Sid Lowe on the state of La Liga this season. Right, and entertaining as usual.
http://football.guardian.co.uk/europeanfoo...2266137,00.html
Does anyone want to win the worst La Liga in memory?
Real Madrid have lost eight times in 2008, yet they remain seven points ahead of a plodding Barcelona side and the rest of the chasing pack
It's Pass-the-Parcel on the Gaza Strip, Musical Chairs in Texas, Roulette in Russia. The game no one wants to win. Like the Chuckle Brothers lugging a piano down a set of stairs, they keep talking about La Liga changing hands - to me, to you; to me, to you - only for it to end up in exactly the same place, the whole sweating, cheek blowing, side-splitting episode an exercise in futility so supreme you'd be better off playing scrabble with Jermaine Pennant.
Every time someone opens the door to La Liga, someone else slams it shut again; every time Real Madrid try to offer Barça the title, their Catalan chums dash for exit like a diner in a Piccadilly sushi bar. As for the rest, they're hardly bothering to play at all. 
Hay Liga as they say in Spain - there is a league. Trouble is, even if there is a league (and it looks suspiciously like there isn't) it's rubbish. A slow bicycle race. Less a sprint for the line, more Douglas Bader answering the door to the postie after a particularly heavy night on the sauce. Not so much seeking a worthy winner as the best of a bad bunch. No wonder everyone spent the whole week banging on about Julian De Guzman's promise to abstain from sex for a year if he scored against Madrid. It beats talking about the football. As Javier Clemente put it: "Madrid and Barça don't play a pepper."
On December 23, Madrid opened a seven-point lead, winning 1-0 at the Camp Nou , and prompting President Tourettes to declare: "Madrid are frightening". On Saturday night they lost 1-0 to Deportivo La Coruña, thanks to an own goal from Pepe. Which might not seem that bad - after all, Madrid have gone almost seventeen years without winning at Riazor - but for one thing: it was bad. Truly, deeply, desperately bad. A game so awful it left you whimpering for your 90 minutes back and the poor sods who actually paid-per-view demanding an €11.99 refund on the grounds that they hadn't viewed anything. A game in which Madrid didn't manage a single shot on target. A game so utterly pathetic AS's Mad Madridista Tomás Roncero declared it the "worst in Madrid's history" and Calderón was proven right: frightening? Madrid were terrifying.
Worse still, it was a game that continued a desperate run. Since their clásico victory, the absences of Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Robinho, Sergio Ramos and Wesley Sneijder have exposed Madrid's weaknesses. So too, although no one wants to admit as much, has the dip in (return to?) form of Raúl and Guti. And, however much marvellously miserable manager Bernd Schuster tries to claim that defeats are "not defeats", Madrid have been beaten eight times in 2008 - half their matches. They've lost four of their last seven in the league and only beat Recreativo and Espanyol with help from the referee.
They've spent €100m on players, none of whom are regulars; their president is busy threatening newspapers with excommunication if they mention Nicolas Cage, while insisting that he clocked Paolo Calabresi right from the start (which will be why he took him into a the dressing room afterwards) , and Schuster is at war with the world. In short, they're in crisis. Out of the Cup. Out of the Champions League. And out of the league.
Oh. Right. Yeah.
Three months later and Madrid's lead is still seven points; the same seven points it was after the derbi. Because if Madrid are bad, Barça aren't much better. Unfit, poorly organised, plodding, with Henry missing Tea - all ex-pats out here do, Thierry - and Ronaldinho missing training, Messi injured again, Edmilson fit again, lacking a killer instinct or a Plan B, they are a mess. One especially adept at snatching failure from the jaws of success, as the last four games have shown.
Against Zaragoza a terrible decision saw them escape with a win they tried to surrender. Against Atlético, they were so superior it was embarrassing but lost to el Kun. Against Villarreal they were on top but were defeated. And last night, handed yet another opportunity, they twice led against Almería and twice conceded from set-plays. Which is fair enough: why work on set-plays when Almería, a supremely well-drilled side, have only scored a third of their goals that way?
Barça have collected a solitary point out of the last nine - a run so bad that while they remain stuck puffing on the stairs, Villarreal are just two points behind. The same Villarreal who yesterday collected their first home victory in four.
And that's kind of the point. Because while Madrid and Barça have been poor, the saddest thing is that their challengers have been unable to take advantage or provide a half-decent title race. Atlético have a fantastic forward line but no defence, Villarreal panic near the summit, and Racing and Espanyol are over-achieving. Considering the problems that Sevilla have had - Antonio Puerta's death, the Dani Alves soap opera, Juande Ramos ditching them, injury to Javi Navarro and Manolo Jimenez's bizarre attempt to deny Luis Fabiano goals - it's a wonder they're this close. And, as for Valencia, the club that should have pushed for the title, they're a joke, ruined by a fat bloke with a rubbish 'tache: Juan Soler.
Last week Soler finally left the Valencia presidency on the grounds of illness. He was right too: he's made Valencia sick. Very sick. This is the man who sacked Quique Sanchez Flores and replaced him with Ronald Koeman with the team four points off the top and saw them brilliantly extend that gap to 26, just six off the relegation zone; the man who has created a hive of in-fighting and bitterness, ending up in court against his captain; the same man who in his three years since taking over a club that had just won two league titles and the Uefa Cup, has had seven coaches, seven technical directors, three medical chiefs, €187m worth of players and no trophies whatsoever. Sometimes you get exactly what you deserve. And sometimes, as Madrid look set to prove, you get rather more.
Results: Recreativo 4-2 Murcia, Deportivo 1-0 Real Madrid, Betis 1-2 Athletic (suspended in the 69th minute after Athletic goalkeeper Armando got hit by a bottle thrown from the stands. I repeat, a this was no isolated incident, but this time Betis fans - the ones that didn't have punch-ups with the police - should be applauded for grabbing the idiot who threw the bottle and handing him over to the stewards), Valencia 1-2 Sevilla, Villarreal 2-0 Zaragoza, Getafe 2-1 Racing (With some quality lunacy from Toño and a great goalkeeping display from Marcano, who's a centre-back), Espanyol 2-1 Mallorca (Dear God, no. The chiki-chiki, no, Valladolid 0-0 Osasuna, Almería 2-2 Barcelona, Atlético 3-0 Levante.
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