Phil Ball & Ed Álvarez write at length about La Liga
Never mind the bullocks, it’s The Balls. The traditional round-up of the league season has been delayed by an unfeasible attack of Japanese jet-lag, but now I’m compos mentis, here we go: Continue reading “The Balls. 2018-2019 LaLiga awards”
Who overachieved, delivered or underachieved this season in LaLiga
The final weekend in LaLiga only brought one surprise: Espanyol managed to finish 7th as they surpassed two Basque teams, thus making the preliminary round of the Europa League. The Catalans defeated an apathetic Real Sociedad at home, and those three points allowed them to overtake Athletic, who played another awful away match at Sevilla. Continue reading “Season Review”
Preview of LaLiga’s 38th week
It’s an intriguing weekend, this one. LaLiga has organised the relevant matches in two groups that kick off at the same time: one, on Saturday at 16:15, includes the matches that will determine who plays Champions League and Europa League football next season. The second cluster, on Saturday at 20:45, groups all teams in the relegation zone – and yes, Girona still has a minimal chance of staying up, but involves such a bizarre scenario that I believe that LaLiga has scheduled matches this way out of pure good manners. The remaining matches, completely meaningless, have been thrown around the weekend to fill the gaps for China – i.e. early kickoff times. Continue reading “The end of the road”
‘twas the penultimate game of the season, with everyone kicking off at 18.30 on Sunday – and ‘twas fun for some, less for others. This particular week of the league season is always the toughest, because at the nether end of the table there is usually a single side left who can still escape relegation and two sides who can be sucked into it, whilst up top the 4th Champions League spot tends to be the main focus. The trap-door opens or the dreams are quashed. Continue reading “Almost over, bar the shouting”
Preview of LaLiga’s 37th week
So we finally got to the last two weekends of the tournament. It’s probably the only moment of the season in which this scribe can think ahead and keep in mind the fixtures of the current week and those of the following week as well, in an impressive display of mental agility. Continue reading “The final two”
“They play like this [like a small team], that’s why they’re down [in the standings]”, were the bitter words of Mr Enrique Setién, coach of Real Betis Balompié, after his team were handed their backsides by Leganes back in February. That 3-0 victory took Leganes only three points below Betis, but Setién paid no attention to that fact and went on to say that if Leganes decided to attempt a ball possession approach like his inspiring, innovative, ground-breaking Betis (the adjectives are mine), they would miserably fail. Continue reading “Strikers’ time”
It’s one of those sandwich weeks, stuffed between the two chewy pieces of Champions League bread, Iker Casillas’ heart-attack, Xavi’s retirement and Messi’s official deification by the international press – to which the aficionados and sages of LaLiga respond ‘Eh? He does that every week, and actually he didn’t play particularly well against Liverpool’ – not forgetting Valencia of course, their defeat at Arsenal and the bad behaviour of some of their numbskull followers – please note the use of the quantifier ‘some’.
