Not the best video, but you can see how polemic is the beginning of the play. Then, Reyes with a beautiful long ball to Agüero, who dribbles well and assists Forlán, who score the equalizer.

Thin, tall, blonde, world class goalkeeper. You are probably thinking on Van der Sar, but Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson isn’t. The future of Old Trafford goal is in the hands of a 20 year old: David De Gea. This is more than a rumour, more than a beautiful coincidence used to fill newspaper’s lines column inches. It is said that the agreement between Manchester United and the player is very close.

The career of David De Gea at Atlético de Madrid has been meteoric. He was promoted to the first team after great performances with the reserves and with Spain national youth teams. He was going to be the third goalkeeper of the squad, but Sergio Asenjo and Roberto’s injuries allowed him to make his debut in Primera División. He took the opportuny and became indispensable for Quique Sanchez Flores.

De Gea keeps on showing all his quality in his second season at the highest level of Spanish football: His reflexes, agility and huge self-confidence shine. He could be the next Spain’s goalkeeper when Iker Casillas retires and Sir Alex Ferguson knows it.

It is said that Atlético and ManU have already reached an agreement and I believe it. Atlético de Madrid’s board is well-known for his disastrous way of running the club – e.g last week they offered Forlán to nearby rival Real Madrid! The obstacle is that De Gea doesn’t want to leave the colchoneros. Maybe he fears his Premier League career won’t be as brilliant as he had thought, like Fernando Torres’ in Liverpool.

He should be as calm about this move as he is when he is on the field. Manchester United would provide him the opportunity to become a world-class player and he should take advantage of it.

Real Madrid is not missing him, but Hércules is enjoying him.

First minute of the game and Javi Márquez scores the winner. Talented but irresponsible player.

- Real Madrid started with a 4-3-3 system, but the only midfielder that could move the ball cleverly was Xabi Alonso. Lass is too defensive-minded and Khedira is a box-to-box player. So, there were problemas with the well organized Auxerre. Anyway, the three strikers were very static, so they didn’t create any spaces in the french team defense and almost didn’t create any opportunities.

- Cristiano Ronaldo and Higuaín are anxious. Every time they get the ball they try to do an individual move. Moreover, the portuguese is not dribbling anybody. Mourinho have to change that.

- Real Madrid always tried to attack throught the centre when they should have opened the field. When Di Maria came in, late in the second half, the game changed a bit, and that was the way to score the first and last goal.

- The positive part: The Special One is The Lucky One too. Three points and no goals conceded, and top of the group.

Rubin Kazan vs Barcelona

- Maxwell is not good enought for Barcelona. He’s a good full back, but not a world class player as Dani Alves. Barcelona is lacking of depth and speed when their attack through left side.

- Select Mascherano and Busquets together is not a good idea when you play against such a defensive team. They are two of the best defensive midfielders in the world, but they play better behind the ball, and against Rubin Kazan, Barcelona should have been put players between Kazan’s defense and midfield.

- Villa is not at his best. I don’t know if he needs more minutes with their new teammates or if he’s going throught a bad patch, but he’s not the goalscorer he used to be.

- I don’t like Rubin’s tactic, but it’s valid, and it worked. Their match was almost perfect.

Valencia vs Manchester United

- It’s difficult to create something with Albelda and Tino Costa as midfielders. With Manuel Fernandes it would have been better, obviously with Ever Banega, that was injured.

- Valencia is playing better with two strikers. The progression of Aduriz is beeing impressive, and he starts being a very complete forward.

- Manchester United is smaller without Rooney and Scholes. And I can’t think in many players who had wasted his talent as Dimitar Berbatov.

- Small things always help big teams. Manchester United was lucky, and they won a match that deserved a draw.

Group A

Internazionale 4 – 0 Werder Bremen

Tottenham 4 – 1 Twente

Group B

Shalke 2 – 0 Benfica

H. Tel-Aviv 1 – 3 Lyon

Group C

Rangers 1 – 0 Bursaspor

Valencia 0 – 1 Manchester United: 85′ Chicharito Hernández

Group D

Panathinaikos 0 – 2 Kobenhavn

Rubin Kazan 1 – 1 Barcelona: 30′ Noboa (pen) [1-0], 60′ Villa (pen) [1-1]

Group E

Basel 1 – 2 Bayern

Roma 2 – 1 Cluj

Group F

Spartak Moscow 3 – 0 Zilina

Chelsea 2 – 0 Marseille

Group G

Ajax 1 – 1 Milán

Auxerre 0 – 1 Real Madrid: 83′, Di Maria

Group H

Partizan 1 – 3 Arsenal

Braga 0 – 3 Shaktar Donetsk

]]> http://spanishlaliga.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/ucl-1011-week-2-results/feed/ 0 El Pase De La Muerte http://spanishlaliga.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/goal-of-the-week-eliseu-vs-villarreal-1-0/ http://spanishlaliga.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/goal-of-the-week-eliseu-vs-villarreal-1-0/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:22:05 +0000 Marcos G. Rayado http://spanishlaliga.wordpress.com/?p=183 ]]>

Brilliant shot, great goal, but in the end it was useless.

2: Villarreal – 12 pts (4-0-1)

3: Barcelona – 12 pts (4-0-1)

4: Real Madrid – 11 pts (3-2-0)

5: Atlético – 10 pts (3-1-1)

6: Espanyol – 9 pts (3-0-2)

7: Sevilla – 8 pts (2-2-1)

8: Hércules – 7 pts (2-1-2)

9: Athletic – 7 pts (2-1-2)

10: Getafe – 7 pts (2-1-2)

11: Mallorca – 7 pts (2-1-2)

12: Málaga – 6 pts (2-0-3)

13: Almería – 5 pts (1-2-2)

14: Osasuna – 4 pts (1-1-3)

15: Racing – 4 pts (1-1-3)

16: R. Sociedad – 4 pts (1-1-3)

17: Sporting – 4 pts (1-1-3)

18: Levante – 4 pts (1-1-3)

19: Deportivo – 3 pts (0-3-2)

20: Zaragoza – 2 pts (0-2-3)

• Most of the media stated that Real Madrid’s performance is the best one we have seen in the Camp Nou (of course we are talking about the visiting teams). They say the galácticos‘ playing style is completely different from Barça’s – meaning the blaugranas always take control over the ball, while Real usually waits for the counterattack, so they can take advantadge from a fast linkman as Kaká, or Cristiano Ronaldo himself.
• Something to point out: Barcelona beat their rivals by using their own strategy, i.e. total effectiveness inside the box. Real had five chances to score a goal while their rivals had only two.
• Ibrahimovic‘s goal shows that Guardiola’s work has been improving all this time, despite he has to lead a potentially unsettled group of footballers. By the way, that goal made the Swedish forward increased his possibilities in order to win the Ballon d’Or, as some journals reported today.
• Spanish and European media published the audience of the match: around 2,000,000,000 watched El Clásico all over the world (that is 1 person out of every 3).

The most decisive match of the year, much more than 3 points are at stake, the whole world watching 22 men fighting on the ground, and so on…Many clichés and trivialities surround this beautiful football game which involves a long-time rivalry prompted by social, politic and of course sporting subjects.

Yet, we should point out one of those phrases we hear over and over during the previous week – “no matter whether they are in or off form, when the times comes no one knows what will happen”. Or paraphrasing Cristiano Ronaldo’s words, “it doesn’t really matter who will play the match”.

THE SURPRISE FACTOR

December 13th, 2008.

Barcelona beat Real Madrid (2-0, goals by Eto’o and Messi) five days after Bernd Schuster got the sack from his job at the Bernabéu stadium. The German manager told the media that it was “impossible to win the derby against Barcelona”, in the press conference after losing to Sevilla 3-4 at home. He was immediately fired, as Juande Ramos took the charge and ended up losing in the most important game of the year, as his predecessor had foretold.

We could say that was the first time in many years where we could see a final result which met the previous expectations. Mostly, the surprise factor plays an important role in these kind of matches – it did in the famous 3-3 tie, when Messi began to be recognized as one of the best players of the world thanks to his three goals, or in the last chorreo* (2-6), when Barça took the first step to achieve their famous treble.

Today, we can see many fans all around the world predicting a blaugrana victory – even some of them dare to say that Guardiola’s guys will play their opponents off the pitch by scoring three, four or even five goals. Apart of these typical and inevitable predictions, everyone agrees that the Catalan giants are the favourite ones to get the points.

January 7th, 1995.

The Spanish derby experienced one of their most historic episodes. One year after Barcelona (still with Johan Cruyff on the bench) humiliated the merengues by beating them 5-0, Real Madrid paid them back by scoring the same result – the manita, a famous word in the Spanish football scene, was enough revenge for Jorge Valdano’s team.

Some years after that game, the Argentinian manager himself gave us one of the most well-known quotes in the football history:

“Football is like a frame of mind”. **

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* Chorreo: Sid Lowe (The Guardian’s La Liga expert) defined the verb chorrear as “roughly, dick on them, take the piss out of them”.

** “El fútbol es un estado de ánimo” – it all depends on the current mood in the kick-off.

Original cover image.