Doubts over season’s end

Barça

This will of course come as a blow to Barça fans, whose side again top the table fol­low­ing the only two games to be played in March. The first of those was the lat­est Clásico at Real Madrid’s Bern­abeu sta­dium, where then lead­ers Barça went down 2-0 in a timid dis­play to allow Zi­dane’s side to leapfrog them to the top of the league. Goals from Vini­cius and sub­sti­tute Mar­i­ano caused the dam­age, al­though in truth Barça failed to threaten in an unin­spir­ing per­for­mance.

The good news is that Barça’s home form re­mained solid a week later, as Valverde’s men saw off Real So­ciedad 1-0 to make it 13 wins and one draw from the 14 league games played at the Camp Nou this sea­son. The vic­tory came thanks to a highly con­tro­ver­sial Messi penalty awarded for hand­ball by VAR in the 81st minute, leav­ing Barça back at the top of the table thanks to Madrid’s 2-1 de­feat at the hands of Betis the same week­end. As the sea­son came to a grind­ing halt, Barça held a two-point ad­van­tage over their arch ri­vals with 11 games to play.

Es­panyol

The break in and pos­si­ble end of the sea­son might not be so un­wel­come for the city’s other top-flight foot­ball team, Es­panyol, given their dire sit­u­a­tion. Prop­ping up the league on 20 points from 27 games, the periq­ui­tos did man­age one point from their two games in March, a cred­itable 1-1 home draw with Atlético that they looked like they might even win after a good first half saw them take the lead through a Savic own goal on 24 min­utes. But ul­ti­mately a point was all they could muster against a Sime­one side dis­tracted by its im­mi­nent trip to An­field in the Cham­pi­ons League the fol­low­ing Tues­day, where they knocked out hold­ers Liv­er­pool. Sadly for Abelardo’s men, their poor away form and ter­ri­ble dis­ci­pli­nary record came back to haunt them in their next game. The truth is they were al­ready a goal down against Os­asuna when goal­keeper Diego López was sent off, but that made four red cards in the pre­vi­ous five away games. Es­panyol fans will be hop­ing this sea­son will be writ­ten off as null and void, as un­likely as that seems.

Girona

The push for a pro­mo­tion play-off place con­tin­ued for Girona in March, al­though two 1-1 draws from their two games will be at least a cou­ple of points short of what they were aim­ing for. A draw from the away game at Mi­ran­des on March 1 was not a bad re­sult, but Marti’s men would have ex­pected to take all three points against Al­bacete at Mon­tilivi, es­pe­cially after tak­ing a first-half lead in a game they seemed to have under con­trol. Such profli­gacy, at­trib­uted in the local press to over-con­fi­dence, will not serve them well, and if they are to fin­ish in the play-off places then games like this will need to be put to bed much more ruth­lessly.