On the up

Barça

It is hard to see how things could have gone much bet­ter for Barça since Atheltic knocked them out of the Copa del Rey back on Jan­u­ary 20. Since then, Xavi’s side can def­i­nitely be said to have found its mojo, win­ning nine of twelve games, pro­gress­ing through two rounds of the Eu­ropa League and scor­ing four goals in a game no fewer than six times in that pe­riod. The last of those times was an ab­solute drub­bing of run­away league lead­ers Real Madrid on their home turf in the Bern­abeu just prior to the lat­est in­ter­na­tional break, in what seemed to rep­re­sent a com­ing of age of Xavi’s side and cer­tainly a con­fir­ma­tion of his cre­den­tials as coach at the high­est level. Few coaches out­plan, out­think and out­wit the wily old fox Car­los An­celotti in the way Xavi did on this oc­ca­sion, and this glo­ri­ous per­for­mance will live long in the culers’ mem­ory. In truth it could have ended 7-0 or 8-0, such was Barça’s dom­i­nance.

Does this mean they can go on and win the league? That still seems highly un­likely given the twelve point dif­fer­ence be­tween the sides, even if Barça do have a game in hand which would cut Madrid’s lead to nine points with nine games to play. But this is foot­ball, and stranger things have hap­pened. For now, Xavi and his team will be sat­is­fied with the fact that they are fir­ing on all cylin­ders and blow­ing away most teams that stand in their way. It cer­tainly means that they are favourites to win the Eu­ropa League, which along with a now al­most cer­tain top four league fin­ish and con­se­quent qual­i­fi­ca­tion for next year’s Cham­pi­ons League, would be a more than sat­is­fy­ing re­turn from Xavi’s first few months in charge.

As men­tioned in pre­vi­ous columns, the ar­rival of at­tack­ing re­in­force­ments in Jan­u­ary in the shape of Adama Tra­ore, Fer­ran Tor­res and, in par­tic­u­lar, Pierre Em­er­ick Auba­mayang, has gone a long way to im­prov­ing what was a tooth­less side be­fore Christ­mas, but there can be no doubt that under Xavi Barça’s scin­til­lat­ing brand of foot­ball has re­turned, and with it, fans will hope, the dream of more ti­tles next sea­son.

Es­panyol

For their part, Es­panyol have also had a pos­i­tive time of it lately, even if they only played three games dur­ing the month of March, hav­ing been knocked out of the Copa del Rey in the com­pe­ti­tion’s ear­lier stages. Vi­cente’s side played three league games, two at home and one away, and earned seven points from nine with wins at the RCDE Sta­dium against Getafe (2-0) and Mal­lorca (1-0), and a draw (1-1) away at Lev­ante. It has been a wel­come change of for­tunes for the periq­ui­tos, since their form prior to those three games was be­gin­ning to sug­gest they might even be dragged into the rel­e­ga­tion bat­tle. The two sides they de­feated could be seen as di­rect ri­vals in the table, so these were pre­cious vic­to­ries. They now find them­selves in twelfth po­si­tion in La Liga on 36 points from 29 games, but with a four-point cush­ion over Rayo below them.

The key part­ner­ship for Es­panyol has been be­tween top goalscorer Raúl De Tomás and play­maker Sergi Darder. In fact, De Tomas is the league’s third high­est scorer and Darder has the third most as­sists, which just shows how re­liant Es­panyol are on them for goals. For fans, per­for­mances are more prac­ti­cal than spec­tac­u­lar, get­ting the job done with their sup­port at home, where they have won 80% of their points this sea­son (28 from 36). Away from home is an­other story, how­ever, and Vi­cente has his work cut out to change things in that re­spect as the team stut­ters to­wards an­other mid-table fin­ish. It re­mains to be seen whether Chi­nese owner Chen Yan­sheng will pump funds into the club for trans­fers this sum­mer, but one thing is for sure, as well as adding to the squad for next sea­son, Vi­cente’s pri­or­ity will be to keep hold of RDT and Darder.

Girona

Things have got mighty in­ter­est­ing for Girona, who ended March top of the form league in the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion after win­ning all four of their games, in­clud­ing key vic­to­ries over po­ten­tial pro­mo­tion ri­vals Oviedo and Alme­ria. That lat­ter win away at the erst­while lead­ers was earned against all odds: coach Michel was in the stands miss­ing the first of his two-match sanc­tion; then there were mul­ti­ple con­tro­ver­sial VAR de­ci­sions favour­ing the home side, not least the award­ing of an 85th-minute penalty, which was saved and then re­taken, only to be blasted high into the stands; goal­keeper Juan Car­los put in a spec­tac­u­lar dis­play, in­clud­ing that late penalty save; and Girona also suf­fered a late send­ing off.

The “sur­real win”, in the words of Michel, left Girona in 4th place, seven points off sec­ond, and there­fore with re­newed hope of grab­bing one of the two au­to­matic pro­mo­tion places. That would be a real boon, given the club’s painful record in play-offs over the last 12 years or so. When asked about the pos­si­bil­ity after the game, Michel said “We’re a long way off that, but if we still had some hope, today was de­ci­sive. This is a turn­ing point. It’s a vic­tory which brings us closer to that goal. We will con­tinue to dream as long as we can”.