Weekend Preview — August 24th, 2007

La Liga kicks off this week­end and I am going to high­light three games. We start things off with a bang as the Madrid derby sees Real host Atlético. It has been revealed that new sign­ings Arjen Robben and Gabriel Heinze will not make their Real Madrid debuts despite my feel­ing that at least Heinze would start. How­ever, goal­keeper Iker Casil­las has been included after injury, while six other sum­mer sign­ings have also been named to the squad — Christoph Met­zelder, Pepe, Javier Savi­ola, Jerzy Dudek, Roys­ton Dren­the and Wes­ley Snei­jder. Both clubs trans­fer moves have been dis­cussed in pre­vi­ous posts. It should be a great clash and I am look­ing for­ward to tak­ing it in.

Another eye-catching match could be Valen­cia v Vil­lareal on Sun­day. Valen­cia are favourites to be in the top four and have bol­stered their ros­ter with some solid sign­ings. They have picked up centre-back Ivan Helguera from Real Madrid who gives them an expe­ri­enced replace­ment for Roberto Ayala who moved to Real Zaragoza. Valen­cia also signed for­mer Rac­ing San­tander striker Nikola Zigic on a deal worth around 15 mil­lion euros The 26-year-old Ser­bian joined Rac­ing from Red Star Bel­grade last August and was one of the rev­e­la­tions of the sea­son, top scor­ing for the Catabrian club with 11 goals. The impos­ing Zigic is likely to be the pre­ferred strike-partner for David Villa, which puts Fer­nando Mori­entes out of the pic­ture at the moment.

Valencia’s regional rivals Vil­lar­real ended last sea­son on an eight-match win­ning run but have lost top striker Diego For­lan to Atlético Madrid. Lined up as a replace­ment is another for­mer Man­ches­ter United striker in Giuseppe Rossi. Rossi had trou­ble crack­ing the start­ing XI with United and asked to move on in search of first team foot­ball. Also mov­ing on is Argen­tine play­maker Juan Roman Riquelme who fell out with coach Manuel Pel­le­grini. Where Riquelme ends up is not known at this point but he will find another club for certain.

Vil­lar­real signed Deportivo Coruna’s Spain defender Joan Capdev­ila when their plans of sign­ing Ayala fell flat. The 34-year-old agreed in Feb­ru­ary to join Vil­lar­real when his con­tract with Valen­cia expired in June. Zaragoza appar­ently paid the buy-out clause in Ayala’s con­tract and swiftly signed him to a three-year deal. Vil­lareal also lost left-back Jose Enrique to New­cas­tle United over the sum­mer so it will be a dif­fer­ent look to the club to start this cam­paign. Their strong fin­ish to the sea­son allowed them to qual­ify for this season’s UEFA Cup.

The Sevilla — Getafe match is intrigu­ing more for off-the-pitch devel­op­ments than any­thing else. Sevilla man­ager Juande Ramos and right-back Daniel Alves have both been the sub­ject of heavy spec­u­la­tion this sum­mer. Ramos was linked with a move to Tot­ten­ham ear­lier on in the week, while Alves had been tipped to join Chelsea dur­ing the cur­rent trans­fer win­dow. Chelsea’s acqui­si­tion of Juliano Bel­letti has cooled talks of his depar­ture but Alves still desires a move to a “big­ger” club. Per­son­ally speak­ing, while he might get his move to a “big­ger” club, I don’t know how much bet­ter of a club he could want to join. Sevilla have won the UEFA Cup two sea­sons in a row and have been among the top clubs in Europe the last cou­ple of sea­sons. They are already off and run­ning this sea­son hav­ing won the Super­copa de España in a two-leg tie against Real Madrid.

Getafe have a few new faces in the squad but the most notable change is the man­ager. Bernd Schus­ter took up the chal­lenge of defend­ing the title with Real Madrid so Getafe have hired Dan­ish man­ager Michael Lau­drup. The Sevilla-Getafe fix­ture is a repeat of last season’s Copa del Rey final, which Sevilla won 1–0.

A quick note on last season’s runners-up (and my pick to win the league this sea­son) Barcelona. They learned that Ronald­inho would be receiv­ing his Span­ish cit­i­zen­ship, which allows them to free up a non-EU ros­ter spot. Barca open their league cam­paign away to Rac­ing San­tander on Sunday.

Com­plete list of fix­tures:

Sat­ur­day, August 25
Real Madrid v Atlético Madrid
Sevilla v Getafe
Mur­cia v Real Zaragoza

Sun­day, August 26
Ath­letic Bil­bao v Osasuna
Deportivo La Coruña v Alme­ria
Mal­lorca v Lev­ante
Rac­ing San­tander v Barcelona
Recre­ativo Huelva v Real Betis
Espanyol v Val­ladolid
Valen­cia v Villarreal