Manolo Preciado: The Most Interesting Man in the World

There was a time on Saturday night when Lionel Messi actually became frustrated with himself and his teammates.  There was a time on Saturday night when Xavi Hernández could not find the killer pass through the hard-working, organized defense.  There was a time on Saturday night when Gerard Piqué was absolutely skinned alive by an opposing forward, costing FC Barcelona only its twelfth conceded goal all season in La Liga.

When these previous statements are applicable against Barcelona, one would assume the club on the other side of the pitch that forced the Catalans to toil for a draw was one of the European powers.  It certainly was not Real Madrid, nor Villarreal, nor Valencia.  It was the humble club from an industrial town that plays it football at a stadium named for the old watermill that once stood on that piece of land.

Sporting de Gijón, led by the most interesting man in the world, Manolo Preciado.

Similar to Blackpool’s Ian Holloway, Preciado filters very little what comes out of his mouth, and in almost beautiful synchronicity, both managers spit in the face of accusations that they purposefully set out weakened teams in a “lose the battle, win the war” type of creed.  In Holloway’s case, he made ten changes to his starting lineup against Aston Villa in November, in which that Villa match was the third of four matches Blackpool played in a short span of thirteen days.

Holloway threatened to resign from his post if the Premier League found the club guilty, and when the league handed down the guilty verdict, Holloway was true to his word, handing his resignation papers to Blackpool chairman Karl Oyston.  Oyston duly rejected Holloway’s resignation, but despite all of the strange and bold statements that come out of Holloway’s mouth, he genuinely believes in all of them and stands by everything he says.

Manolo Preciado is no different, and when José Mourinho charged Preciado of fielding a weakened team against Barcelona in September because “they [Sporting] felt they could not win,” in Mourinho’s words, Preciado went on a priceless diatribe that hearkens to the Rafael Benítez “Fact” rant or Diego Maradona’s “suck” castigation:

“I do not like Mourinho and I am going to tell him that to his face.  Who the hell is this guy?  He claimed that we gave away the points at Camp Nou and has since repeated this.  Even if he says this as a joke, it is very bad.  But if he means it, I think he is despicable and a poor professional.  I don’t like it at all.  If Madrid don’t teach him respect, I will.  We deserve the same respect he does.  To say that Sporting, who have killed ourselves to get into the top flight, would give up on a match?  Who the hell does he think he is?”

To say that the Sporting players backed their manager would be one of the understatements of the year.  They had already defeated Sevilla, drawn with Villarreal and Athletic Bilbao and frustrated Barcelona in a 1-0 loss with that “weakened” team, but when Sporting hosted Real Madrid in November and faced Mourinho for the first time since Mourinho made his disparaging comments against Sporting and Preciado, El Molinón developed into a fiery cauldron and a white-hot crucible that has not been matched in Spain this season.

Unfortunately, Mourinho sat in a private box for that match because he was in the middle of a two-match touchline ban for his own firebrand statements about referees.  He would have reveled in the hate raining down on him from the Sporting faithful as the clever and not-so-clever chants created an extra element of flavor and flair in an already combustible atmosphere.  The Sporting players channeled the positive energy from the El Molinón crowd and hassled and harried Cristiano Ronaldo and co. for the whole of the match.  Real expected the initial surge from Sporting, but the pressing and the closing down did not waver as the clock hit the 30th, 60th and even the 90th minute.  Gonzalo Higuaín eventually scored the decider in the 82nd minute to give Real the 0-1 victory, but their win was overshadowed by the effort of the Sporting players and their tangible love for their manager Manolo Preciado.

All that heart and emotion spent against Real Madrid took a toll on los rojiblancos, as they would not win in their next seven league matches, and with each successive game without a victory, Preciado’s leash shortened bit by bit until he was within one loss short of a sacking as was widely reported.  Sitting in the relegation zone and tied on points with the bottom of the table, Preciado’s players rallied behind their coach and reeled off three consecutive victories in January, including a 1-0 over Atlético Madrid and a 0-4 thrashing over Mallorca.

Heading into their home match against Barcelona on Saturday night, Sporting sat in a nominally safe 13th in the table, but with only one point separating them with those in the relegation zone, they were supposed to rely on other results of the round to keep them above the drop line because no one had taken a point off Barcelona away from the Camp Nou this season.

Sporting should have been comforted by the fact that under Pep Guardiola, Barcelona’s record coming of FIFA-sanctioned international matched was a relatively mediocre 5-6-1, and that one loss came at the hands of Hércules in September.  Added to the player fatigue from the internationals was the impending UEFA Champions League Round of 16 first leg against Arsenal this upcoming Wednesday, so if there were a time when Barcelona would not be at their best, Sporting would get them at the perfect time.

Preciado and the El Molinón crowd did not have any qualms against Barcelona, but subconsciously, Preciado wanted to prove Mourinho wrong and show that Sporting believed they could beat Barcelona, even though he firmly denied Mourinho’s indictments about his team in their first meeting against the blaugrana earlier in the season.

The same intensity that Sporting showed against Real Madrid resurfaced against Barcelona in the first twenty minutes of the match, but whereas the impetus against Real arose from hatred and disgust, the vigor displayed against Barcelona came more from fear as the threat of relegation looms for the bottom eight La Liga clubs.

Sporting employed a high defensive line and a suffocating on and off-ball pressure that defines Barça’s defense, and this strategy forced Barcelona into some uncharacteristic turnovers and lack of composure on the ball.  After Sporting foiled another Barça offensive move, the subsequent counter-attack ended with Gijón taking the shock 1-0 lead.

Diego Castro sent a ball down the left wing for David Barral, and Barral did the rest.  Gerard Piqué is one of the most complete defenders in the world, but he is not blessed with blistering pace, so when he went against Barral in a one-on-one battle down the left wing, Piqué was always going to finish second best.  Barral cut in from the left wing, leaving Piqué in his wake, and when Gabriel Milito tried to help out Piqué in the box, Barral ran laterally past Milito with Milito stumbling to the floor in the process, and Barral struck a shot to the right far post that Víctor Valdés had no chance of saving.

1-0 to Sporting, but what were they going to do for the final seventy-four minutes plus stoppage time?

While they stood by their high pressure for a few minutes after the goal, they predictably began to sit back more and more in their own half of the pitch as the game wore on because they could not keep up the high intensity for the whole of the match.

When Sporting converted into a 4-6-0 formation later in the match, they plugged every hole and covered every hint of open space in which Barcelona wanted to exploit.  Preciado was almost serenely calm (feisty for normal folk), and the faint possibility of three points slowly became more and more of a reality.

Then the local boy done good, David Villa, broke his people’s hearts with a deft twenty-yard chip over goalkeeper Iván Cuéllar with ten minutes remaining, and Barcelona somehow came out of El Molinón with a point.

Ever since Pep Guardiola took over FC Barcelona in the summer of 2008, every team has tried to find the magic formula or blueprint to contain and ultimately defeat Barça on a somewhat consistent basis.  Has Sporting Gijón, of all clubs, provided the plan for others to follow when they encounter Barcelona?

High pressure and the early goal for the opposition has been the common theme when Barcelona has struggled, and Sporting completed these two tasks.  Unless the team has players that can fight with this intensity for the entire match, eventually they will have to sit back and withstand the inevitable Barcelona onslaught.  Without the early goal, Sporting would likely have tired at a much higher rate, and Barcelona would have found their goal sooner or later, but with the thought that they could actually defeat Barcelona dancing in their heads, they transcended their own physical and mental limits for the cause.

While Sporting did not finish the way they wanted, Preciado had nothing but effusive praise for his whole team, and the individual players reciprocated that love back to their trainer.

Sporting Gijón fell three spots to 16th despite the point earned and perilously stand one point above Osasuna for the final relegation place.  As the Asturian club claws their way toward safety in La Liga for another year, the luscious mustache from across the border in Cantabria soldiers on, running his team in his way, regardless of others from the outside have to say about he and his team.  La Liga would sorely miss his graveled, stern voice and his larger-than-life character if Sporting were to go down, and if Mourinho stays with Real Madrid for the foreseeable future, who else will keep him in check?

Fueras de Juego

- If Quique Sánchez Flores has not been sacked, he should just resign if he wants to keep his sanity.  Valencia came up with another late-goal winner to rise to third in the table, and Atlético Madrid’s schizophrenia has morphed into a chronic depression that has little chance of curing at this point.  Diego Forlán missed a penalty that would have given Atlético a 2-1 lead, and he falls further into the doghouse with both the Atlético fans and the coaching staff.  It might be time to blow up this team and start over, and Quique will not want part of any of that.

- Sevilla found another way to blow a match, and all of the blame for Manuel Arana’s first-time forty-yard loop with the outside of his right boot game-winner should fall on Andrés Palop, who went on an absent-minded walkabout outside of his area and left the goal wide open.  The goal nearly left Arana in tears, and back to the future new boss Marcelino García Toral shrewdly decided to run in ecstasy on the grass after he nearly broke his butt celebrating Racing’s second goal on the slippery technical area.  Sevilla now is fourteen points behind Villarreal for the final Champions League spot, and Gregorio Manzano looks like he is on the hot seat and the next manager to go after Quique Sánchez Flores with the bookmakers.

- Villarreal’s inexplicable poor play for a second week as they fell to a deserved Deportivo La Coruña team that needed three points with relegation a real possibility for the Galicians.  The Depor ball kids must have watched Osasuna defeat Real Madrid a couple of weeks ago because with a few minutes remaining on the clock and Villarreal in a dangerous attacking position on Daniel Aranzubia’s goal, the Depor ball kid threw a second ball on the pitch, and referee Rafael Ramírez Domínguez had no choice but to stop play.  On the drop ball, Depor kicked into the Villarreal half, and all of the attacking momentum disappeared.  Anything for a win apparently.

- Real Madrid had one of its best performances of the season, even with Iker Casillas receiving his marching orders from referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz in the second minute.  Emmanuel Adebayor gelled with Cristiano Ronaldo and the other Real attackers and fit in seamlessly in José Mourinho’s team.  Karim Benzema might have to be comfortable sitting on the bench for the rest of the season save for some substitute appearances.  Pepe deserved man of the match honors because he made a multitude of stellar defensive plays, and he had to pick up the slack of Ricardo Carvalho, who had a rare off day in the center of defense.  Seven points down to five, and La Liga seems realistic for Real.  For now.

With the league title slipping away from Real Madrid’s hands, their two cup competitions, the UEFA Champions League and the Copa del Rey, could be the tournaments that they can realistically expect to win.  Real can stamp its name in the final of the Copa del Rey on Wednesday night if they can navigate a more than tricky second leg tie against the current holders of the cup, Sevilla.

Real leads the semifinal tie 1-0 after nicking a crucial away goal at the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán in the first leg.  The win for los blancos was significant, but the actual result took a backseat because of two incidents in that game dominated the talk afterward: Luís Fabiano’s disallowed goal and Iker Casillas’ bottle incident.

Concerning Fabiano’s shot on the line just before halftime, several different angles and thousands of super slow-motion replays still have not conclusively rendered a definitive answer as to whether or not the whole ball crossed the whole of the goal line.  Fermín Martínez Ibáñez, the linesman who made the pivotal and fateful call (or non-call as it were), should receive credit for the situation because referees and linesman are always taught to make a decision only if they are 100%, and it was not clear if Fabiano scored.  In addition, it would have been easy for Martínez Ibáñez to cave into the ravenous and vociferous Sevillista crowd, but he stuck to his convictions and made the call he felt was correct (although now some have now considered him another covert agent for the Real Madrid cause).

Despite the disputed goal/no goal from Fabiano and the general hot-blooded, robust tension throughout the match, there is no excuse for supporters to throw missiles onto the pitch, and after the final whistle blew, someone in the crowd through a bottle and hit Iker Casillas flush on the back of his head.  Luckily, the missile was merely a plastic bottle and not an object with more mass, but regardless of what was thrown, the RFEF (the Spanish football governing body), was disgusted with what happened and handed Sevilla a €6,000 fine and stern threats about stadium closure if similar incidents occur in the future.

Hopefully, the second leg will be about only the football and not about ancillary incidents or refereeing decisions.  Emmanuel Adebayor is expected to make his home debut at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu for Real, and after Real unexpectedly lost at Pamplona to Osasuna in the league on Sunday, José Mourinho and his players would want nothing more than to make their first Copa del Rey final since 2004 and possibly win it for the first time since 1993.

For Sevilla, new January signings Gary Medel and Ivan Rakitic could make their debuts in the match, and apart from the suspended Andrés Palop and the long-term injured Tiberio Guarente and Ivica Dragutinovic, Sevilla trainer Gregorio Manzano will have a full squad from which to choose his starting eleven.  Should Sevilla overturn the tie and reach the final, it would be the first time in their long history that they would have advanced to the Copa del Rey final in consecutive years.

Preceding the Real Madrid – Sevilla match is the other second leg semifinal between Almería and FC Barcelona, almost forgotten by everyone because Barcelona holds a 5-0 advantage from their home leg, and Barça scored eight without reply the last time they visited the Estadio de los Juegos Mediterráneos in November.

With the hectic schedule Barcelona has had and what they will have in the next month or two, Pep Guardiola will likely rest most of his normal starting eleven.  Guardiola has not implemented a rotation-type system like most top European clubs, so the likes of Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Villa, etc. have played nearly all of Barcelona’s matches in all competitions.  Guardiola has said all the right things, stating that this tie is still alive and that he will not take this match lightly, but if his top guns make more than short substitute stints late in the match, it would be very surprising.

Almería trainer José Luis Oltra jokingly proclaimed to the media in Tuesday’s press conference how he had his team practice penalties just in case they overturn their five-goal deficit, but his focus has turned more toward this weekend against Espanyol:

“We must take it as a challenge, and we want to win.  We, by the way, have been practicing penalties, but, hey, that is not our goal.  Our big game and our final is on Saturday, [against Espanyol] but the match against Barcelona has many attractions.  Our challenge [on Wednesday] simply is to win.”

It will be interesting if Oltra does send out his best players, including Pablo Piatti, Kalu Uche, Albert Crusat, etc., but whatever decision he makes concerning his starting eleven, it will make no difference as Barcelona should be in the Copa del Rey final on April 20.  As Oltra said, this match for Almería is about pride.

Feb. 2

Almería vs. FC Barcelona – 1:55 PM on Gol TV HD

Real Madrid vs. Sevilla – 3:55 PM on ESPN Deportes/ESPN3

Josep Guardiola, known for his cool demeanor inside and outside of the technical area, channeled his feelings for all things Madrid when he refused to give Cristiano Ronaldo the ball for a throw-in on the half-hour mark.  Unlike his outspoken and demonstrative counterpart José Mourinho, Guardiola usually keeps to himself, shouting and dictating to his players on the pitch on rare occasions.  Monday night’s match was El Clásico, however, and normal circumstances and situations have little bearing.  The ball had gone out of play, and Ronaldo wanted to take a throw-in quickly to continue what little momentum Real Madrid had going forward.  The ball fortuitously came to Guardiola, and in one of his less sporting moments, he held the ball away from Ronaldo and then eventually rolled it away from him.  Ronaldo took exception to such behavior and shoved him in the chest, starting a little fracas as the Barça players came to defend Guardiola while the Real players took Ronaldo’s side.

Mentioning how normal circumstances fly out of the window during El Clásico, Víctor Valdés, Gerard Piqué, and Carles Puyol would be the ones who would immediately soar into the affray because of their combative personalities, and on cue, Valdés received a yellow card for coming out of his penalty area to confront Ronaldo.  Who was the first one, however, to challenge Ronaldo for his behavior?  The mild-mannered and unassuming Andrés Iniesta.  Iniesta was the nearest Barça player to the situation, but Dani Alves, Lionel Messi, and Sergio Busquets were also around, saw exactly what Ronaldo did to Guardiola, and did not immediately react as Iniesta did.

By the time the Guardiola – Ronaldo showdown occurred, it was already 2-0 in favor of the Catalans, and that situation was the only fight that Real Madrid could muster throughout the whole of the match.

Before the match, Mourinho had to make one forced change to his settled starting eleven, as Gonzalo Higuaín failed to pass a late fitness test due to a back muscle injury, and the much-maligned Karim Benzema deputized for Higuaín as the lone center-forward.  Benzema had become 75th – 80th minute replacement for Higuaín in most of the matches this season, and he had provided some decent performances in those short stints.  He needed to fill Higuaín’s boots from the start of the match against their toughest and most important opponent, however, and Benzema’s few starts for Real Madrid this season were nothing about which to write.

Guardiola sent out his optimum eleven, which meant that the slightly more defensive Éric Abidal started at left back over the Brazilian Maxwell.  With Ángel di María and Cristiano Ronaldo on the flanks and willing to switch at any moment, Guardiola wanted the defensive assurances of Abidal to cover the Barça left wing.

From the opening minutes, this version of El Clásico did not resemble the tight, cagey matches from the previous season where both teams found it hard to penetrate the opposition’s defensive lines.  At least for FC Barcelona.

Lionel Messi, who had never scored against a José Mourinho-trained club, provided the ominous, early salvo in the sixth minute.  From the right edge of the penalty area, Messi audaciously chipped a ball to the left far post over Iker Casillas and pinged off the post for a momentary let-off for Real Madrid.  Gerard Piqué was making a late run to that left back post, but Messi’s universal skills could only mean that he intentionally went for the shot over Casillas rather than crossing for Piqué that happened to beat Casillas and clang the post.

Four minutes later, Barcelona would breakthrough with the opening goal by a combination between the two best midfielders in football, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández.  After another twenty to thirty pass move, Iniesta cut in from the left and drove a pass through the Real defense, and Marcelo, desperately sliding to intercept the pass, could only deflect it to Xavi, who had made a relatively rare darting run into the box, and with his feathery touch, volleyed it over Casillas with the side of his right boot to open the floodgates.

Barcelona would score again eight minutes later when Xavi returned to his maestro role in the midfield and gave David Villa a perfectly flighted forty-yard diagonal ball to the left wing.  Villa was the only debutant in Barcelona’s starting eleven to El Clásico, and he showed no signs of nerves as he cut into the box against Sergio Ramos and got the best of both Ramos and Casillas as his squared ball across the six-yard box avoided Ramos’ lunging tackle and crept under Casillas’ gloves to an open Pedro “Don’t call me Pedrito anymore” Rodríguez, and with an empty net in front of him, Pedro knocked it in from two yards out to extend the lead to two goal before twenty minutes had ticked off the clock.

The only legitimate shout for a potential goal for Real Madrid came in the 39th minute when Ronaldo and Valdés came together in the penalty area, and referee Eduardo Iturralde González ruled that Valdés just got a finger on the ball before Ronaldo got to it and thus it was a fair challenge.  The replay proved inconclusive as it looked as though both arrived at the ball at the exact same time.

MARCA, of course, disputed Iturralde González’s decision, and for MARCA‘s more “detailed” analysis of Iturralde González’s performance, click here.  If you cannot read Spanish or do not have a website translator, MARCA did do a decent job of somewhat maintaining neutrality, but they did mark the penalty shout as a “clear penalty” as well as emphasizing Messi’s yellow card just before the break for simulation following Ricardo Carvalho’s supposedly accidental shoulder to Messi’s face.

José Mourinho did make a halftime change in the hope of turning the match around, but curiously, he took off an admittedly ineffective Mesut Özil for the midfield destroyer Lassana Diarra.  Real’s defense did not improve, and within the first fifteen minutes of the second half, Barcelona doubled their lead to an astonishing 4-0.

Lionel Messi took the role from Xavi as the midfield general as he provided two assists for David Villa that both Iniesta and Xavi would gush over.  Villa’s first goal, Barcelona’s third goal, came about through a “simple” through ball in between two Real defenders, but the foresight Messi needed to visualize the pass was impeccable, and although Villa looked to be a quarter of a body length offside, the linesman did not raise his flag, and the rout ensued.

Villa’s second goal, Barcelona’s fourth goal, was all about Messi, as he delivered the best pass of the 600/700 that Barcelona executed in the match.  Xavi started the move by causing the turnover on Lassana Diarra in midfield, and Diarra cynically pulled Xavi back to prevent the counter-attack, but Barça maintained possession, and Iturralde González correctly played the advantage when most referees would have blown the whistle.  Messi then dribbled for a few yards when he saw Villa make a run down the left wing.  He executed a pinpoint thirty to forty yard diagonal pass on the ground through four Real players for Villa in stride, and Villa took the shot first-time with his right foot, in between the legs of an onrushing Casillas, into the back of the net for an improbably 4-0 lead.

Jeffrén Suárez would add a fifth at the end of the match to complete the humiliation, but the action did not end there.

Sergio Ramos was ready to take no prisoners.

Sergio Ramos decided upon himself to avenge his fallen teammates by scything through Lionel Messi’s left leg, then pushing Carles Puyol down by his face once referee Eduardo Iturralde González had flashed the red card at him, then tweaking Xavi’s chin as he left the pitch and into the tunnel.  In a match sprinkled with bouts of unsportsmanlike conduct, Ramos took that conduct to the highest (or lowest, depending on perspective) level with his one-man Rambo-like rampage in an act of petulance that should land him at least a three-match ban if not more.

Despite this 5-0 romp and the added satisfaction of embarrassing their eternal rivals, this match only counts for three points, and in the cold light of statistics, Barcelona only has a two-point lead over Real Madrid and a seven-point lead over Villarreal.  Guardiola and his players all spoke about how this result did not mean anything if they end up losing the championship, and they somewhat quelled the euphoria of the win with their levelheaded statements in the post-match press conferences.

A humbled José Mourinho gave all the credit to Barcelona and stated that it would be easy to move on from this match because they were outplayed in all aspects of the match, and no outside influences (refereeing decisions, close calls, etc.) would have made the difference in this edition of El Clásico.  He also mentioned that because they were blown out, the loss was easier to swallow rather than a close loss.  Of course, Mourinho would try to add a positive spin to an otherwise dire performance, but the gulf in class on this particular night should alarm Mourinho.  Even if a one-goal loss would have been harder to take, at least they would know that a small adjustment here or there could have made the difference among a loss, draw, or even a win, but a five-goal blowout only indicates that Mourinho still has plenty of work to compete with FC Barcelona if they are to capture La Liga for the first time since the 2007-08 season, a barren spell for los blancos.

Josep Guardiola and FC Barcelona vividly showed how the game of football could be so simple yet equally spectacular at the same time.  While it only meant three more points in their coffer, the confidence they can take from this stellar performance can carry them into the dregs of midseason and the long, winter months.

Xavi, Jorge Valdano, and others felt that this match should not have been played on Monday because it would lose its soul, but it gave everyone in Spain as well as around the world the chance to focus solely on these two teams, and the only conclusion that the viewers of the match can make is that FC Barcelona is truly the best team in world football.

Eduardo Iturralde González (!) will officiate El Clásico on Monday night.

The José Mourinho – Pep Guardiola headline and the Lionel Messi – Cristiano Ronaldo headline have been covered and written many times over, so this preview of El Clásico will try to avoid these subjects and focus on the other, less talked about aspects of the biggest game in Spanish football this season.

The man in the middle of the fray will be Eduardo Iturralde González, the dentist from Bilbao, who will referee his third Clásico and his second at the Camp Nou.  Those who watch Spanish football on a regular basis know Iturralde’s penchant for handing out multiple cards not necessarily because they were warranted but because of his overt need to control the match.  For visual proof, watch Iturralde González give Nikola Zigic a yellow card here in one of the longest booking sessions in the history of football.

Normally, the referees that are given this match are the most highly rated in Spain, as indicated by the last the ten Clásicos being overseen by only three referees: Manuel Mejuto González, Alberto Undiano Mallenco, and Luís Medina Cantalejo.  Mejuto González retired in the summer and Medina Cantalejo the summer before, so while Undiano Mallenco will most likely take charge of the Clásico in the Santiago Bernabéu in April, someone else had to take charge of the other Clásico.

If there were any refereeing new blood to throw into the Clásico fire, it would have been Carlos Velasco Carballo, who refereed his first matches in the UEFA Champions League group stage this season and has been praised by UEFA and the RFEF for his refereeing competency, but Eduardo Iturralde González got the call because of his experience refereeing this match.

Madridistas have long cried that Iturralde González harbored pro-Barça sympathies, and while these claims have little to no substance, they show the still-fractious regionalism that continues to exist in this somewhat more unified Spain as well as the almost life-or-death meaning of El Clásico with both the Merengues and the Culés.

Now to the players.  While Barcelona will have to devise more than a couple of strategies to limit Cristiano Ronaldo and Gonzalo Higuaín’s contributions, Sergio Busquets and the central defensive pairing of Carles Puyol and Gerard Piqué will deal with the two new additions to the attacking midfield, Ángel di María and Mesut Özil, and their abilities to create for Real’s scoring duo and to outpace the relatively slow defensive four, save for Dani Alves.  Kaká, Rafael van der Vaart, Marcelo and Guti roamed the same areas last season that di María and Özil currently occupy, and they could not force or guile their way through Barça’s underrated defensive shield.

While Ángel di María and Cristiano Ronaldo switch wings from time to time, di María usually bombs down the left wing, which means he will come against Dani Alves for most of the match.  This battle will be vital for their respective clubs because if di María can continually threaten Barcelona’s final third, that means that Alves has to be more of a stay-at-home fullback, and his important contributions to Barça’s attack will be limited.  If di María is ineffective, Alves will have the freedom to act as the right wingback that suits his abilities best, and he will create space for Messi, David Villa, Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta, etc. to retain possession and pry Spain’s best defense more often.

Mesut Özil has made the normally demanding Madridistas almost forget about the second most expensive transfer in football history, €65 million and currently injured Kaká.  Kaká was the central focus of the imperious attack at AC Milan, and when he brought his talents to the Santiago Bernabéu, little did he know that Florentino Pérez would sign Cristiano Ronaldo two days later to the largest transfer fee ever at €94 million.  Kaká never really fit in to Manuel Pellegrini’s system, and injuries hampered Kaká from ever fully integrating into the Real starting eleven.

With successful surgery on his left knee this past summer, Real faced four to six months without him, so new trainer José Mourinho was instrumental in signing Mesut Özil from Werder Bremen for a bargain price of €15 million, and after a couple of matches to get himself situated to his new surroundings and responsibilities, Özil has been just as important as Ronaldo and Higuaín for Real’s offensive output.

Özil is tied for the league lead with five assists as well as chipping in with three goals, but the statistics do not really tell all that Özil does for Real Madrid.  In hockey, assists are awarded not only to the player that passed to the person that scored but also to the player that passed to the principal assist man.  If football kept such statistics, Özil would likely lead the league with a double-digit assist count because he provides the link from Xabi Alonso deep in the midfield to di María, Ronaldo, and Higuaín up front, and Kaká will find it difficult to supplant the German international when he is fully fit from his knee surgery.

Sergio Busquets will have the responsibility to break up and disrupt Özil in the middle of the pitch, especially during counter-attacks.  Limiting Özil and di María to the periphery of the action should become Barcelona’s number one priority because accomplishing this task will isolate Ronaldo and Higuaín, and when they get frustrated, they both try to carry the whole team on their backs and will take ill-advised and speculative shots from all over the final third, which would suit Barcelona perfectly.

Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Villa, and Pedro Rodríguez will do what they do in Real’s final third.  Ronaldo, Higuaín, and Xabi Alonso will do what they do in Barça’s final third.  The wild cards are the two new participants in Los Blanco’s attacking midfield, Mesut Özil and Ángel di María, and their performances on Monday night will tilt the scales in one team’s favor.  Perform well, and Real Madrid might just stop Barcelona’s four-match winning streak against Real.  Perform mediocre or poorly, and Real Madrid will suffer the ignominy of Barça’s first ever five-match winning streak against Real.

Note: The times listed below are in Eastern Standard Time (EST).

Nov. 29

Fuera de Juego: Especial El Clásico - 2:00 PM on ESPN Deportes

Gol TV Live Preview Show – 2:30 PM on Gol TV HD

FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid – 2:50 PM on Gol TV HD (Play-by-play Phil Schoen and Analyst Ray Hudson in English with Play-by-play Diego Pessolano and Analyst Eduardo Biscayart in Spanish)

ESPN Deportes (Play-by-play Fernando Palomo and Analyst Mario Kempes)

ESPN3 (Play-by-play Adrian Healey and Analyst Robbie Mustoe in English with Play-by-play Fernando Palomo and Analyst Mario Kempes in Spanish)

FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid Replays – 5:00 PM on Gol TV HD and 6:00 PM on ESPN Deportes

Sportscenter Especial El Clásico – 5:00 PM on ESPN Deportes

Gol TV News: El Clásico Special – 7:00 PM on Gol TV HD

La Liga 360: El Clásico – 7:30 PM on Gol TV HD

Barcelona's second goal, scored by Lionel Messi, typified the creativity displayed throughout the match by both Barcelona and Villarreal.

A select few matches each season define the league in terms of pecking order and/or overall footballing ability.  Obviously, the two editions of El Clásico between Real Madrid and Barcelona usually determine the fate of La Liga’s crown.  More specifically, in the past five seasons, the team that won the most points in El Clásico has gone on to win the league.  There are thirty-six other matches, however, that both teams have to play that shape their seasons, and Barcelona hosting Villarreal on Saturday night was touted as that type of monumental match.

After Valencia has fallen by the way side from the top of the league after the October international break with one point out of a possible twelve, including an emotionally crushing 2-1 loss to Barcelona, the only team remaining that had any realistic chance of staying with the established duopoly was Villarreal.

The Yellow Submarine’s revival to their passing, flowing style under Juan Carlos Garrido coincided with positive results in the second half of last season and the third-place position they held coming into the Camp Nou on Saturday.  Giuseppe Rossi and Nilmar are developing a telepathic understanding with each other, Santi Cazorla has provided the creative influence in whatever position of the midfield he plays, and new addition Borja Valero allows Cazorla, Rossi, and Nilmar to roam if they want to with his steadying influence and ability to spray the ball around the park.

The knock with Villarreal falls on their mediocre away form.  While they have achieved a perfect eight-for-eight at home in all competitions, including a 5-0-0 record in La Liga, Villarreal has only won two matches out of eight in all competitions away from El Madrigal, including a pedestrian 2-2-1 record in La Liga, a draw at lowly Segunda División B (third tier) side Polideportivo Ejido in the Copa del Rey, and losses in the UEFA Europa League at Dinamo Zagreb and PAOK, hardly considered as European powers.

While an average away form alongside their stellar home record will likely equal a top-four place and a spot in next year’s UEFA Champions League, it simply will not equal a top-two position, much less a league championship.

A win at the Camp Nou would not only jump Villarreal above Barcelona and temporarily tied with Real Madrid on top of the table, but it would send a significant message to Real and Barça that Villarreal is not merely a nice team that they would dismiss as a little engine that could but a legitimate threat to their increasingly cozy existence standing on top of Spanish football.

If Villarreal needed more confirmation that they could at least pull out a draw in Barcelona, they ride a three-match unbeaten streak at the Camp Nou, and both of Barça’s non-wins in La Liga have occurred at home.

Both teams predicate their games on ball possession and controlling how the match will play out.  No matter how much Villarreal wants to keep the ball away from Barcelona, Barcelona will have at least 62% of possession or higher, so a sharpened and biting counter-attack is necessary if they wanted to pierce Barcelona in its side.

In the first twenty minutes of the match, Villarreal executed this strategy well with two separate counter-attacks that severely threatened Víctor Valdés’ goal.  Barcelona’s defensive line played so high that they were near midfield when they had possession, so when Villarreal recuperated the ball, it did not take a brilliant pass to get behind the defense.  Combined with a general lack of pace from the Barcelona defensive four, Giuseppe Rossi flew down the left wing to latch onto through balls in open space.  To Barça’s credit, they recovered to quell the trouble both times, but Villarreal quickly identified how they were going to hurt Barcelona, and after David Villa scored the opening goal in the 22nd minute, Villarreal responded four minutes later with a Nilmar equalizer.

Nilmar’s ankle-breaking, sublime run through four or five Barça players and subsequent shot across the face of goal and past Valdés where it pinged off the right far post and into the net came as a result of Villarreal immediately attacking a forlorn Barça team after they were denied a second goal by the linesman’s offside flag.  Just as Rossi caught the back four off-guard with his two runs behind them in the early stages of the match, Nilmar took advantage of a team that still had its mind on the shockingly erroneous offside call by the linesman, and in a flash, a 2-0 game became 1-1.

As Carlos Delgado Ferreiro blew his whistle for halftime, Villarreal could go into the dressing room with a fairly satisfied disposition because they fashioned five scoring opportunities to Barça’s three despite only possessing the ball 36% of the time.  For the Barcelona players and the Culés in the stands, they beamed their frustrations straight at Delgado Ferreiro and his crew because of their poor performance in the opening forty-five minutes, denying a two-on-one situation with Lionel Messi and Pedro Rodríguez that resulted in a goal along with other questionable calls that had the Barça supporters waving their white handkerchiefs in disgust.

When both sets of teams came out for the second half, Pep Guardiola brilliantly channeled his players’ anger at the referee into a productive yet effulgent display of football in the second half to see away their worthy adversaries, similar to Barcelona’s second-half performance against Valencia to terminate another pretender to the throne.  Guardiola had his defense play a more conservative defensive line so that Villarreal could not run into open space like they did in the first half, and while Barcelona’s definition of “conservative” means holding their line at the edge of the center circle rather than at the halfway line, they effectively suppressed the Villarreal counter-attacking game with this tweak in defense.

This modification meant that Villarreal would have to create a build-up of passing football to penetrate the penalty area, a strategy with which Villarreal is highly capable, but Barcelona would not allow them to accomplish such a proposition because they kept the ball even better than they did in the first half.  Even though the statistics show that Barcelona “only” had 68% of the possession in the second half, that percentage went down after Barcelona scored their third goal and sent in substitutes Adriano Correia and Javier Mascherano to finish off the match.

The other changes with Barcelona in the second half had nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with the luminosity, the splendor, and every other positive adjective to describe Lionel Messi.  In perfect, synchronized amalgamation with Pedro, Barcelona’s second goal to regain the lead must go down as the goal of the season, and rather than wasting words on describing what happened, click on this to witness a universe-class event of understanding and trust between two players.

Messi would pounce on Joan Capdevila’s block of Pedro’s shot in the closing stages of the match to seal the victory for Barcelona at 3-1, showing the predatory, goal-poaching instincts in the penalty area that go understated with all of his other outstanding traits.

Villarreal played really well while the box score would say otherwise, and on many other days, including against Barcelona or Real Madrid, Villarreal would have at least garnered a point in the worst-case scenario.  Unfortunately, for El Amarillo Submarino, this night was not many other nights.

The critics and the cynics will jump on this match and proclaim that La Liga is morphing into a more glamorous version of the Scottish Premier League because second-place Barcelona now has a five-point gap over third-place Villarreal with leaders Real Madrid six points clear.  Villarreal, who was supposedly a danger to the Spanish royalty, could not compete with Barcelona in the second half as Barça deservedly won a 3-1 decision at home.

Maybe there is a kernel of truth behind that argument, but the same pundits who proclaim the Barclays Premier League as the most competitive league in the world because the “Big Four” could lose in any one matchday overlook the fact that only once in the past five years had a club other than Chelsea or Manchester United finished in the top two (Liverpool finished second in the 2008/09 season), the same amount of times it has happened in La Liga when Barcelona and Real Madrid did not end as the top two teams in La Liga (Villarreal finished second in the 2007/08 season).

That is a debate and discussion for another day.  The focus should sit squarely on Barcelona and its combination of individual and team performances that led to a two-goal victory over a Villarreal team that deserves it place as the third-best team in Spain at this moment.  If Barcelona can carry this form over to El Clásico two weeks from now on Monday night football (!?!?), this upcoming edition of the derby will be the most intriguing Clásico since… the last edition of El Clásico.

Fueras de Juego

- No one exerted less pressure on the opposition for an entire half that Real Zaragoza did in the first half against Sevilla on Sunday.  With Zaragoza playing at a snail’s pace with five in the back along with a holding midfielder, Sevilla could have stood still for the entire half and Zaragoza would not have scored.  Zaragoza trainer José Aurelio Gay made two changes and a formation shift to start the second half, and the whistles that deservedly rained down on Zaragoza turned into cheers and encouragement as Nico Bertolo got the equalizer and Sevilla left back Fernando Navarro was sent off halfway through the second period.  A late winner from Álvaro Negredo, of all people, broke los maños hearts, and Sevilla escaped with a 1-2 victory at La Romareda.

César Muñiz Fernández created another controversy when he clearly appeared to flash the yellow card at Alexis for dissent, which would have been his second, but the yellow was eventually credited to Frédéric Kanouté.  Muñiz Fernández is quickly becoming the second coming of Alfonso Pérez Burrull for his puzzling decisions and his general arrogance that only helps to rile up the players.

- Frightening scenes preceded the second half between Hércules and Real Sociedad as an Hércules youth player or employee lay motionless on the ground with the emergency workers quickly coming to his aid to diagnose the problem.  As of the time of this writing, there is no update on the situation, but with the recent passings of Antonio Puerta and Dani Jarque, the retirements of Real Madrid midfielder Rubén de la Red and Salamanca midfielder Miguel García, and the ongoing struggles of Sevilla defender Sergio Sánchez, all due to heart problems, one can only hope that this young man has not been struck down with such health problems.

- Manolo Preciado sent the verbal volleys all week at José Mourinho for the latter’s insinuation that Preciado sent in a scrub squad against Barcelona earlier in the season because Preciado knew they would lose, and the bite and venom translated not only through his words but through to his players, as Sporting Gijón showed little respect for Real Madrid with their hard tackling and general sniping with the Real players.  Mourinho’s team got the last laugh with Gonzalo Higuaín’s late winner to walk away from El Molinón with the three points, but if one team in Spain will die for their trainer, it is the Sporting Gijón players for their firebrand Manolo Preciado.

Before this current season, Hércules CF had tasted top flight football only twice in the past twenty-five years: the 1985-86 season, when their neighbors to north, Valencia, also suffered relegation for the first time in its illustrious history; and the 1996-97 season, when the Alicante club spent one campaign in La Liga before subsequent relegation to the Segunda División.

Even though they finished twenty-first in that season where twenty-two teams competed in the first division for the final time, they foiled Barcelona’s chances of capturing the La Liga crown with two stirring come-from-behind victories against the Catalans.  Barcelona fronted their attack with one of the greatest trios in Spanish football history: Ronaldo, Hristo Stoichkov, and Luís Figo, but they proved to be insufficient against the supposedly weaker team.

Specifically, at the Camp Nou, when Luis Enrique and Ronaldo gave Barça the 2-0 lead, the situation seemed bleak for Hércules and looked to be another routine win for the Blaugrana. Hércules stormed back with a couple of goals to even the score, and then Eduardo Rodríguez took a long ball and absolutely turned great French defender and current French national team coach Laurent Blanc inside out as Rodríguez slotted it home in between goalkeeper Vítor Baía’s legs.  Click here to witness that nugget of brilliance.

If Hércules were to pull off yet another shocking result at the Camp Nou this season as they did fourteen years ago, they needed Barcelona to play lower than their astronomical standard as well as capitalize on the few chances that Barça would afford them.  To the ownership and manager’s credit, they brought in quality players from the summer transfer market that could aid Hércules not only to avoid relegation but also to compete with vim and vigor against the top clubs in Spain.  Six of their summer signings started against Barcelona, including three well-known players with European experience: Royston Drenthe from Real Madrid, Nelson Haedo Valdez from Borussia Dortmund, and Juventus legend David Trezeguet.

As is the case with many of the smaller clubs in Spain, Hércules had to find hidden jewels in the transfer market that were talented yet unwanted by their teams (Royston Drenthe, Abel Aguilar and Nelson Valdez), loan signings that were willing to join a club that had just risen to the Spanish Primera (Matías Fritzler and Royston Drenthe), and veteran players that felt they still had significant contributions to give to their prospective clubs (David Cortés and David Trezeguet).

As with any major upset, Hércules needed a few breaks to fall their way, and even before the match commenced, they saw on the team sheet that Pep Guardiola did not put out his optimal starting eleven.  With the Argentina – Spain friendly taking place in Buenos Aires a mere four days prior to this match, ten of the Barça players had to travel back and forth from the Southern Hemisphere, and while these players will never use FIFA International dates as excuses, to dismiss the significance of such travels within a short period of time would be disingenuous.  Five of the regular starting eleven did not begin on the pitch for Barcelona, the most important of these players being Xavi Hernández, the conductor of the Barcelona attack.

A lack of chemistry was ever apparent in all three lines of Barcelona’s starting lineup with the hodgepodge of players filling in for the normal starters.  Bojan Krkic started in place of Pedro Rodríguez, and Bojan’s only impactful involvement in the match came when he unnecessarily attempted a cute back heel shot after David Villa and Maxwell combined on the left flank to create the space for Maxwell to deliver a spot-on squared cross to the six-yard box.  Pedro came in for Bojan to start the second half and immediately created havoc down the left flank that Bojan could not muster in forty-five minutes.

Javier Mascherano made his first start for Barcelona after his €22 million move from Liverpool as the defensive midfielder in place of Sergio Busquets, and he looked out of place from the normal Barça flow.  Mascherano will adjust accordingly to the Spanish game, and he will learn that some of the challenges he attempted on Saturday that were allowed in the Premier League will not be as tolerated in La Liga.  Pep Guardiola substituted him at the beginning of the second half in favor of Xavi, and much like Pedro, Barcelona became more decisive in the Hércules half of the pitch and less ponderous with their abundance of possession.

Outlining Barça’s negatives, however, would take away from Hércules’ allegorical performance.  Hércules manager Esteban Vigo knew that his team would likely own less than 30% of the possession, so converting on their few chances became vital if his team had any opportunity to achieve the supposed unthinkable.  One of those moments arrived in the 26th minute when Mascherano cynically knocked Royston Drenthe down to prevent a potential scoring chance.  The only reason referee Carlos Velasco Carballo did not give Mascherano a yellow card was that he booked Mascherano a few minutes earlier for another professional foul, and he likely felt a second yellow card so early in the match would be considered overbearing.

Drenthe floated the free kick into a scrum of players in the box, and after Víctor Valdés saved Abraham Paz’s shot from Abel Aguliar’s flick-on header, Nelson Valdez took advantage of the rebound and completely mis-hit his effort into the ground.  Fortunately, for Valdez and his team, the bounce from his shot tantalizingly rose over Valdés and bundled into goal for the 0-1 lead.

Barcelona came out of the dressing room with a roar with Pedro and Xavi coming in to the team to start the second half, and Hércules goalkeeper Juan Calatayud stood up to the arduous task of keeping the ball out of his net.  He received the assurance of a two-goal cushion in the 59th minute when Nelson Valdez scored his second goal to fortify their tenuous and slender one-goal advantage.

Tiago Gomes played a nice one-two with David Cortés to provide space down the right flank, and Gomes looked up to see the situation near the right edge of the penalty area and laid a perfect cutback for Valdez just inside the box.  He took the shot on first-time and curled it past a desperate and a sprawled Víctor Valdés.  Two opportunities for Hércules in sixty minutes, and they worked each chance into a goal.

Hércules naturally sat back after Valdez’s second goal, and while Barcelona peppered Calatayud with shot after shot, only a few of those shots truly threatened his goal, and he can give thanks to his defensive four that contained and bottled up Lionel Messi and David Villa as much as any team could possibly do against two of the best forwards in the world of football.

A 0-2 final, and the fiesta in Alicante ran through the Spanish evening and into the early hours of Sunday morning.

Esteban Vigo, while amazed at their achievement, spoke like a football manager after the win:

“This is a day this club will remember.  We did very well understanding Barcelona’s style of play, and we made things very difficult for them… It’s a historic day, but it’s just three points.  Right now I’m delighted, and this will stay in my résumé as a coach, but let’s remember that we’ve won nothing yet and on Monday, it’ll all be gone.”

Can other teams use Hércules’ tactics to compete against Barcelona?  Maybe.

Has Barcelona been figured out?  Every team knows what they will do, but hardly anyone has stopped them in three years.

Is this match an ominous sign for Barcelona?  Hardly.  Remember when Numancia defeated Barcelona 1-0 in 2008 in Pep Guardiola’s first match in La Liga as Barcelona’s manager?  Six trophies later, that loss actually might have spurred on Barcelona to take nothing for granted.

Will the gap between Real Madrid and Barcelona and the rest of La Liga shift closer than the current chasm?  The first two rounds of any season can be quite deceiving if extrapolated to the rest of the campaign.

The most important question following Saturday’s stupefaction is if Hércules can take this momentum into the rest of their La Liga campaign and avoid relegation.  Even though they defeated Barcelona twice in the 1996-97 season, they went down to Liga Adelante at the end of the season.  With the caliber of talent brought in for this season, along with those who fought last season for Hércules to earn promotion, this team from the southern part of the Valencian Community will not have to worry about the relegation dogfight, much like Málaga in 2008-09 when they rose from the Segunda División to finish in eighth place.

Enough of the questions and thinking.  For the residents of Alicante, the last two nights partying and celebrating at the Playa de San Juan shows that eleven people with a ball can do wonders not only for themselves but also for the city in which they play.

Fueras de Juego

- Usually, an indirect free kick inside the penalty area happens rarely, but in the first two rounds of La Liga, there have been three such situations, including one this past weekend between Valencia and Racing de Santander when David Albelda unintentionally kicked the ball to his goalkeeper César Sánchez, and César picked it up.  On all three occasions, the team with the indirect free kick did not score.

- Málaga had six ocasiones de gol (scoring chances) in the first half against Real Zaragoza and scored on five of them, and the last of those chances should have been converted when Quincy Owusu-Abeyie took the shot rather than passing to Edinho who had the goal at his mercy.  Zaragoza goalkeeper and La Liga veteran Leo Franco was culpable for a couple of those goals, and if this were ice hockey, he would have been pulled before the half was over.  To Zaragoza’s credit, they did score three to make the score look somewhat respectable, but the defense, the worst among the teams that avoided relegation last season, continues to be a chronic problem.

- Eduardo Iturralde González can conservatively be called the most demonstrative referee in La Liga, and he further proved this assertion yesterday when he was in charge of the Villarreal – Espanyol match.  Iturralde González issued twelve yellow cards and a red card, and at least three of the yellow cards were due to dissent.  While these players might have said the magic words to receive the admonishments, Iturralde González is partly to blame for his penchant to inflame incidents that need not have extra gasoline.

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.

Diego Milito, Iván Córdoba, and Wesley Sneijder celebrate their passage to the Champions League final.

The sprinklers rose up from the pitch and sprayed the Inter Milan players and staff.  The Barcelona anthem, “Cant del Barça,” blared through the loudspeakers as the Culés did not know whether to clap off their Blaugrana heroes or vehemently whistle at the unwanted visitors from northern Italy.  This sense of confusion permeated throughout the Camp Nou after referee Frank de Bleeckere blew the whistle for fulltime, but two things were certain: FC Internazionale Milano would face Bayern Munich in the Champions League final in the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid, and FC Barcelona would not.

Inter manager José Mourinho fueled the fire, in typical Mourinho fashion, in the pre-match press conference when he spoke of Barcelona’s ambition to compete in the Champions League final in Madrid:

“We (Inter Milan) have the dream of winning the Champions League, and for Barcelona, it’s an obsession.  This is the difference.  A dream is purer than an obsession.  There is pride in a dream, anywhere in the world.  For Barcelona, it was a dream to reach the final in Rome, but to reach the final at the Bernabéu is an obsession for them.”

If this quote were analyzed on its own grounds, very few people would know what the hell he was talking about; however, Mourinho’s ingenuity for creating distractions away from his team and onto himself has served him well with his previous teams.  FC Porto and Chelsea put up with his antics because they worked.  This formula seemed to sour at Inter Milan, where the Italian press were unimpressed with his brash personality, and even Inter president Massimo Moratti started to suffer from Mourinho fatigue.

With the 3-1 triumph at the San Siro in the first leg of the Champions League semifinals against Barcelona, Mourinho had free reign, and his quote struck a chord with Barça and its fans like no other manager could accomplish.  They immediately went on the defensive.

Some Barcelona supporters reportedly attacked Mourinho’s car after the press conference, punching the windows, throwing various paraphernalia, and attempting to topple the car on its side.

Barça TV, the club’s television channel, created an advertisement where various Barcelona players promised to “leave their skins” on the Camp Nou pitch to audibly declare their intentions on Wednesday night, accompanying the shirts they displayed after they beat Xerez on Saturday which showed the message, “Nos vamos a dejar la piel,” (We will leave our skin).

Another section of Barcelona fans tried to disrupt the sleep of the Inter players Tuesday night into the early hours of Wednesday morning outside of their team hotel, making constant noise with drum, horns, and firecrackers.

Barcelona president Joan Laporta gave his rebuttal to Mourinho’s “obsession” quote, stating that anyone who assesses Barcelona as obsessive is a second-rate psychologist.

A strong reaction from many arms of the Barça establishment, but why?  There is no doubt that José Mourinho can get under the skin (no pun intended) of his opposition, but whenever all of this huffing and puffing occurs, usually it means that there is doubt, and they engage in all of this extracurricular activity to convince themselves otherwise.

When Barcelona traveled to Stamford Bridge in last year’s Champions League semifinal second leg without scoring at the Camp Nou, this same rah-rah fervor did not exist prior to the match.  Although it took a 93rd minute goal by Andrés Iniesta to slug past Chelsea into the final, the confidence that Barcelona had of breaking through a resolute Chelsea defense was enough for them.

Although they only needed to score once at Stamford Bridge last season, a 2-0 result at the Camp Nou, even against a José Mourinho defense, was not an impossible situation by any stretch.  All of the extraneous motivation mentioned above was inconsistent with this team and teemed with a desperation not seen since the end of the Frank Rijkaard era.

When the players took to the pitch at 20:45 CET, the choreographed displays of the Catalunyan flag from each goal side and a Barça trophy resplendent in garnet, yellow, and blue from the sideline stands would inspire the most jaded of players.  Not only the Barcelona players, but the Inter Milan players who would want nothing more than to spoil Barcelona’s magnificent run since the origins of the Pep Guardiola regime.

With Carles Puyol suspended for this match, Gabriel Milito was expected to deputize in central defense, but Guardiola threw a wrench with Milito starting at left back and Touré Yaya in central defense.  In the first leg, most of Inter’s successful attacking moves originated down the right flank, and they took advantage of Maxwell’s constant forward runs and left him out of position for Maicon, Samuel Eto’o, and Wesley Sneijder to perform their duties.

For Inter Milan, yellow cards became their main concern, as, save for Lúcio, the rest of the back four was one yellow card away from missing the final should they reach that stage.  The burning question lingered about whether Maicon, Walter Samuel, and Javier Zanetti would be hesitant to throw themselves into challenges, knowing that one late tackle could mean suspension from the biggest match of their careers.  Ask Roy Keane and Paul Scholes, who missed the 1999 final when Manchester United completed their astonishing two-goal turnaround in stoppage time against Bayern Munich.  According to Keane, “Although I was putting a brave face on it, this (missing the final) was just about the worst experience I’d had in football.”

Inter clearly frustrated Barcelona through the first twenty-seven minutes, ceding nearly 80% of the possession but allowing nothing to bother their goalkeeper Júlio César.  Then the inevitable controversy ensued when Frank de Bleeckere sent off former Barça player Thiago Motta for a hand to the face of Sergio Busquets.  As the modern game would dictate, Busquets reacted as though he suffered a knockout blow from Mike Tyson.  He had the audacity to take a peek at de Bleeckere to see if he flashed a card before “regaining his senses,” and he accomplished exactly what he set out to do when Motta raised his hand to his face.

Understandably, Motta could not believe the decision and needed to be held back not from de Bleeckere but from Busquets.  A harsh decision by de Bleeckere, but if the roles were reversed, Motta would have likely done the same thing and also try to coax that red card.

Until Gerard Piqué scored in the 84th minute, however, Barça’s one-man advantage appeared irrelevant, as Inter Milan continued to clear any ball that entered their penalty area.  Júlio César made a spectacular diving, fingertip save on a Lionel Messi curler, and Bojan Krkic missed an absolute certainty of a header two minutes before Piqué’s goal, but the vast majority of Barça’s attempts on goal were fired from the twenty-five to thirty-five yard distances, nothing that would seriously trouble Júlio César.

More newsworthy than Barça’s lack of cutting edge involved the substitution of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the 63rd minute in favor of Bojan Krkic.  With twenty-seven minutes on the clock, there remained plenty of time to score the necessary two goals, but Pep Guardiola believed Bojan had a better chance of galvanizing the offense than Ibrahimovic.  Ibrahimovic’s reputation had been linked to his shrinking violet act in the most important moments for both club and country, and his listless performance against Inter Milan will do him no favors in shaking this reputation.

The last ten minutes became purely riveting, as the siege on Inter’s goal had actual consequences, and when Bojan appeared to net the clinching goal in the first minute of stoppage time, the city of Barcelona actually lifted from the ground, but Frank de Bleeckere blew his whistle before Bojan’s goal transpired for a handball on Touré Yaya.

No one claimed any doubt that Touré Yaya did not intentionally handle the ball, as Walter Samuel smashed his clearance straight into Yaya’s tucked arm from less than three yards away, but that call always goes against the attacking team and in favor of the defending team.  If that same situation happened, where the offensive player kicked the ball into the defensive player’s tucked arms in their own penalty area, the referee would rightfully continue play because the handball was unintentional.

Barcelona did not do enough on the pitch, and their 1-0 result might be their most hollow victory in many years.  Legitimate questions will be asked about this Barça team.  Would Andrés Iniesta have made the difference between advancing and failing?  Does Pep Guardiola need to develop an alternate plan when the opposition decides to employ ten men behind the ball?  Did Barcelona miss the inspiration of their captain, Carles Puyol, even though Inter Milan made little to no suggestion of troubling the Barça defense?  Was the Ibrahimovic for Eto’o swap a potential bust?

All of these inquiries will either never be answered or answered over time, but now they must focus on their tenuous one point lead over Real Madrid in La Liga.  Failing to reach the Champions League final in Madrid hurts, but if Barcelona cannot hold on to the La Liga crown after having at least a share of the lead for all but a couple weeks of the season, this potentially historic team will become just another good team that played nice football.

As for now, they will seethe over José Mourinho, pejoratively referred to as “The Interpreter” in Barcelona, and how he defiantly pointed to the crowd in revelry after his Inter Milan team achieved for what they set out.  Mourinho deserved to do whatever he wanted, however, because he earned it.  He slew the beast.  Those windmills were actual giants, and he defeated the enchanter.  Joan Laporta, Pep Guardiola, and the rest of the Blaugrana nation will look internally soon enough, but this pain that they will have to put away in time for Villarreal on Saturday stings much more than the joy they felt from any of their six trophies from a year ago.

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.

A forlorn Manolo Jiménez rues his side's inability to capture the moment against CSKA Moskva.

With the advantage of the away goal, Sevilla looked in prime position to advance to the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League.  Unfortunately, Manolo Jiménez’s team played as though they were already in the next round.  A 0-0 score line would have sent Sevilla through, and even though Diego Perotti declared that they could not be confident in their advantage or rely on the fact that they were playing at home, there was little impetus from Los Nervionenses in their attack.

CSKA Moskva also played this cat-and-mouse game, knowing that they did not need to push forward and leave themselves open to a swift counter-attack.  When Tomáš Necid scored in the 39th minute from a seemingly harmless throw-in deep in the Sevilla half, Sevilla woke up from their slumber and immediately responded with a goal of their own two minutes later.

The CSKA defense allowed a long ball from an Andrés Palop free kick to bounce near the penalty area, and Jesús Navas capitalized on this good fortune by gathering the ball and squaring the ball to Diego Perotti, who coolly finished with aplomb from seven yards to equalize at 1-1.

Jiménez substituted Diego Capel to start the second half in favor of Frédéric Kanouté to have another out-and-out striker with Luís Fabiano, but play reverted to the opening thirty-eight minutes of the match.  Sevilla went into hibernation again, and it cost them in the 55th minute, when Palop palmed Keisuke Honda’s free kick into his own net.  Although Honda fiercely struck the ball, Palop got himself into perfect position to catch it or deflect it away.  Palop rightly decided to push the ball away instead of attempting to snatch it in the air, but he somehow managed to deflect it into his own goal in one of the worst blunders in this year’s Champions League.

Galvanization did not repeat itself after Sevilla fell behind a second time, and they timidly fell out of the competition 1-2 in the match and 2-3 on aggregate.  The ineffective performances ran rampant across the Sevilla squad.  Renato failed to muster any extended possession in midfield, Luís Fabiano became a ghost as he could not be seen through most of the match, and Andrés Palop made the mistake that forced Sevilla to score twice without conceding in the final thirty-five minutes.

It would be easy to say that without Palop’s error, the match would have gone into extra time, but with all of these “what if” scenarios, any single event in a football match is not mutually exclusive.  Assuming that the rest of the match would have gone as it ended up without CSKA’s second goal would be fallacious.  CSKA had the slight upper hand throughout the match, and they were the more likely team to score anyway, whether it occurred with a goalkeeping error or by CSKA’s own brilliant play.

Sevilla deserved to be knocked out of the Champions League, and they face a fight from multiple angles to qualify for the Champions League next year.  Deportivo La Coruña, Mallorca, and Athletic Bilbao are all within three points of Sevilla for the fourth Champions League spot, and while these teams do not possess the talent and the European experience like Sevilla, the Andalucians cannot take for granted that they will finish in the top four.  If they finish the La Liga season in the same nonchalant fashion and attitude as they played against CSKA, the Europa League beckons.

The "Best Player in the World" debate should be tabled for the time being.

Someone forgot to tell Stuttgart that there was a crucial Champions League match this evening.  As confident and daring as they were at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in the first leg, Die Roten were timid and meek at the Camp Nou.  Obviously needing at least one goal in order to have any legitimate chance of brushing the defending champions away, they only had two shots all night, and neither of those shots were on target.

The match, however, told more about Barcelona’s dominance than Stuttgart’s quiescence.  Pep Guardiola made the bold move of leaving Zlatan Ibrahimovic on the bench in favor of Thierry Henry, a man who has only scored three goals in La Liga and has found it difficult to break into the starting eleven.  His revealing performance in the second half against Valencia on Sunday gave Guardiola the confidence to employ him as the central striker against Stuttgart.

A thigh injury ruled Xavi Hernández out of the Stuttgart match, and with Seydou Keita not fully fit to start, Touré Yaya became the choice for Guardiola, although there was little alternative.  Mainly used as a defensive midfielder, he patrolled the left side of midfield as though he were a tricky winger.  Numerous counter-attacks saw him bomb down the left flank with astonishing ease, and he directly contributed to Pedro Rodríguez’s opening goal with an unselfish squared ball across the penalty area that he could have easily shot himself.  Another player that has been stuck on the substitutes’ bench for most of the year, Guardiola shows the ability to inspire even the most disgruntled of players.

Then there is that man again.  Without waxing poetic to the point of veneration, Lionel Messi continues to befuddle the opposition while involving his teammates in many of the attacks in which he is involved.  Lately, due to the inconsistencies of Ibrahimovic, Pedro, and Henry, Messi had to shoulder more of the scoring load, and he looks to take a crack at goal more often than at any other time in his career.

Messi always possessed the skill and the guile to be one of the best players in the world, but in the last couple of seasons and especially in the last few months, his clinical finishing ascended to world-class level.  When Messi scored the first goal in the 14th minute, the Stuttgart defense decided to back off him instead of closing down his space in fear that he would make one move and slice them in half.  With this clearing, Messi popped a top left corner laser that Jens Lehmann had no chance of saving, and the rout commenced.

On Barça’s second goal, Messi played the provider, as he floated a ball over the top of the Stuttgart defense to Touré Yaya, and he squared the ball to Pedro, who delivered it into the back of the net.  Messi would score another goal in tandem with Dani Alves later in the match, but the damage was done, and Barcelona marched on into the quarterfinals, where no one would want to draw them on Friday afternoon, when the matchups for the rest of the competition will be sorted out.

Bordeaux’s talisman Yoann Gourcuff already declared that his team would like to face anyone but Barcelona in the quarterfinals, and every other team left might have this same request.  Now that Olympique Lyonnais eliminated Real Madrid and CSKA Moskva bounced Sevilla from the Champions League, Barcelona represents the only Spanish team remaining in the competition, and they are peaking at the right time of the season.  They wrote this script last campaign, and they won the treble.  Why deviate now?

My nieces, in blue, combining to nullify the opposition attack.

Apologies to those who expected the usual Monday column that recaps the latest round in La Liga.  I did not watch a single La Liga match this past weekend because I attended my twin nieces’ soccer tournament.  Although classified as U-9, their team played in the U-10 group, and they won the championship, proudly accepting the winners’ medals with an everlasting gleam in their wondrous eyes.

The older U-10 team that my nieces’ team faced held a 2-1 lead with seconds remaining, but a late equalizer forced extra time.  After two scoreless periods in extra time, both of these teams would encounter the cruel ending that is penalty kicks for the first time in their lives.

My precocious nieces feel the nervousness when they perform penalties on FIFA 09, and now, they were selected to be two of the penalty takers in the shootout.  They invoked the power of prayer as a vehicle for their jangling nerves while they watched their teammates take their penalties and awaited their own.  They both made their penalties, but after each team took their five penalties, both teams were still tied.  The sixth penalty proved pivotal as my nieces’ team converted their penalty and the opposition missed theirs.  Even at such a young age, the famous Jim McKay line “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” felt appropriate because while my nieces’ team celebrated, their opposition could not hold back their tears.

The most telling difference between watching professionals in various European leagues and watching children in this U-10 tournament was the willingness of the children to adapt to their surroundings versus the paid football players.  A torrent of rain surged through the city hosting this tournament the night before the competition started, and when my nieces’ first match kicked off at 12:30 PM the next day, they trudged through a mushy pitch that bore little grass with which to begin because the last vestiges of winter still reigned even though spring temperatures had sprung up sporadically.

Bad bounces, balls halting to a complete stop while dribbling, and frequent slips that these children endured would discourage many professionals.  The chronic carping and lamenting of the surface would have been endless from the professionals, but the children continued to play their football as though the pitch compared to the old Wembley Stadium.

Covering professionals for a living can jade the most optimistic of journalists, but if they need a break from the constant petulance and complaining of grown men who earn millions of Euros, attend a match or competition involving young children.  They just want to play.  Although you get the occasional parent who goes overboard, the purity of the sport lies here in these children.