Catalan clubs with cause for optimism

Barça

Ronald Koe­man’s side are top of the form league over the past six games, hav­ing taken 16 from 18 points while lead­ers Atlético fal­tered, pick­ing up only 11 points in the same pe­riod. That has been enough to hoist Barça up to sec­ond place in La Liga, above Real Madrid and Sevilla, who both took 15 of the last 18 points avail­able. Barça are now five points be­hind Diego Sime­one’s side and two ahead of Madrid, though hav­ing played a game more than both.

What may prove a turn­ing point in the sea­son was the sec­ond of two vis­its to Sevilla’s Sánchez-Pizjuán sta­dium in Feb­ru­ary. Hav­ing lost the first leg of the King’s Cup semi final 2-0 – the sec­ond leg is due to be played at the Camp Nou in the first week of March – Barça re­turned three weeks later in the league and turned in what was likely their best per­for­mance of the sea­son after Koe­man switched back to a for­ma­tion he had flirted with briefly in De­cem­ber, namely play­ing three cen­tre halves and two wing backs. The tac­ti­cal change re­sulted in dom­i­na­tion of a team that had been in ex­cel­lent form and only con­ceded once in its pre­vi­ous nine games. Barça this time came away from the Sánchez-Pizjuán with a more than mer­ited 2-0 win thanks to goals from Dem­bele and Messi, lim­it­ing the hosts to no shots on tar­get in the first half and in­deed very lit­tle threat through­out the en­tire 90 min­utes: some achieve­ment given Lopetegui’s side’s bril­liant re­cent form. That re­sult meant that Barça had won 12 and drawn three of their last 15 league games, putting them in with every chance of chal­leng­ing for this year’s league title.

It was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story in the two cup com­pe­ti­tions, how­ever, as, in ad­di­tion to that seem­ingly de­ci­sive 2-0 King’s Cup semi-final loss at Sevilla, Barça suc­cumbed to a dev­as­tat­ing 4-1 home de­feat to PSG in the Cham­pion’s League. PSG for­ward Kylian Mbappé was the star of the show, ter­ror­is­ing the Barça de­fence and scor­ing a hat trick after being given far too much space at the Camp Nou. How­ever, Koe­man will be for­given for the more than prob­a­ble exits from those two com­pe­ti­tions should his team con­tinue their ex­cel­lent league form and have nicked the title from long-time lead­ers Atlético and arch ri­vals Real Madrid come the end of the sea­son.

Es­panyol

After being top of the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion for much of this sea­son, Es­panyol now find them­selves in sec­ond place and fight­ing for au­to­matic pro­mo­tion. They were also knocked out of the King’s Cup in the past month, los­ing 2-0 at home to top-flight out­fit Os­asuna.

The good news for periq­uito fans, how­ever, is that an alarm­ing run of three league games with­out a win, in­clud­ing two de­feats, did not turn into a slump, and eight points from the last twelve will make them think they have every chance of still claim­ing one of the two au­to­matic pro­mo­tion spots, de­spite Almería and Leganés clos­ing in below them. In fact, a spir­ited draw at in-form Sport­ing in the last game of Feb­ru­ary was a sign that this team may well yet make its way back into the First Di­vi­sion at the first time of ask­ing, even if it seems like they are win­ning less when play­ing bet­ter foot­ball. Com­plaints over ref­er­ee­ing de­ci­sions are also be­com­ing com­mon­place on their trav­els: the ref­eree’s per­for­mance ap­peared to be de­ci­sive in the game at Sport­ing, deny­ing the vis­i­tors a penalty and the send­ing off of Javi Fuego for a sec­ond yel­low card. Strange sit­u­a­tions that have been re­peated through­out the sea­son and are not help­ing Es­panyol’s cause. Head coach Vi­cente Moreno is not look­ing for ex­cuses, how­ever, and in­sists that good foot­ball will al­ways be re­warded. De­spite de­serv­ing vic­tory at a team that has not lost at home all sea­son, Es­panyol will take great con­fi­dence from an­other im­pres­sive per­for­mance and look to renew their as­sault on the first po­si­tion with three home games – against Oviedo, Logroñés and Fuen­labrada – and two away games – at Mi­randés and Castellón – in March.

Girona

Al­though Fran­cisco’s side con­tinue in the bat­tle for a First Di­vi­sion play-off place thanks to sixth-placed Rayo only tak­ing two points from their last 12, Girona’s form is not cur­rently that of pro­mo­tion hope­fuls, only chalk­ing up two wins from their last six games them­selves. Now four points off sixth, they also have Pon­fer­rad­ina three points above them in sev­enth, so there’s plenty of work to be done if Girona are going to con­test the play-offs for a sec­ond sea­son run­ning.

In their last out­ing of the month, Girona demon­strated their lack of cut­ting edge when they were un­able to fin­ish off a stut­ter­ing but phys­i­cal op­po­nent in Fuen­labrada, de­spite tak­ing an early lead from the penalty spot. Fran­cisco’s side then al­lowed the home team to im­pose them­selves rather than going on to take the ini­tia­tive, some­thing you would ex­pect from a team fight­ing to get among the pro­mo­tion places, and they were duly pun­ished by an equaliser on 70 min­utes. “If we don’t start putting a run of vic­to­ries to­gether, it will be im­pos­si­ble to reach sixth place,” Fran­cisco said after the game.

There is some op­ti­mism around the side now that top scorer Cristhian Stu­ani is back among the goals, how­ever, the Uruguayan in­ter­na­tional hav­ing net­ted three times in the last three games. Added to that is the fact that after Almería’s visit to Mon­tilivi at the start of March, Girona will have played all of the top four sides home and away, leav­ing them with a run-in full of pos­si­bil­i­ties.