Highs and lows

Barça

Xavi’s side are on the verge of com­plet­ing a mem­o­rable sea­son. At the time of writ­ing, they head La Liga with 82 points from 33 games, mean­ing that al­though they can no longer hit the mag­i­cal num­ber of 100 points for the sea­son after notch­ing up 50 from the first half of the cam­paign, it is only a mat­ter of time be­fore they are pro­claimed cham­pion’s in Xavi’s first full sea­son in charge. In fact, they need just two more points from their re­main­ing five games after Real Madrid lost 2-0 at Real So­ciedad, mean­ing a win at Es­panyol on May 14th would not only leave their city ri­vals in ter­ri­ble trou­ble at the bot­tom, but would seal Barça’s 27th league title.

The boy from Ter­rassa has stamped his per­son­al­ity on the team, which has shown a mix­ture of bril­liance and re­solve to put them­selves within touch­ing dis­tance of glory. The dis­ap­point­ment of a 4-0 King’s Cup semi­fi­nal loss to Real Madrid after bring­ing a 1-0 lead back to Barcelona fol­low­ing the first leg in the Bernabéu will not take the gloss off what has been a mag­nif­i­cent league cam­paign. A glo­ri­ous March brought league wins against Va­len­cia (1-0) and Real Madrid (2-1) at the Camp Nou to go with a 1-0 win at San Mamés, be­fore they started April with a 4-0 drub­bing of Elche. That semi­fi­nal Cup de­feat to their eter­nal ri­vals was then fol­lowed by 0-0 draws against Girona and Getafe, and ques­tion marks were being asked as to whether this Barça had the steel to fin­ish the job, but three wins at the Camp Nou against Atletico (1-0), Betis (4-0) and Os­asuna (1-0) – al­beit with a poor de­feat at Rayo sand­wiched in be­tween – have now set them up for their final vic­tory march.

Es­panyol

Can the periq­ui­tos save them­selves from the drop they have flirted with so often in re­cent years? The re­place­ment of head coach David Mar­tinez with Luis Gar­cia at the be­gin­ning of April fol­low­ing a run of four straight de­feats brought no im­me­di­ate respite, as Es­panyol took only one point from the fol­low­ing four games thanks to a 0-0 draw at home to Cadiz. And al­though the des­per­ately im­por­tant first win fi­nally came against fel­low strug­glers Getafe at the RCDE Sta­dium at the end of April, giv­ing fans re­newed hope, they re­main en­sconced in the rel­e­ga­tion places with 31 points from 32 games. With their re­main­ing six fix­tures in­clud­ing tough trips to Sevilla and Rayo and home games against Barça and Atlético, it is look­ing in­creas­ingly likely that Es­panyol’s hopes will rest on their final two games of the sea­son against di­rect ri­vals for the drop: an ail­ing Va­len­cia at Mestalla and at home to Alme­ria. How­ever, even two wins from those two games would mean only 37 points, which does not look enough to stay up this sea­son, so they may need to col­lect those un­likely points else­where.

What would make things even more galling for diehard Es­panyol fans is the ex­treme like­li­hood that, as men­tioned ear­lier in this ar­ti­cle, their arch ri­vals Barça win the title at their sta­dium in the Sun­day evening game on May 14th, or even worse, should Real Madrid fail to beat Getafe and Atlético fail to pick up max­i­mum points against Cadiz and Elche prior to that game, then Es­panyol would have to form a guard of ho­n­our to ap­plaud Barça onto the RCDE Sta­dium pitch as league cham­pi­ons be­fore they even kicked off.

Girona

Things were look­ing good for Michel’s men at the end of Feb­ru­ary, and whis­pers of Eu­ro­pean foot­ball could be heard in the cor­ri­dors of Mon­tilivi. But a dis­mal March brought de­feats at Getafe (3-2) and at home to Atlético (1-0) be­fore a 2-2 draw at Rayo, mean­ing Girona would need a storm­ing end to the sea­son to chal­lenge for the Eu­ro­pean places. Thir­teen points from 18 since then, in­clud­ing a rol­lick­ing 4-2 win at home to Real Madrid in late April and an im­pres­sive 2-0 win at Sevilla at the start of May have got fans dream­ing again under Michel’s steady tu­tor­ship, which has seen the team and club grow through­out the cam­paign.

The epic de­feat of Cham­pi­ons Madrid is worth fur­ther men­tion, as it sent the city into rap­tures as well as bring­ing their beloved Barça closer to the league title. It was a mem­o­rable day for Girona’s num­ber 9 Taty Castel­lanos, who notched all four of the goals, giv­ing Mil­i­tao a tor­rid time in the process.

Girona’s game against Betis on May 28th could prove to piv­otal in the race for a Eu­ro­pean place.