La Liga 2013/14 Barca off to a good start beating Villereal at home 5-0 which is a great result for them. Madrid beat Real Zaragoza 6-0 away which is also a good result. Scorers for Barca: Thiago (25) Fabregas (45) Sanchez (47) Messi (52, 74) Scorers for Madrid: Ronaldo (24, 71, 87) Marcelo (28) Alonso (64) Kaka (82) Nice to see Fabregas on the score sheet and his goal was pretty good!
The game between Barca/Real and the rest is going to be even more massive than ever. I'm thinking 30 points.
Not only that but the next tier of clubs have lost some key players. Cazorla, Mata, Forlan, Aguero - that's far too much top-class talent going out, albeit with a couple of interesting names coming in (Falcao, Piatti) and Malaga's mini-Man City act.
Soldado and Banega will be their key men I guess, although that was already sort of the case before. Pablo Piatti from Almeria is probably the closest thing to a direct replacement for Mata. Quick, tricky, and a decent goalscorer but obviously not in Mata's class. Edit: Just remembered they've also signed Canales on loan from Real. Haven't seen that much of him but he was supposed to be the next big thing when he was at Racing. If he works out he'd presumably plug the gap left by Mata at least in the short term.
Barca won 5-0 against a CL team with 3 midfielders in defence, No Xavi starting and no Villa starting....Jesus F Christ!
Atletico have signed some good players and even in spite of losing Aguero, i do think they are favorites for 3rd place this season. Falcao is the main acquisition, but Ruben Michael from Porto and Silvio from Braga could work out to be good signings, as could Courtois, Chelsea rated him highly enough to sign him, a season or two out on loan at Atletico is far better than him sitting in Chelsea's reserves. Diego joined on loan from Wolfsburg yesterday, as a replacement for Fran Merida who has gone on loan to Braga in Portugal. Valencia have made some decent signings too, Rami, Piatti and Victor Ruiz are good signings and like you mentioned, a loan for Canales could be an excellent move for him as he was highly rated at Racing prior to joining Real, (who he never should have joined in the first place given Real had Kaka, Di Maria, Ronaldo etc) As for Malaga, their defeat at Sevilla showed that it will take time for the new assortment of stars to gell together, certainly do believe a Champions League spot is possible for them with the likes of Cazorla, Baptista, Monreal, Majisthen etc in their team.
Upcoming fixtures: Saturday, 10 September 2011 Real Sociedad v Barcelona, 17:00 Villarreal v Sevilla, 17:00 Real Madrid v Getafe, 19:00 Valencia v Atletico Madrid, 21:00 Sunday, 11 September 2011 Real Betis v Mallorca, 11:00 Racing Santander v Levante, 15:00 Osasuna v Sporting Gijon, 17:00 Rayo Vallecano v Real Zaragoza, 17:00 Espanyol v Athletic Bilbao, 21:00 Monday, 12 September 2011 Malaga v Granada, 20:00
It's not really an exaggeration as it is quite true, the gap between these two clubs, particularly Barcelona is huge. If you consider that Man Utd is possibly the next biggest threat to Barca, outside of Spain, then the CL final where they were well and truly embarrassed shows this. I suspect we'll see these two clubs dominate Europe for the foreseeable future.
Need this stickied Watched the Real Madrid game last night and going forward again they are a joy to watch but in defence they were just terrible. 2 goals against them were easily taken by Getafe
Barcelona drew as well, which is the equivalent of Man Utd losing 3 games in a row. Well actually I think the Premier leauge is starting to become as non-competitive a La Liga now.
