  Now, these three are in the twilight of their careers, hoping to recapture the magic they wielded in the past.

Ignacio Camacho and Sergio Asenjo were supposed to be the future of both Atlético Madrid and the Spanish national team.  Camacho rose through the ranks of the Atleti cantera to the first team while captaining the Spanish under-17 team to a European Championship in 2007.  He could not supplant the likes of Paulo Assunção, Tiago, Raúl García, Cléber Santana, etc., so Atlético let go their once promising midfielder to Málaga for a bargain-basement price of €1.5 million.

Asenjo was presumed as the heir to Iker Casillas in the Spanish national team.  He was the first-choice goalkeeper for the Spanish under-21 team at the 2009 European Championships and the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup, and when he supplanted both Ludovic Butelle and Alberto López as the undisputed number one goalkeeper for Real Valladolid at the end of 2007, he became the youngest starting keeper in La Liga at the tender age of eighteen.

Atlético thought so highly of Asenjo that they let go of Grégory Coupet and long-time starter Leo Franco and brought Asenjo from Valladolid for €5 million in the summer of 2009.  A nervous start and some unforgivable gaffes saw his grip on as first-choice Atlético keeper loosened completely with Roberto Jiménez taking over, and eventually David de Gea rose above both Roberto and Asenjo with Asenjo relegated to third choice, a stunning and immediate fall from grace.

Manuel Pellegrini drafted all five of these players directly into the starting eleven, but circumstances had not improved.  Four points out of five matches in January, including conceding a late goal that lost a match 1-2 to relegation rivals Real Zaragoza, had the Andalucian club at the foot of the table, four points below the safety line.  So when Málaga traveled west to their provincial rivals Sevilla on Sunday afternoon, the gloaming looked to continue los boquerones.

Málaga had conceded forty-seven goals in La Liga prior to Jornada 22, eleven more than any other team in the Primera División, and with a rojiblanco team loaded with talented attacking players like Frédéric Kanouté, Luís Fabiano, Jesús Navas, etc., it was not a question of if but how many would they allow.

Sevilla trainer Gregorio Manzano, however, strayed from the normal 4-4-2 and employed a 4-2-3-1 with Fabiano as the lone striker up front in order to shore up a midfield that had given up a plethora of scoring chances in the past few weeks.

Manuel Pellegrini changed his tactics for this match by closing his open, attacking style and employing Eliseu Pereira, the attacking left winger, at left back ahead of the incumbent Patrick Mtiliga.  Pellegrini’s strategy worked to perfection, as his team allowed only one scoring chance and gave up three shots, only one of which was on target, in the first half.  Eliseu bottled up Jesús Navas on the right wing for the most part, and while Eliseu could not bomb forward because of the Navas threat, he unearthed defensive acumen that apparently Pellegrini only saw.

The match did not perk up that much in the second half, and Málaga nearly stole the three points in the fifth minute of stoppage time.  In the last action of the match, Eliseu whipped in a free kick into a host of bodies in the box, and Weligton got a surprisingly unmarked header on target.  Andrés Palop, who had little to do for the whole match, came up with a flying parry that saved the draw for Sevilla, and Seba Fernández fluffed a potential reply from Palop’s save as it screwed miles wide of the right near post.

0-0 fulltime, and Málaga could not be more pleased with a boring, tedious draw.

Málaga fully deserved to come out of the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán with at least a point, and while the match was a snoozer for the neutral and a frustration for the Sevilla fans, this match was a very positive sign for Málaga, not only because they got a point in the middle of a relegation battle against a European-caliber team but also because they kept a clean sheet for only the third time all season.  While Pellegrini will likely not apply this type of defensive strategy too often, he made a point of making Sevilla have to penetrate a Fort Knox-like team to signal to his players that they are capable of playing well defensively while limiting the egregious turnover and mistakes to a minimum.

If Pellegrini can keep his team this organized while opening up a little more to allow Baptista, Rondón, and the other attacking personnel to express themselves in the final third, they should rise above the bottom three by the end of the season.  Pellegrini’s main objective is to keep Málaga in La Liga, and if he accomplishes this task, Sheikh Al Thani has shown that he is fully invested in all facets of this club besides player transfers but will also provide all the funds necessary for Pellegrini to craft this team in the way Pellegrini wants.  Bright days are ahead of this club that has been known as the classic yo-yo team, bouncing up and down from the first division, and if Málaga becomes a mainstay in La Liga, what player would not want to play in a beautiful city on the Costa del Sol that is bankrolled by a billionaire?

Fueras de Juego

- Villarreal must have assumed that playing at El Madrigal against a modest Levante team would require little effort, but their sleepwalking performance inspired Levante to channel this disrespect into a positive outcome, and Levante shocked their Comunitat Valenciana neighbors 0-1, handing Villarreal only its first loss at home all season.  With Valencia comfortably handling Hércules 2-0 at the Mestalla in the other Comunitat Valenciana derby on Sunday, Valencia is only one point behind Villarreal for third in the table, and the Yellow Submarine will regret their arrogant attitude against Levante if Valencia and they remain close together at the end of the season.

- Many assumed Osasuna would experience a massive letdown after the physical and emotional nirvana of defeating Real Madrid 1-0 at the Estadio Reyno de Navarra last weekend in front of their ravenous home faithful, but while they only managed a 1-1 draw at home to Mallorca to remain one point above the relegation zone, Osasuna performed with a surprising vim and vigor throughout the ninety minutes, scoring within the first ten minutes from a Miguel Flaño goal.  Six of Osasuna’s next seven fixtures feature teams tenth or below in the standings, so the gorritxoak could sew up top-flight football for another year in this stretch.

- FC Barcelona won their sixteenth consecutive La Liga match on Saturday, breaking the 1960-61 Real Madrid record of fifteen, and Lionel Messi scored another hat-trick to raise his total to a mere twenty-four goals in nineteen starts in the league and thirty-seven goals in thirty-one appearances in all competitions.  What is new?  Not much, and that is the brilliance of this streak.  They have had more 5+ goal victories (Sevilla, Almería, Real Madrid, and Real Sociedad) than one-goal victories (Valencia and Levante) during this run, and besides the occasional knocks and niggles, the squad has been healthy for the most part.

Real Madrid kept pace to stay seven points behind Barcelona after they cruised to a 4-1 victory over Real Sociedad, but to expect Barcelona to drop points in three or four matches in order for Real Madrid to catch up seems improbable at this point.  With the Champions League returning next week, that might provide the only plausible avenue for Barcelona to drop points, balancing La Liga and the Champions League with possible squad rotation and general fatigue.

Early in the second half, before Angel di María opened the scoring with a sublime curler to the right far post to give Real Madrid the 0-1 lead, “El Especial,” José Mourinho, lambasted referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz for showing a yellow card on Sergio Ramos for an apparent trip on young Real Sociedad starlet Antoine Griezmann.  Replays showed that Griezmann fooled Mateu Lahoz by tripping himself and baited the referee to flash yellow.  Whether Mourinho actually saw what transpired or merely stood up for his player, he infused a renewed energy into his team that had frankly been outplayed in all facets of the match by the Basques from San Sebastián.  One minute later, di María gave Madrid a one-goal cushion.

Some teams respond to a manager that stays calm despite the chaos surrounding them.  Last season, Manuel Pellegrini led Los Blancos with this type of tranquil and stolid style, and they earned their highest point total in their illustrious history and in the history of La Liga prior to last season.  The only problem was that Barcelona also broke this record and pipped them at the end by three points with an astonishing ninety-nine points out of a possible one hundred fourteen.

In their three most important matches of last season, the two El Clásico fixtures and the second leg against Olympique Lyonnais in the first knockout round of the UEFA Champions League, Real Madrid could not muster the strength and character to overcome the deficit in any of these matches.  Was it Pellegrini’s fault that they lost these three matches?  Not in the least.  Did Pellegrini do anything extra within the match to lift his team above the level at which they were playing?  Unfortunately for the Madridistas, the answer again was no.

José Mourinho, whether coincidental or intentional, affects his team from the technical area in each match they play, and when Mourinho feels that he needs to berate the referee, the linesmen, or the fourth official to get his point across while catalyzing his players at the same time, he will do so.  With Real Sociedad outplaying and beating Real Madrid to most of the loose balls in the first half, Mourinho needed to perform some of his world-famous magic to pull his team across the sea of blue and white at the Estadio Anoeta.

Real Madrid somewhat got shafted by the schedule makers who slotted them into the late Saturday kickoff after dismantling Ajax in the Champions League a mere seventy-two hours prior whereas both Valencia and Barcelona received Sunday kickoffs after playing in the Champions League on Tuesday, two extra days to recover from their exertions in the midweek.  Despite this quick turnaround, Mourinho did not make any changes to his starting eleven.

As for Real Sociedad, manager Martín Lasarte also kept his lineup mainly intact from the team that gave up the late equalizer to Almería on Monday to prevent a perfect two-for-two start, the only change being the 19-year-old Antoine Griezmann slotting into the left attacking midfield spot in place of Francisco Sutil.

That modification proved a brilliant move as Griezmann, along with Raúl Tamudo and Xabi Prieto created several chances that cut through the Real Madrid defense.  Two opportunities, in particular, should have given Real Sociedad at least one goal but probably two goals to send Real Madrid into panic mode within the first half-hour of the match.

In the sixth minute, Xabi Prieto provided the perfect curling cross from the right wing for Griezmann, who was unmarked in front of the penalty spot, but Griezmann struck his header over the bar.  He could do nothing but place his hands over his face in bewilderment and disgust about wasting a well-engineered opening.

In the twenty-fifth minute, Griezmann again missed a golden chance to give Real Sociedad the lead when he missed a yard right of Casillas’ right near post.  From a long ball from goalkeeper Claudio Bravo, it eventually led to Raúl Tamudo sending Griezmann in with a nicely weighted through ball into the box, but Griezmann’s left-footed effort, that fooled Casillas as he dove to his right, went wide.

On a handful of occasions, man of the match Ricardo Carvalho prevented the culmination of well-worked Sociedad moves to keep his club level with the Erreala.  Just after the half-hour mark, Carvalho slid in and toe-poked away a certain goal for Tamudo after Xabi Prieto provided the squared cross across the face of goal to the right back post.  Without Carvalho’s intervention, Tamudo had a sliding tap-in from two yards away.

A few minutes after Real Sociedad equalized at 1-1, Carvalho again prevented a potential scoring chance as he stuck a foot out to prevent Xabi Prieto’s through ball that would have certainly put in Tamudo toward goal.  Mourinho has managed Carvalho at three different clubs, FC Porto, Chelsea, and Real Madrid, and even when Mourinho coached at the San Siro for Inter Milan, he wanted to purchase Carvalho from Chelsea to consolidate his central defense.  Like Gerard Piqué currently and Fabio Cannavaro from the recent past, Carvalho’s strengths as a central defender are not necessarily in his pace or physical strength (although he has both) but in his positioning and passing ability from the back, and Saturday’s match against Real Sociedad showed this characteristics in full display.

The familiar story read through at the fulltime whistle, and Real Madrid somehow left the Estadio Anoeta pitch with the three points and left their Basque hosts in disbelief.  Madrid’s second and decisive goal propitiously came off a massive deflection from Pepe’s back after he could not duck away from Cristiano Ronaldo’s free kick, and despite Sociedad creating more and better chances, the indomitable spirit that has not enveloped this team often enough pulled them through a tough match on the road.

When a lower side achieves a victory over a top-level club, they capitalize on small number of breaks they have during the course of ninety minutes.  Real Sociedad deserved to share the points with Real Madrid, but whereas Hércules converted twice on the few chances they had against Barcelona, Sociedad were not efficient with their numerous chances.

Real Madrid will not score 102 goals as they did last year, far from it.  They will not sparkle in attack as their extravagant eternal rivals to the northeast in FC Barcelona.  While some of the Madridistas will loathe Mourinho’s lack of flair when it comes to the play on the pitch, Mourinho only cares about winning and not necessarily pleasing the supporters (sorry Alfredo Di Stéfano).

The following statement is no slight to previous manager Manuel Pellegrini, but Real Madrid likely would have not won this type of match last year when they were not playing their best.  José Mourinho provides that belief in self that has characterized all of his previous teams.  Despite their relatively mediocre performance, they stuck with it and got the winner, however fortunate that goal was.  With this kind of fight and non-wavering spirit, Real Madrid might have that little extra to pip Barcelona to the title.

Fueras de Juego

- FC Barcelona broke Atlético Madrid’s hoodoo over them at the Estadio Vicente Calderón with an entertaining, yet physical 1-2 victory on Sunday evening, but Tomáš Ujfaluši took this physicality over the edge when he flew into Lionel Messi ankle in stoppage time and immediately received a red card for the challenge.  Messi’s ankle visibly swelled within seconds of the tackle, and while the Culés can breathe a sigh of relief that he will only be out for a couple of weeks, there are calls for the competition committee to invoke Article 97 that could raise Ujfaluši’s suspension from 1-3 matches to 4-12 matches.  Article 97 is conjured when an incident “occurs in a violent manner, resulting in harmful consequences considered serious by its nature.”

- Through the first twenty-five minutes, Hércules looked hungover from their monumental victory over Barcelona as their derby rival Valencia brought the Alicante club down to Earth with two splendid goals from Juan Mata and Pablo Hernández.  To Herculés’ credit, they rose from the canvas after Valencia punched them in the mouth with a penalty kick goal from David Trézéguet after David Navarro handled the ball in the box and a commencement of an assault on Valencia’s goal after Navarro received a rather dubious second yellow card.  Valencia held on for a 1-2 road victory and is now the only team in La Liga to earn the maximum nine points from their first three matches.

- Levante and Real Zaragoza appear doomed to relegation this early in the season after they both looked awful on Sunday afternoon.

Once Lionel Messi scored his club record-tying 34th goal of the season in the 76th minute to increase the lead to 4-0, the 98,772 Culés at the Camp Nou, save for a few hundred Real Valladolid die-hards, began to chant the song that every team wants to hear at the end of the season, “Campeones, campeones, ¡Olé, olé, olé!”  For the final fifteen minutes, the procession commenced on the pitch.

Bojan Krkic came out for Thierry Henry, likely Henry’s final appearance for Barcelona because of his increasingly diminished role with Pedro Rodríguez and Bojan ahead of him in the pecking order.

Dani Alves departed in the 80th minute for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a player who epitomizes the cliché that there are two halves of a season.  Despite Ibrahimovic’s struggles in the last three months, the supporters gave Ibrahimovic a nice round of applause.

The heartiest plaudits, however, rained down on Pedro when Pep Guardiola took him out in the 86th minute for Andrés Iniesta.  An infrequent contributor last season, Pedro rose to the occasion nearly every time Guardiola called his name this season, and after fifty-one appearances and twenty-three goals in all competitions, Pedro made himself a fixture as one of the starting three forwards for FC Barcelona.

Referee Miguel Ángel Pérez Lasa whistled for fulltime at the ninety-minute mark, and Barcelona won its fourth La Liga crown in six years and their twentieth overall.

Despite the 4-0 scoreline, Valladolid accounted well for themselves and displayed the aggression on both ends of the pitch early that Javier Clemente-led teams always show.  Ever the entertaining yet obstinate manager during press conferences, Clemente verbalized the fighting spirit that Valladolid would have against Barcelona with colorful imagery:

“We will not go like lambs to the slaughter.  I would rather be a bull, which gives its all and dies angrily.  Let us see whether we will die or not, but if we do, we will do it with our boots on.  We have nothing left to fear.  We must go there bravely.”

Nearly invoking the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt with his impassioned plea, Clemente sought the desire, will, and all of those wonderful intangibles from his players that would be necessary to achieve any sort of positive result against Barcelona.

In a bizarre twist of fate, Mr. Clemente, one of the most hated enemies of Real Madrid, could have aided Madrid’s faint hopes of winning La Liga if Valladolid could prevent Barcelona from earning the three points.  Real Madrid had to beat Málaga and pray for Barça not to win in order to secure their 32nd championship.

Besides winning two La Liga crowns in 1983 and 1984 with Athletic Bilbao on the last day of both seasons with Real finishing second both seasons, he had a reputation of excluding Real Madrid players in favor of Basque players during his tenure as Spanish national team manager in the 1990s.  No one player felt this cold shoulder more than Real Madrid legend and current Getafe manager Míchel.

Míchel was part of the illustrious Quinta del Buitre quintet of homegrown players for Real Madrid in the 1980s and early 1990s that won two UEFA Cups and five consecutive domestic titles, and Míchel made himself a fixture on the Spanish national team.  He earned sixty-six caps to his name when Clemente became Spain’s manager in 1992, and despite his continued excellent play with Los Blancos in the prime of his career, Clemente never called him up for Spain.  At a young twenty-nine years, his international career ended prematurely.

Clemente favored Barcelona right wing Ion Andoni Goikoetxea over Míchel, and while Goikoetxea featured the hard-working and industrious characteristics that Clemente loved and coveted, he did not have nearly the skill or creativity that Míchel brought to the table.  In defense of Goikoetxea, he did win the Don Balón award for Spanish player of the year in 1991 and was a significant member of Johan Cruijff’s Dream Team that won four consecutive La Liga crowns and the 1992 European Cup over Sampdoria, but for Clemente to leave Míchel completely off Spain’s squad and not even grant him a seat on the substitute’s bench stung Míchel and continues to sting him to this day.

Despite the history, the Madridistas would instantly forgive Javier Clemente Lázaro if he prevented the Barcelona machine from rolling to one last victory.

The “thank you” letters from Real Madrid, however, nearly needed to be written for Víctor Valdés, as his penchant to show his footballing skills virtually handed Valladolid the opening goal in the fourth minute.

Receiving a simple back pass from Gerard Piqué, Valdés’ first touch on the ball got away from him, and eying this unexpected opportunity, Valladolid left back Antonio Barragán pounced on the ball.  Valdés tried to recover from his error by clearing it to safety, but Barragán deflected his clearance as he slid in to tackle the ball away from Valdés, and the ball fell right into the path of Manucho just inside the top of the penalty box.  Whether Manucho felt he needed merely to guide it toward the empty net or the bounce prevented him from striking the ball cleanly, he hit the ball with his shin, but it was heading to the back of the net.

Because Manucho’s did not crack his shot with the greatest conviction, there was a slight chance that a Barcelona defender could knock his shot away from goal, and who other than the captain and defensive stalwart, Carles Puyol, to race into the box and commit to a diving clearance that sent the ball to the touchline.

When Luís Prieto deviated an innocuous Pedro cross into his own net in the 27th minute to gift Barça the 1-0 lead, the title was destined to be retained by the Catalunyans for another season.  Valladolid could not get into the game as Barcelona played their possession style, and the “plan” that Clemente championed and rightly refused to reveal prior to the match failed miserably.

Lionel Messi scored twice and assisted Pedro in the backbreaking second goal, but the man of the match award must go to Touré Yaya, who took on the responsibility of playmaker because of Xavi Hernández’s suspension.  After the first fifteen to twenty minutes, where they could not penetrate the Valladolid and resorted to long-distance efforts, Yaya controlled the match from the midfield on both offense and defense.

Nothing encapsulated Touré Yaya’s impact as the conductor more than Barça’s third goal that prevented any thought of a miracle comeback by Valladolid.  After receiving a pass from Sergio Busquets, Yaya nutmegged Raúl Rodríguez Navas and then hurdled Henrique Sereno’s sliding challenge as he charged into the box, where his cutback pass from the endline found Messi, and with a wide-open goal, he rolled it in for the 3-0 advantage.  Touré Yaya will likely leave in the summer because Busquets has succeeded him as Barça’s holding midfielder, and if this eventually becomes the final appearance for Yaya in a Barcelona uniform, he went out with one of his best performances as a Barça player.

Even though Real Madrid only managed a 1-1 draw with Málaga, the spirit and gusto of the Real players dropped considerably when they found out what was happening at the Camp Nou, so one cannot assume that this result would have occurred if the Barcelona – Valladolid match were much closer.  FC Barcelona, however, did not want to have the championship decided on Real Madrid’s result against Málaga, and they merited the La Liga trophy in typical Barça flair in their 4-0 drubbing of Real Valladolid.

Ninety-six points in a season is a ridiculous amount, the most points accumulated in the history of La Liga prior to this season.  Unfortunately for Real Madrid, one other team eclipsed that point total in the same season.  While the 2009-10 FC Barcelona club did not defend their Champions League trophy, ninety-nine points in the league and a +74 goal difference (98 for and 24 against) are accomplishments that will be on par with any that Barcelona has ever achieved.  With all of their young talent under contract for the next several years along with the economic firepower that the club possesses, László Kubala’s five cup season of 1952, Cruijff’s “Total Football” of the 1970s, and Cruijff’s Dream Team of the 1990s could take a backseat to this current Barcelona incarnation.

It also helps that Lionel Messi declared that he could never see himself playing for Real Madrid or at any other club.

Fueras de Juego

- Another upheaval in the Bernabéu seems likely as they failed to win any silverware this season.  Manuel Pellegrini deserves another season to mold this team, but with José Mourinho possibly available in the summer (although he would employ a more pragmatic style that the Madridistas and the Real boardroom hated when Fabio Capello WON the league in 2006), Real’s failure to advance past the Round of 16 in the Champions League (although the previous seven Real managers did not pass this stage), their debacle against Alcorcón in the Copa del Rey (although Real does not really care about this competition and had not won this since 1993), and second-place in the league to Barcelona (although they amassed an obscene ninety-six points and scored 102 goals), Pellegrini may not get the chance to improve on what any other team would consider a great season.  Fabio Capello was right when he compared managing Real Madrid to living in a goldfish bowl.

- Getafe cruised to sixth place and a Europa League berth when they defeated Atlético Madrid’s B-side 0-3 at the Vicente Calderón on Saturday evening.  The players and the colchoneros in the stands celebrated their Europa League triumph and looked forward to the Copa del Rey final against Sevilla on Wednesday rather than worry about a league match that did not matter to them, and Getafe could not have been happier to take advantage.

- RCD Mallorca felt the ecstasy and agony of football in a span of a couple of minutes.  After dismissing Espanyol 2-0 at the ONO Estadi, they watched the final minutes of the Almería – Sevilla match on the big screen at the stadium.  At the time, it was 2-2, and if that result held, Mallorca would be in the Champions League for finishing fourth in the league.  In the third minute of stoppage time, however, Sevilla youngster Rodri twisted himself around to score past Esteban Suárez and send Sevilla into the Champions League.  The juxtaposition of Mallorca captain Nunes’ despair with the champagne bottle standing right behind him showed how close they were to the bright lights of the top European club competition.

- Racing Santander saved themselves from relegation with a 2-0 victory over a more-than-willing Sporting Gijón, and Barça blasted Valladolid 4-0, but the other three teams in the relegation battle (Xerez, Tenerife, and Málaga) were involved in intense matches where one goal in any of those matches would have ramifications for the others.  Xerez needed to beat Osasuna and hope that two other teams involved in the relegation fight would not earn a point.  Xerez could only muster a 1-1 draw against Osasuna, so Néstor Gorosito’s reclamation project fell just short of an all-time great escape.

That left two teams for one spot in La Liga.  Málaga had the head-to-head tiebreaker over Tenerife, so Tenerife needed to better Málaga’s result for salvation, except for one caveat: if Valladolid, Málaga, and Tenerife were tied on points for 17th place and another season in the top flight, Tenerife would stay in La Liga because they scored more goals than the other two teams amongst matches against them, the fourth tiebreaker.  As complicated as that sounds, a Tenerife loss would not necessarily doom them.

Tenerife played as though they were doomed.  Tenerife keeper Sergio Aragoneses must have felt like those body-shaped silhouettes at a shooting range because Valencia pelted his goal with shot after shot after shot.  Luckily for Aragoneses, David Villa, David Silva, and Juan Mata did not start for Valencia because their clinical finishing would have converted some of the fourteen chances at goal.  Miraculously, it was 0-0 late into the match, and Nino flew down the right flank unmarked, heading toward Miguel Ángel Moyà’s goal.  Hedwiges Maduro’s incredible speed, however, caught up to Nino in the box, and the opportunity was gone.

Alexis scored in the second minute of stoppage time for Valencia to give Valencia the 1-0 win, but with the other matches falling Tenerife’s way, only a Málaga result against Real Madrid would drop them to the second division.  Málaga did the seemingly impossible and got the draw at home to revive their stay in the first division for another season.

- This final weekend of the season became swan songs for three that have served their respective professions to the highest degree: Joseba Etxeberria, Rubén Baraja, and referee Manuel Mejuto González.  Mejuto González’s last match will be on Wednesday as the referees the Copa del Rey final, but his La Liga career ended on Saturday in the Athletic Bilbao – Deportivo La Coruña match.  Etxeberria and Baraja both won, and both could not contain their emotions, as they were both given heroes’ exits by their clubs.

Throughout Barcelona’s two-year run of groundbreaking excellence, Josep Guardiola i Sala role as a tactician tended to be undervalued.  He reinstituted the “Total Football” concept that Johan Cruyff, Guardiola’s former manager at FC Barcelona, instilled when he was a player and a manager at the club, and he changed the culture inside the dressing room.

He sent bad influences Deco and Ronaldinho away, and he brought a sense of discipline and accountability that the club lacked at the end of the Frank Rijkaard era.  When it came to the X and O’s of a match, however, most defined the team in his reign as a beautiful machine that only possessed a “Plan A” of ball possession and incessant attack.

If anyone still doubted Pep Guardiola as a tactical grandmaster, the last two matches against Arsenal and Real Madrid should validate his place as one of the top managers in world football.

Debuted against Arsenal during the second half of the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinal, Guardiola insisted on the 4-4-2 formation to handle Real Madrid’s abundance of offensive talent.  Partly forced by injuries but mostly a tactical decision, the Barça starting eleven was a departure from the norm.  Guardiola brought Dani Alves forward as a right midfielder/winger and positioned Seydou Keita as a left midfielder.  Carles Puyol went to right back, and Gabriel Milito filled in alongside Gerard Piqué in central defense.

With Éric Abidal reinjuring his thigh against Arsenal, the question surrounding the left back position was if Maxwell would receive the nod against Real Madrid.  Maxwell is the natural replacement, but in some instances this season, the opposition caught him out of position when he would make his forward runs.  With Marcelo and Cristiano Ronaldo racing down the left flank, there would be a decent possibility of a defensive breakdown with Maxwell absent from the action.  Rather than putting Carles Puyol in a left back role that he rarely ever plays, Guardiola kept faith with Maxwell in their most important match of the La Liga season.

The first few minutes of the match suggested that this pivotal game would be more akin to the tightly contested edition in November than the open affair at the Bernabéu last May.  The suffocating Barça press swarmed even harder, and the Real Madrid tackling came with more regularity and venom.

Guardiola positioned his team to quell Real Madrid’s lightning counter-attack, and apart from a couple of instances when Cristiano Ronaldo’s pure talent and speed would defy any defense, Barcelona’s defensive organization and discipline kept firm.  A clean sheet through forty-five minutes and zero shots on goal allowed testified to the Blaugrana’s security in the midfield and in front of Víctor Valdés.

With a one-goal lead to start the second half, Guardiola readjusted his formation, bringing Dani Alves back to his usual right back role and moving Carles Puyol into central defense, creating a five-man back line to consolidate an already strong defense.  Guardiola knew that his counterpart Manuel Pellegrini would send wave after wave of attacks in the second half to score the equalizing goal, and he felt a reinforcement to stem this oncoming tide would be prudent.  Hardly characterizing this change as protectionist with Dani Alves and Maxwell still marauding both flanks, Real Madrid found Puyol, Piqué, and Milito to be uncompromising and intelligent in their tackling and positioning.

Two clean sheets against Real Madrid this season substantiated Barcelona’s claim as more than a club who only worries about scoring goals.

Manuel Pellegrini is no fledgling manager either, and with Real Madrid’s midfield and defensive organization at its season best, it would take more invention and guile than individual splendor to break down their white wall.  Who better than Xavi Hernández to solve the problem.

For a player that has and continues to receive numerous accolades throughout his illustrious career, Xavi does not get the full credit for his contributions to Futbol Club Barcelona.  He always had a transcendent talent on his team that would garner the headlines: first, it was Rivaldo; then it was Ronaldinho; and now it is Lionel Messi.  Others would scoff at their teammates for stealing the limelight, but Xavi would want nothing more than to provide assists for his fellow colleagues as well as deflecting praise to them and his manager.

For Xavi’s first masterpiece, he executed a cheeky lofted ball over the Madrid defense to perfection.  Constantly scanning the field for any potential passes to befuddle the opposition, he saw Messi make a run from the corner of his eye.  He had two options: an incisive through ball in between the defenders or a ball over the defense.  He chose the latter (the much more difficult option), and Raúl Albiol watched in horror as the ball floated over his head onto the chest of Messi, who chested it to his right to create space and smack it past Iker Casillas for the vital first goal.

Xavi’s second offering early in the second half sealed the match.  Again, he spotted a run of his teammate in his peripheral vision.  Pedro made a diagonal run, and Xavi obliged his effort by slotting a perfect through ball that hit the moving target as well as directing it into a position where Álvaro Arbeloa could not come around Pedro to tackle the ball away.  Pedro curled his shot past Casillas, and the 0-2 lead proved insurmountable.

Besides his inventive and sagacious ball distribution, his ability off the ball remains underrated.  Sergio Busquets and Touré Yaya are known to be the pivots of the Barça midfield as well as the protectors of the back four, but Xavi is the epitome of a box-to-box midfielder.  His harassment of any Madrid player on the ball forced them to rush their movements, causing a few turnovers in compromising areas of the pitch.  On several occasions, he fully committed to decisive tackles that broke up feasible goal-scoring opportunities for Real Madrid.

It is no coincidence that Xavi Hernández and Josep Guardiola would mastermind a crucial victory in Barcelona’s attempt to repeat as Spanish champions.  When Barcelona won their first European Cup in 1992, Guardiola led the midfield as that deep-lying playmaker that controlled the game without having to score.  As Guardiola started to age, Xavi became the natural successor to Guardiola in his position, and Xavi’s teams have won two UEFA Champions League titles, the second with his former teammate Guardiola as manager.

Lionel Messi and Pedro Rodríguez scored yet again in an important match, and the plaudits showered on these two for their brilliant individual moments are richly deserved.  Behind all great forwards, however, are the midfielders that provide them with the potent ball to pierce the defense.  While Messi creates opportunities for himself due to his amazing ability, he would be the first to say that without Xavi governing the midfield as a maestro and conductor and Pep Guardiola continually instructing in training and in the heat of a match, he would not have matured into the historic figure he has already become.

Fueras de Juego

- Cristiano Ronaldo played his part, consistently flying down both flanks in search of any opening that Barcelona allowed, but his anxiety to prove he is better than Lionel Messi and worth the €94 million transfer fee left his teammates out of the loop as he single-handedly tried to beat Barça on his own.  Gonzalo Higuaín supplied the most disappointing performance for Real Madrid, as he could not carve out a decent chance against Puyol and the gang.  Although it was not entirely his fault, the papers will again spout out how he flatters to deceive in the grandest occasions despite scoring a tremendous amount of goals.

In case of El Clásico blinkers, there were other matches in La Liga this weekend.

- Sevilla defeated Málaga 1-2 in an Andalusian derby, but both Andrés Palop and Gustavo Munúa provided classic moments for those blooper highlight reels.  For Palop, he failed to secure a routine shot from Duda, and the ensuing spill gave Felipe Caicedo a simple tap-in for Málaga to take the lead.

Sevilla’s equalizer from Juan Cala came about from an embarrassing error by Munúa.  Ivica Dragutinovic’s free kick floated straight into Munúa’s chest, but he somehow fumbled and mishandled it as if he caught a burning rock, and Cala could not believe his luck as he tapped in his goal.

Málaga was disgraceful with their constant play-acting and time-wasting tactics, and cosmic justice reigned supreme as Lolo headed the winning goal late in the contest.

- Athletic Bilbao notched the most comprehensive victory of the weekend with their 4-1 drubbing of Almería at the San Mamés, and the score flattered Almería.  Javi Martínez exhibited why Rafa Benítez and Liverpool are following his every move closely.  Two goals and industry in the midfield further cemented him as one of Liverpool’s summer transfer targets as the Reds try to find the replacement for Xabi Alonso that Alberto Aquilani has failed to achieve to this point.

Bilbao pelted Almería goalkeeper Diego Alves with twenty-six total shots, thirteen on target, but the most impressive stat of the match for Athletic Club was that they committed only nine fouls for the whole ninety minutes.  Nine fouls in ninety minutes for Athletic Bilbao would be analogous to Barcelona only having 50% of the possession.  It hardly ever happens.

- Valencia’s Manuel Fernandes might want to hide under a rock tonight after a torrid game against Mallorca.  Admittedly a midfielder forced into central defense due to a host of injuries, Fernandes committed elementary errors in defense, including getting continually beat over the top and stranding his own keeper César Sánchez a couple of times with short back passes.

The coup de grâce came when he netted into his own goal from a Gonzalo Castro cross to hinder any chance for Valencia to salvage a point.  To cap off a miserable performance, Fernandes was sent off late in the match for a clumsy tackle on Aritz Aduriz.

Pablo Hernández scored late for Los Che to intensify the last few minutes, but Mallorca dominated Valencia despite the 3-2 final scoreline, and Valencia’s miserable week ended with a thud at the ONO Estadi.

Gonzalo Higuaín scores the second goal to give Los Blancos their first lead in the match.

A gigantic banner covered one end of the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu before the match.  On this banner, the Grim Reaper and other scary creatures from movies and stories past sprawled across, and there was a message for their Madrid neighbors to the south, “Noche de Derby.  Vuestra Peor Pesadilla.”

In English, this means, “Derby night.  Your worst nightmare.”  This statement aptly describes Atlético de Madrid’s feeling whenever they have played Real Madrid in El Derbi Madrileño, the Madrid derby.  Including the two years that Atlético was in the Segunda División, Real Madrid has not lost to Los Colchoneros in ten years.  For further confirmations of Real’s dominance, Real Madrid only lost twice in the derby in thirty-one meetings since the 1992-93 season.

Even when Atlético Madrid won their last title in the 1995-96 campaign, when they finished seventeen points ahead of sixth-place Real Madrid (that season was the first of two seasons to include twenty-two teams in La Liga and forty-two matches in a season), Real Madrid won both meetings.

To say that Atlético Madrid and their supporters developed an inferiority complex would be quite an obvious statement.

Heading into the 169th edition of El Derbi Madrileño, each team composed a different agenda for this match.  For Real Madrid, keeping up with Barcelona has become a drama in itself, and for the second straight round, Los Merengues had to follow up a Barça win in order to maintain a tie at the top of the table (On a side note, Barcelona will again play before Real Madrid next weekend.  Barcelona’s home match against Athletic Bilbao will commence on Saturday evening, while Real Madrid hosts Racing de Santander on Sunday night.  If AS and Marca have not already run some articles on this latest LFP “conspiracy” favoring their Catalan rivals, those writings will come sooner than later.).

For Atlético Madrid, the mediocre play of the teams immediately ahead of them in the standings meant that fourth place and a Champions League spot might actually be viable.  When they defeated Racing de Santander in the semifinals of the Copa del Rey, Atleti knew that they sewed up a Europa League place.  With Sevilla making the final of the Copa del Rey and most likely securing a top-six finish in the league, Atlético’s place in Europe was all but set in stone, whether it was as the finalist in the Copa del Rey or the winner of the competition.

Atlético was mired in twelfth place at that time, and it would take a quixotic journey to rise to a UEFA Champions League spot.  Sevilla, Mallorca, and the rest of the contenders (pretenders at this moment) trod water as Atlético Madrid strung a stretch of positive results together.  More than pure pride on the table, Atlético held real possibilities of climbing to fourth place.

When José Antonio Reyes scored for Atlético Madrid in the 10th minute, Real Madrid looked the more nervous and jittery team.  Real could not forge a consistent attack, and Atlético was efficient with their possession, eventually leading to Reyes’ goal, where Tiago, Sergio Agüero, and Reyes combined across the top of the box to give Reyes open space to slot the ball past Iker Casillas.

Up to the half-hour mark, Real still dominated possession but could not break down the Atlético defense.  Strange to say about Atlético, but with Juan Valera at right back and Tomáš Ujfaluši back into his natural central defensive position, cohesion actually existed in the back line.

Frustration began to envelop the Real players, and Cristiano Ronaldo, as he often does, felt as though he needed to all the work himself.  He went on individual runs and acted visibly disgusted almost every time his teammates did not provide the perfect ball for him.

Real Madrid kept chipping into Atlético’s resolute nature, but when Tiago miraculously blocked Gonzalo Higuaín’s from two yards out, and Ronaldo missed an open header from a pinpoint Xabi Alonso cross at the stroke of halftime, the Madridistas must have wondered if they were the ones suffering the nightmare.

Two events shaped what would transpire in the second half.  Juan Valera had to come out of the game in the 42nd minute due to injury, and his replacement, Luis Perea, received a staggering cheer from the Real faithful.  Perea can be a great defender at times, but he always has those “What the hell is he doing?” moments, and the Madridistas prophesied and envisaged one of those mistakes from Perea.

The other event involved the substitution of José Jurado in place of José Antonio Reyes to start the second half due to injury.  Reyes ran Marcelo ragged throughout the first half, and while Marcelo did have a karate-kick volley that forced Atleti goalkeeper David de Gea into a diving save, Reyes kept Marcelo from bombing forward at every opportunity.  Speedy wingers like Reyes, Jesús Navas, and Andrés Guardado have troubled Marcelo throughout his career, but Jurado, while an effective player and a good crosser of the ball, would not scare Marcelo into sitting in his own half.

The second half became a Real Madrid clinic in offensive football, culminating in a three-goal outburst in a span of thirteen minutes that silenced any doubts about a first derby win for Atlético Madrid since the beginning of this century.  A set piece, a brilliant cross-field ball, and a turnover by the Atlético defense in front of their own penalty box composed Real’s three goals respectively.  While Xabi Alonso, the author of that ineffable ball to Álvaro Arbeloa which led to the second goal, gifted Atlético their second goal, via a Diego Forlán penalty, with an inane handball from a Simão Sabrosa corner kick, Atlético de Madrid hardly threatened Iker Casillas’ goal throughout the second half.

The 3-2 final scoreline discredits how dominant Real Madrid was against their city rivals.

Real Madrid was so unworried about the final result that Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos both intentionally forced referee Alberto Undiano Mallenco to issue yellow cards to them late in the match, earning one-game suspensions because those were their tenth yellow cards of the season.  They will miss next week’s match against Racing Santander, so that they would not be in danger of missing El Clásico against Barcelona on April 10.

On pace to equal the record for most goals in a season with 107 by the 1989-90 Real Madrid team that included Pichichi winner Hugo Sánchez, Bernd Schuster, and four of the five members of La Quinta del Buitre, this year’s squad continues to focus through the tunnel vision set by their manager Manuel Pellegrini.  Another similarity between the 2009-10 Real Madrid team and the 1989-90 team is that they were both knocked out in the last 16 of the European Cup/Champions League despite high expectations.  John Toshack, manager of that record-breaking squad, and Pellegrini likely both spun those European losses as removing the distractions from domestic affairs.

Toshack and Real Madrid would win La Liga in 1989-90, and while Pellegrini’s path to the title is much more competitive than the nine point stroll (fifteen points if wins counted for three points as they are today instead of two points as they were back then), Pellegrini and his team would want nothing more than to replicate that team’s accomplishments.

As for the derby, those Madridistas are very quick.  As soon as Undiano Mallenco blew the final whistle, the fans unfurled a second message for Los Colchoneros:

“10 años sin ganar un derby… 28/3/10: RMCF 3 – ATM 2… La pesadilla continua.”

“Ten years without a derby win…  3/28/10: Real Madrid CF 3 – Atlético Madrid 2… The nightmare continues.”

Fueras de Juego

- RCD Mallorca needs to tell their fans to stay away.  For once this season, Mallorca supporters populated the ONO Estadi because Barcelona flew into town.  While Mallorca forced Pep Guardiola to use Xavi and Lionel Messi when Pep wanted to rest them ahead of their Champions League quarterfinal at Arsenal on Wednesday, it was not enough, as a suddenly hot Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored in his third consecutive match to win a hard-fought 0-1 game against Los Barralets.

Jeffren Suárez got the start on the right of Ibrahimovic in place of Messi, and Jonathan dos Santos replaced Suárez late in the match.  For some reason, Bojan Krkic has fallen down Guardiola’s ladder to where dos Santos made his second ever appearance in La Liga for the blaugrana instead of Bojan making an instant impact off the bench.  Bojan has scored in his last two appearances in all competitions, and his lack of playing time will only help fuel the transfer rumors through the end of the season and into the summer transfer window.

- Xerez must have made a deal with El Diablo (the devil) because they won again on Sunday against a torpid Real Valladolid club that played as though they have little hope of staying in La Liga, even though they are only five points behind Real Zaragoza from safety.  Unlike their brash and polemic manager Onésimo Sánchez, Valladolid has played with a timid nature.  Valladolid striker Manucho, who promised forty goals before the season started, missed a couple of platinum opportunities to give his team a chance to come back against Xerez (Who would have said that at any time this season?), but he still has nine matches to score a mere thirty-eight goals and fulfill his vow.

- Xerez still lags seven points from safety, however, after Real Zaragoza put the hammer down on an unsuspecting Valencia 3-0 in the late Saturday kickoff.  When Zaragoza defender Jirí Jarošík nonchalantly back-flicked Gabi’s corner past a shocked César Sanchez to score the third and decisive goal, it capped off a poor Valencia performance that might not matter at the end of the campaign, as no team behind them is threatening them for third place.  Valencia finished with less than eleven men yet again, and this lack of discipline could come back to haunt them when they face Atlético Madrid in the quarterfinals of the Europa League.  As for Zaragoza, Xerez might be their only real threat to send them back down to the second division because Valladolid and Tenerife cannot buy a win as the season winds down.

- Villarreal looked like the imperious Yellow Submarine that continually finished in the top five in La Liga and ventured into the later stages of the Champions League.  Sure, the Sevilla team they faced on Sunday acted like a limp fish beaching in the sun, but with the Nilmar, Giuseppe Rossi, Joseba Llorente trio finally starting to work well together, along with the return of Santi Cazorla from chronic injuries, a two-point deficit in the race for a Europa League spot is definitely within reach, and the seven-point gap between themselves and fourth place is not impossible.

The Almería – Barcelona match had not concluded when Real Madrid took to the pitch, but a few minutes into their match with Sevilla, they knew that Barça slipped at the Estadio de los Juegos Mediterráneos and dropped two points with a 2-2 draw against Almería.  Expectations were that Real Madrid would not have the chance to grab at least a share of the lead away from the Blaugrana until the second Clásico meeting on April 11, but this unforeseen gift, wrapped in a bow by their archrivals to the northeast, laid at the doorstep of the Bernabéu for the Madridistas to open gleefully.

Unfortunately, Xabi Alonso put it into his own net in the 10th minute, and Ivica Dragutinovic scored an unlikely free kick that was meant to be crossed into a flood of players.  Iker Casillas and Xabi Alonso looked at each other with contempt as both expected one another to handle the harmless ball.  Xabi Alonso let the ball sail over his head, assuming that Casillas would catch it on the bounce.  Casillas anticipated Xabi Alonso to head the ball away to safety and therefore did not cover the left post.  The ball furtively sneaked into the bottom left corner of the net, and Sevilla held a 0-2 lead at the Santiago Bernabéu with 38+ minutes remaining.

A loss for Real Madrid against Sevilla, even in the capital city, would not have been a shocking revelation, and a defeat to the Andalusians would still have Los Blancos a mere three points behind Barcelona with thirteen matches left to overturn the deficit. Real Madrid manager Manuel Pellegrini entertained zero options of settling, as he removed Álvaro Arbeloa and Lassana Diarra from the action in the 55th minute and sent in two creative midfielders, Rafael van der Vaart and Guti, to revitalize the incessant but stagnant attack.

Observing that Sevilla had only one shot on target in fifty-five minutes, the unlikely Dragutinovic goal, Pellegrini concluded that there was little need for a second defensive midfielder and a stay-at-home left back.  Real Madrid played intricate football in the middle of the pitch, used both flanks effectively, and dabbled in a more direct, long-ball approach up to that point, but Sevilla goalkeeper Andrés Palop and his defensive line held firm without a breach of goal.  Los Nervionenses cared little that their two goals came courtesy of a Xabi Alonso own goal and miscommunication between Iker Casillas and Xabi Alonso on a Dragutinovic free kick.

Rafael van der Vaart and Guti certainly have the fecundity to create and exploit any gaps within the Sevilla defense, and each had differing problems with Pellegrini this season.  Van der Vaart was supposed to be gone in the previous summer transfer window.  He was not in Pellegrini’s blueprints to the point where Esteban Granero was given van der Vaart’s number 23 in the preseason.  Wesley Sneijder, exiled by Real Madrid and eventually sold to Inter Milan, more than suggested to van der Vaart that he should leave to join a club that wanted him.

Van der Vaart stubbornly stayed with Madrid, feeling as though he was good enough for the team and wanted to prove his Madrid doubters wrong.  While he has fought injuries throughout the season, van der Vaart showed himself to be the third attacking midfielder with Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká.

As for José María Gutiérrez Hernández, that man known as Guti, Guti is and will always be Guti.  Perpetually and chronically incorrigible, he has gotten under the skin of every Real Madrid manager since he first made it to the senior squad.  If anyone tugs on his gossamer robe, he lashes out and leaves no one in his wake.

For a character like that, he should have been booted out years ago, but he still roams the pitch at the Santiago Bernabéu because of his truly world-class vision and passing distribution.  The term “world-class” is bandied around quite frequently, but for Guti, the label fits.  If he did not possess this type of talent, there is no way manager after manager would have kept this turbulent truculent on their squads.

Manuel Pellegrini could have easily phased out both van der Vaart and Guti if he let his ego get the best of him, but when the bell rung, he employed the players best suited for the situation rather than use others just because they did not vex him.  What Madrid needed in the final half-hour against Sevilla were players that forced Sevilla’s defensive and midfield lines to lose their shape.

Sergio Ramos getting R-rated after heading in the equalizer.

Whereas the field tilted toward Andrés Palop’s goal in the first half, this Madrid torrent in the second half completely inundated everyone with a red tinge.  A 60th minute Cristiano Ronaldo strike that benefited from a wicked Marius Stankevicius deflection and a 64th minute Sergio Ramos header from a van der Vaart corner turned the match completely around in the ten minutes since the substitutes entered the match.  Guti struck the crossbar, and Gonzalo Higuaín hit the post and the crossbar on two separate shots in the ensuing ten minutes after the Ramos equalizer, but Pellegrini was not done with his tinkering.

In the 75th minute, he made the bold move of withdrawing the €65 million Kaká in favor of Real Madrid’s all-time leading scorer Raúl, who has made very few appearances since losing his starting spot early in the season.  Kaká had a decent game, but van der Vaart and Guti accomplished more in twenty minutes than Kaká did in seventy-five.  Pellegrini, soft-spoken but strong in his convictions, knew the gravity of the situation and wanted no less than three points.

An ultra-offensive 4-1-3-2 formation proved to be too much for Sevilla, as Rafael van der Vaart outmuscled Stankevicius for a rebound from three yards out and converted his scoring chance after Palop understandably gave up a rebound from Higuaín’s header in the second minute of stoppage time.

The euphoria felt and created by the players sent the Madridistas into a higher state of consciousness as they witnessed the most electric thirty minutes of the La Liga season.  Pellegrini, always the levelheaded statesman, put this match into its proper perspective when he spoke with Spanish sports daily Marca:

“There are still 39 points to play for.  These are three important points.  We will only be happy when our final objectives are obtained.  Now we depend on ourselves.”

With all the emotion spent on conquering this two-goal deficit against Sevilla, Real Madrid will have little time to recover because they host Lyon on Wednesday in the second leg of their UEFA Champions League tie down a single goal.  Whether they maintain this surging momentum into that match remains to be seen, and for all the plaudits and accolades they received on Saturday, a deluge of harsh criticism will be levied upon them if they fail to defeat Lyon and advance to the quarterfinals of the Champions League.

That discussion, however, is for another day.  Real Madrid and Barcelona are tied at the top of La Liga with thirteen matches remaining.  Barcelona has the edge because they defeated Real 1-0 in November, and as the famous Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once quipped:

If you are first, you are first.  If you are second, you are nothing.

Real Madrid would not want it any other way.

Fueras de Juego

- Athletic Bilbao’s resurgence this season is due to many factors, including a stellar home record and Fernando Llorente leading the line, but some credit has to go to Gaizka Toquero, the perfect wingman to Llorente’s hold-up play.  Once a lower division vagabond with such illustrious clubs as SD Lemona, Sestao River Club, and SD Eibar, he caught the eye of Bilbao, although he was not in manager Joaquín Caparrós’ plans when Toquero first arrived in Bilbao.  He scored both of Athletic’s goals in their routine 2-0 win over Real Valladolid on Sunday, including a clinical finish off the short-hop to give his team an insurmountable two-goal advantage.

- Felicitaciones to Xerez as they won their first match away from home in the top flight after defeating an in-form Málaga 2-4 in a match that featured two red cards, nine yellow cards and a penalty miss and a penalty make by Xerez winger Momo.  Xerez manager Néstor Gorosito had an impossible task of keeping Xerez afloat after he replaced José Ángel Ziganda in January, and while Xerez is still ten points adrift of safety, Gorosito has instilled confidence in a team that had none before he arrived.

- The weekly drama that is Atlético Madrid came up with another plot twist, as Ibrahima Baldé scored in stoppage time to give Los Colchoneros an undeserved 1-1 draw.  A poor match in terms of quality, Diego Forlán was livid when he was substituted with thirty minutes left, and Atleti seemed to release the guillotine on itself after José Antonio Reyes received a straight red card for flailing his arm at Eliseu Pereira, although what little contact Reyes made on Eliseu sent him into “unfathomable” pain.  Clearly frustrated by Zaragoza’s bounty on him, he decided to take the law into his own hands in a half-hearted attempt to send a message.  If Atlético manager Quique Sánchez Flores has not already been prescribed Thorazine, Zyprexa, or any other antipsychotic drug because he has to deal with this club on a daily basis, he needs them now.

The hype, the pomp, the circumstance.  All of these rose to a higher level for this episode of El Clásico at the Camp Nou on Sunday evening.  Coming into this match, FC Barcelona turned their fortunes around in the UEFA Champions League with a 2-0 victory over Inter Milan.  The scoreline hardly gave any justice to both teams as Barcelona played as well as Inter played poorly.  The impotency in attack as well as the nonchalance in defense for Inter contrasted with the elegant passing football and the defensive pressure presented by Barça.  What resulted were two goals in twenty-six minutes and a willingness to keep possession, as Inter Milan did not use their ability to close Barça down.

Real Madrid was more workmanlike in their 1-0 win over FC Zürich.  Reading the stat sheet would convince all those who did not witness the match that Real dominated their lowly Swiss opponents, but the desire and spirit within the Zürich squad contributed to a tighter than expected match.  Real toiled through a physical encounter to rise to the top of their Champions League group with one match to go, and they were able to give Cristiano Ronaldo his first action in several weeks.  His twenty-minute stint was not anything special, but the most important reason that manager Manuel Pellegrini sent him out against FC Zürich was to get him used to live football before their match against Barcelona.

The biggest pieces of news before the Real – Barça clash were the absences of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Raúl from their respective teams’ starting eleven.  Raúl’s omission did not come as too much of a surprise because Gonzalo Higuaín has been the in form striker in the last few games, but for Pellegrini to exclude Raúl in such a monumental occasion shows that he is in full control of this team and will do what he feels is best for the team, even if that means passing over Real legends like Raúl and Guti.  As for Ibrahimovic, he struggled with a hamstring injury that occurred in a league match against Mallorca three weeks ago and forced him to miss two friendlies for the Swedish national team and a Champions League encounter against Inter Milan.  Both Raúl and Ibrahimovic were available on their sides’ benches if necessary.

Many expected this match to be a goal fest, similar to their last meeting in early May, when Real Madrid fought their way back into the title race with a torrid fifty-two points out of a possible fifty-four heading into El Clásico.  Barcelona would dominate the proceedings with a 2-6 thrashing at the Santiago Bernabéu to seal La Liga for the Blaugrana.  What transpired this Sunday was more akin to the first Barcelona – Real Madrid meeting last season, where goals were at a premium, and the physical nature of both teams was a major part in influencing the run of play.

Even though it was 0-0 at halftime, Real won the opening forty-five minutes by creating the better chances and snuffing out the influences of Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta, and Lionel Messi.  Manuel Pellegrini’s tactics forced the ball away from Xavi, the conductor of the Catalunyan orchestra, and Barcelona bypassed the midfield altogether on more occasions than they prefer.  Xabi Alonso and Lassana Diarra worked in synergy in the midfield, as their two dominated the midfield three of Barcelona.

Real had the best opportunity to score in the first half in the 20th minute, when Kaká’s run from the left flank into the penalty area set up a pass across the box to an unmarked Cristiano Ronaldo.  Ronaldo took the shot first-time to the left far post and had Barça keeper Victor Valdés going the wrong way.  Valdés somehow deflected the shot with his trailing legs and went wide of the post for a corner.  Ronaldo might be criticized for not finishing a golden opportunity, but most of the credit should belong to Valdés, as he continues to become one of Spain’s top goalkeepers without ever being noticed.  Those gaffes that have plagued his career are at a bare minimum, and Barcelona rewarded this consistency with a contract extension through 2014 in the offseason.

The start of the second half was more of the same as each team received yellow cards for professional fouls.  Both teams tended to halt any semblance of a counter-attack or breakaway with a professional foul or significant contact.  Barcelona continued to possess the ball at a high percentage but failed to substantiate it with any noteworthy chances.  Barça manager Pep Guardiola made the first move in the tactical game between Pellegrini and him when he sent in Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the 51st minute for an ineffective Thierry Henry.  Henry started the match in the center of the three forward line with Messi on his right and Iniesta on his left but found little success.  He drifted to his more comfortable left flank as the game wore on but still could not engineer a legitimate scoring opportunity.

The blasé Barcelona attack suddenly became much more potent with Ibrahimovic leading the line.  They had their best spell of possession two minutes into Ibrahimovic’s shift, when a series of patented Barça short, incisive passes ultimately led to a shot blocked by Xabi Alonso.  Although they did not convert, Barcelona brought different ideas into the fold and concerned an already worried Real Madrid, as they felt the momentum shift toward their Catalunyan rivals.

Real Madrid stubbornly succumbed to this momentum when Barcelona broke the deadlock in the 56th minute.  Ibrahimovic volleyed in a left-footed shot to give Barça the 1-0 lead.  Dani Alves gets equal credit for the goal because of a wonderful early cross, and Ibrahimovic still had plenty to do, as his left-footed volley was technically difficult.  Many players with this particular opportunity would either blaze it high over the crossbar or completely mistime the cross and whiff on the shot.  This moment was why Barcelona was so aggressive in bringing Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Inter Milan.  As technically gifted and football-intelligent as he is, he built a reputation for coming up small in the most important moments.  Whether this assertion was fair or not became irrelevant at this instant as Ibrahimovic etched his name into the fabric of this historic rivalry.

The euphoria would be short-lived as Sergio Busquets received his second yellow card for an unnecessary and deliberate handball in midfield in the 62nd minute.  Touré Yaya came in for Seydou Keita to beef up the midfield and fill the absence of Busquets, and Andrés Iniesta dropped back into the midfield to produce a 4-3-2 formation.  As well as Barcelona’s offensive flair drives their overall philosophy, it often overlooks their defensive tenacity and discipline.  Carles Puyol is the captain of the team for a reason, and he wears the Catalunyan armband with abounding pride and grit.  Barcelona held on to the clean sheet and the win thanks to Puyol’s defensive positioning and sheer will.

He fully committed to sliding challenges that prevented potential goals in the 26th, 53rd, and 70th minutes, and as Real pushed forward with a one-man advantage and a one-goal deficit, Puyol led the defensive line, always insisting to be compact with his words and his hand gestures.  While Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored the goal that made the difference on the scoreboard, Carles Puyol clearly was the man of the match as he personified the fortitude and determination of FC Barcelona.  Those rumors of Puyol leaving for Manchester City seem laughable now.

Despite the hyperbole surrounding the match, Barcelona’s three-point win over their blood rivals only gives the Blaugrana a tenuous two point lead over Los Merengues, with a myriad of challengers just behind them with twenty-six rounds of matches left.  Real Madrid will take solace in the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo is on his way back to full fitness, and their team will continue to gel as the campaign continues.  Sevilla and Valencia have the talent to break the duopoly at the top of La Liga.  Today, however, belongs to the tenants of Camp Nou.

This past week was a litmus test in their efforts to recapture the once inconceivable treble.  Barcelona was in grave danger of not qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League and falling four points behind Real Madrid at the end of November.  The mark of a champion is when they win when not playing at their best.  Hardly anyone will say that Barcelona was at their scintillating best against Inter Milan and Real Madrid, but they achieved their desired results without compromising their beliefs and philosophies.  The 155th edition of El Clásico ends with a 1-0 victory for FC Barcelona.  A tension-filled thriller, it was neither the prettiest nor the best played match in the history of this rivalry, but the effort and intent displayed by all involved in the match were unsurpassed.

Denial

Although Real Madrid needed five goals to overturn their Round of 32 tie with Alcorcón, a certain sense of denial was important in this particular situation so that they could believe that their task was not impossible.  Kaká stated, “For the pride and for the history of Real Madrid, we have to win this tie.”  Marcelo and Jerzy Dudek followed in this same vein, declaring, “… for our badge and our shirt, we will not fail.”

Through all these hopeful and defiant player statements about their second leg against Alcorcón, Ezequiel Garay showed their true depth of denial when he proclaimed that the Bernabéu will be the 12th man on Tuesday night.  Apparently, Garay relied upon a historically impatient set of supporters, whose lofty standards often lead more to boos and jeers than blind loyalty.

Anger

After the opening stanza of the game, where Real Madrid came out with guns blazing, reality began to settle in as their exertions led to zero goals on the scoreboard.  Real Madrid knew that Alcorcón would put ten men behind the ball, and Alcorcón knew they had to defend for their lives as Real sent out three strikers, Raúl, Ruud van Nistelrooy, and Gonzalo Higuaín, as well as Kaká from behind to break the Alcorcón dam.  Alcorcón manager Juan Antonio Anquela admitted as much, saying, “If they want to crush us, they will crush us.  If Madrid is at its very best then it will be difficult to move on.  They are the clear favorites.  We hope we can win, but not in this leg.”

The Real Madrid players began to get frustrated, as Alcorcón canceled most of their attacking opportunities, and the demanding Madridistas were not shy in their disapproval.  There was no disputable red card to distract the supporters in the Santiago Bernabéu as there was in their La Liga clash with Getafe on Saturday.  The full venom of their anger went directly to the players, excoriating their every move as the minutes ticked toward their inevitable fate.  Whether the fans’ fury fixated on the players, management, ownership, or both, the rampant condemnation within the stadium was more than palpable, especially when Manuel Pellegrini substituted man of the match at the time Lassana Diarra in the second half.

Bargaining

As Real Madrid got closer and closer to breaking the stalemate, many believed that the first goal would open the floodgates.  If only Real could score early in the second half, Alcorcón would feel the pressure for the first time.  Many prayers by the Madridistas were sent to higher powers, asking for a minor miracle.  They will reform their lifestyles.  They will give up their vices.  They will change.  One goal is all they need to spur them on to a historic comeback.  Grant us this one wish.

As Real hit one, then two, then three posts/crossbars, the players and the fans ceased to bargain.  Rafael van der Vaart’s 81st minute goal only helped in ushering a sense of hopelessness.  There was no way Real could score three more times in nine minutes plus stoppage time.  The depression set in as Real Madrid won the second leg 1-0 but lost the tie 1-4 on aggregate.

Depression

After the match, Pepe remarked to Spanish sports daily, AS, “It’s a very sad night.  The attitude and spirit have been positive, but the win could not be.  The effort was there.”  Florentino Pérez, the proactive and ambitious president of Real Madrid, was muted in his assessment of the state of affairs, articulating, “It wouldn’t be a failure if we didn’t win a trophy.  We are in the middle of building a new project.  We’ll give it stability.”

For the players, depression after a loss is only short-lived because their next objectives come at a rapid pace, and they do not have to mull over a loss like this.  Unfortunately, for Real Madrid, there is an international break this coming weekend, which means they will not start avenging this loss until November 22, when they host Racing Santander at the Bernabéu.

Acceptance

As one would expect with professional footballers and managers, they should have the proper perspective after all the loss and heartbreak they have suffered in their careers.  “The players are with me, but it’s not easy overturning a four goal deficit because were playing against the score line, against the opponent, and against anxiety.  But we are a point behind Barcelona in La Liga and leading our group in the Champions League.  This will end well,” declared the levelheaded Real Madrid manager Manuel Pellegrini, according to AS.

“The fault lies with all of the players, who are the ones who play the game. We had a very bad first leg. We lost 4-0, a very heavy losing margin. We have not lived up to what is required at Real Madrid. They worked hard to get through and they deserved it,” Raúl Albiol said to Marca.

Whether Pellegrini and Albiol truly meant these words or if they were hollow statements is irrelevant.  They have to assure both the Madrid media and the Real supporters that their Round of 32 collapse to Alcorcón was merely a blip on the radar and that they would grow stronger from these experiences.  Alcorcón justified their two-legged victory as more than a fluke.  Real Madrid does have bigger fish to fry.  As Pellegrini mentioned, they are second in La Liga by one point and tied with AC Milan at the top of Group C in the Champions League.  Real has not won the Copa del Rey since 1993, so while the manner of their exit was surprising, the exit itself was not.  Understandably, all is doom and gloom in the Real universe, but if Real Madrid wins either of the two competitions in which they are still entered, this Copa del Rey embarrassment will merely be a footnote in their history.

Oscar Ustari can only stare blankly as Gonzalo Higuaín beats him for a second time.

The fashionable district.  The working-class south.  The established.  The disrespected.  Commerce.  Industry.  A comparison between the two top Madrid clubs.  Getafe just wants to be in the conversation.  They are in the city too, they say.  Real Madrid does not disrespect them because they are not in Real’s radar.  With Atlético Madrid struggling to steer their campaign in the right direction, Getafe CF had a chance to be noticed in the capital against Real Madrid at the eminent and illustrious Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.

The recent difficulties for Real Madrid have been well documented.  Outclassed by Sevilla, beaten by AC Milan, mediocre against Sporting Gijón, and embarrassed by Alcorcón.  All told, one win, one draw, and three losses in the last five for Madrid.  It only took until the middle of October for the rumors to start about the future and viability of Manuel Pellegrini at the Bernabéu.  The last event that Pellegrini needed to happen was another slip-up at the hands of their unnoticed cousin from the southern part of the Madrid metropolitan area.

The first half hour of the match saw few chances between the two teams, and the funereal atmosphere within the Santiago Bernabéu did not help in spurring on Real Madrid.  What sparked both the Madridistas and the players occurred in the 28th minute, when Raúl Albiol unjustly received a straight red card.  Apparently, in the eyes of referee Antonio Miguel Mateu Lahoz, Albiol prevented Getafe striker Roberto Soldado from a direct goal-scoring opportunity.  Albiol did pull the shirt of Soldado somewhat, but they both went for the ball in the air, leading to inevitable contact.  At worst, Mateu Lahoz should have given a yellow card to Albiol, but this highly controversial call gave Getafe the one-man advantage and more hope that they could upset Real Madrid in their own stadium.

Pedro León’s subsequent free kick could not curl enough as it flew a couple yards wide of the right post, but Getafe neglected to use the extra man to their benefit.  Paradoxically, Real Madrid actually played better with more vim and vigor after the red card and constantly threatened the Getafe goal through halftime.  Kaká and Karim Benzema played a two-man game down the left wing in one attack, with Kaká laying a perfect pull-back from the byline to Benzema, but Benzema’s strongly struck shot stung goalkeeper Oscar Ustari’s hands as he parried it away from goal.  Even though it was a 0-0 score at halftime, Real Madrid seemed more likely to open the scoring, while Getafe played a more conservative game after Albiol’s dismissal.  The whistles rained down from the Madridistas, but they aimed their anger more at the referees as they headed into their dressing room for halftime.

When Gonzalo Higuaín broke the deadlock in the 53rd minute to give Real Madrid the 1-0 lead, the run of play dictated that Real deserved to be ahead.  From the left wing, Marcelo whipped in a cross to Higuaín, who split between two defenders in the air, and after chesting the ball down to create space, it was a simple finish as Ustari had no chance to prevent the inevitable.

Getafe only changed their tactics after Higuaín scored.  After the referee sent off Albiol, Getafe continued to tread water rather than go for the lead.  When the goal transpired, panic seized through Getafe manager Míchel and his team, and they decided to be more gung ho in attack.  This tactic backfired three minutes later, when Lassana Diarra created a turnover in midfield, and there were only two Getafe defenders in their own half.  A two versus two battle between Mario and Cata Díaz and Karim Benzema and Gonzalo Higuaín yielded predictable results.  With the defenders on their heels, Benzema slotted a through ball to Higuaín, who took two touches and side-footed his shot across goal and across Oscar Ustari into the back of the net.  2-0 to the home team and assured three points.

Fabio Celestini had a couple of long-distance efforts that forced Iker Casillas into some good saves, but the second goal took the wind out of Getafe’s sails as they played out the final half hour without any significant scoring chances.  In eighth place starting Round 9 of La Liga, Getafe looked to continue their good form against a reeling Real Madrid side.  In particular, Roberto Soldado, Miguel Torres, Dani Parejo, and Adrián González wanted to prove to their former parent club that they should not have given up on them.  All members of the Real Madrid cantera, they disappointed as they failed to appreciably affect and effect the game to their fullest extent.  Especially when Real Madrid was handicapped with one less man, they did not have the gusto that was required to defeat any Real Madrid side.

To their credit, Real Madrid arguably had their most impressive performance of the season.  It was not necessarily due to stellar football, but it was their resolve and grit to take control of a game when they went a man down and seemingly every call went against them.  The 60/40 ratio of possession in Getafe’s favor meant nothing when observing the game; Getafe was ponderous with the ball, while Real were decisive and efficient after the red card.  Real Madrid expected to win this game, and even when they went a man down, they were the slightest of favorites to come out with a result, but Getafe never tilted the scales in their favor when they had the chance, and for that, they should be utterly frustrated with themselves.