La Liga Lowdown, Jornada 25/26: Real Madrid hit seven past weakened Málaga

5 Mar, 2011 Luke Colbourne Europe, Spain

As you may have noticed, the schedule in Spain is hectic at the moment – round 25 of La Liga was played at the weekend, while round 26 was a midweek affair, with games being played from Tuesday to Thursday. With that in mind, this week’s Lowdown is going to be a slightly different, bumper round-up, before returning to back normal in round 27.

So we’re going to start at the top, and the big news to begin the whole thing was Deportivo holding Real Madrid to a draw at the Riazor. And as we all know, draws are the new losses in La Liga. Whilst that was going on, Barcelona’s comically dubbed ‘MVP’ – Messi, Villa, Pedro – were on hand to tear Michael Laudrup’s Mallorca apart.

Many were half-heartedly declaring the league over at this point, but it wasn’t until Barcelona overcame Valencia in a tricky game at the Mestalla, that the cries became louder. Going into the game, Pep Guardiola’s record against Valencia wasn’t the greatest, and his team were given the tough game that they had anticipated, despite Unai Emery taking (what seemed to be) unnecessary risks with his team selection. Juan Mata played up front, there was no real holding midfielder, off-form Pablo started – it looked like it was going to be a disaster, but it somehow wasn’t. Then again, it wasn’t ideal either.

With the Madrid press getting ready to print ‘Hay Liga!’, all of a sudden we were back to there being no Liga – and no real competition again – as Leo Messi stepped up to fire Barça into the lead with just 15 minutes left on the clock. One goal was enough to secure them victory, and that one goal painted a bleak picture for the Madridistas. Barcelona were now sat a full 10 points ahead of their rivals.

On Thursday night (at the ridiculous time of 10pm), Real Madrid welcomed Málaga to the Santiago Bernabéu. The build-up had been dominated by José Mourinho’s antics; he had a go at former Madrid and current Málaga boss Manuel Pellegrini, as well as calling one of the journalists in his press conference a “hypocrite”.

In fact, Mourinho didn’t stop there – he even got in a comment about Málaga themselves when he was asked about potentially being sacked by Real Madrid as Pellegrini was last year. “If I get sacked here, I won’t go to Málaga. I’ll go to a big club,” the Portuguese boss sniped.

Eventually, the drama was put on hold as the two teams took to the field. To give themselves even less chance of winning, Málaga lined up with a weakened team, resting a number of senior players. And 30 minutes later came the crushing inevitability – a Madrid goal.

It was Karim Benzema who kick-started proceedings, and 1-0 became 2-0 shortly after as yet more dreadful defending from the away side let in Ángel di María. It was basically all downhill from there, as 2 became 3, 4, 5… until they ended up at 7. Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed himself another hat-trick, taking his league tally to 27.

It was simply embarrassing stuff from Málaga, not helped by the fact they played a weaker team on purpose. “Our game was Osasuna, not tonight,” shrugged Pellegrini. “We knew we couldn’t compete for the points tonight, this was just an obligation.” Not the best thing to admit as a manager I don’t think. The defeat left Málaga second-bottom and took their total of goals conceded to a mindblowing 58 – by far the worst in the league.

Moving on to arguably more interesting affairs, it’s time to look at the lower-half of La Liga, and specifically the fight for relegation. It’s quite tight now, with just eight points separating bottom team Almería from 12^th place Racing Santander. It’s still hard to predict who will go down, but there are at least eight clubs who are stuck in a real battle.

A recent run of good results has seen perennial strugglers Levante move out of the relegation zone into 13^th place. The win against Villarreal a couple of weeks ago seems to have breathed some belief into Luis García’s side, and they’re looking much more together now. They came away with another good point in midweek, as they drew 1-1 with Real Sociedad at the Anoeta.

Another team who have improved since looking doomed is Real Zaragoza. They picked up what was probably their best result of the season on Wednesday, beating Athletic Bilbao 2-1. And, incredibly, Jiri Jarosik even managed to score. It’s particularly bad times for the Basques at the moment though; they’ve now lost their last four consecutive games (although two of them were against Barça and Valencia). One thing remains though – Fernando Llorente is still banging in the goals. He’s now fourth in the goalscoring charts behind Messi, Ronaldo and Villa with 15 goals to his name.

A final word on Racing Santander; they’re still unbeaten under new manager Marcelino after picking up their second draw in a row against Almería. Had central defender Henrique not got himself sent off early on in the game, Racing could well have gone home with three points instead of just the one. It wasn’t to be though, and Almería fought back through captain Albert Crusat. The second-half at the Mediterráneo was a very one-sided half, but in the end they couldn’t find a way past Toño in the Racing goal. They can also thank penalty stopping extraordinaire Diego Alves for the point as well, as he denied Adrián from 12 yards, keeping up his amazing penalty saving record.

La Liga resumes again already this weekend, so the week 27 round-up will be back as normal at the start of next week. As you can see, it’s been a really busy 10 days, with games being played left right and centre; no wonder Mourinho got in such a mood.