La Liga Hangover: Luis Enrique's Big Mistake, Zidane Tactics and Atleti Injuries
Welcome to La Liga Hangover, a weekly column running throughout the season in which we take a light-hearted, though in-depth, look at the key stories and talking points from the most recent weekend of action in Spanish football's top flight. With a focus on the biggest teams, such as Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid and Barcelona, and a worthwhile nod toward the rest, we examine how the league is shaping up each week and what to look out for going forward.
Luis Enrique Feels How the Other Half Live
La Liga was done. It was over. Real Madrid were miles back and facing a tough run. Then Atletico Madrid went and let a lead slip late on Saturday, giving Barcelona the chance to scurry off into the distance, 11 points clear on Sunday.
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By half-time at El Madrigal, the Royal Spanish Football Federation must have been about ready to cancel the rest of the season and just hand out the trophy to Barca, two goals to the good at Villarreal thanks to a referee who clearly has a lot of money on the Catalan club to win the title by a record margin.
All Barcelona needed to do was see out 45 minutes without causing a fuss and the title would be all but theirs—if it weren't already.
Luis Enrique just had to interfere, didn't he?
A manager who had previously done almost nothing wrong for the entirety of the season had the sort of well-meaning-but-disastrous impact only Homer Simpson could dream of, changing half his defence with two substitutions just after the break—and seeing Villarreal score twice to equalise less than six minutes later.
Marca chose to lay the blame firmly at the door of one of the subs, the bumbling Jeremy Mathieu, labelling him "away with the fairies" as he lost his marker for one goal, almost caused another by gifting possession and then scored an own goal to level matters.
Mathieu is an easy target, but the Barcelona boss has to take the blame on this occasion. He left himself short of options to change things offensively later on in the game—though his team are still an extra point clear of Atletico after the most recent round of games.
Jornada 30 Results
Getafe 1-1 Eibar
Sporting Gijon 2-1 Atletico Madrid
Real Sociedad 0-1 Las Palmas
Granada 2-2 Rayo Vallecano
Deportivo La Coruna 2-1 Levante
Real Betis 0-1 Malaga
Espanyol 2-1 Athletic Bilbao
Villarreal 2-2 Barcelona
Valencia 0-2 Celta Vigo
Real Madrid 4-0 Sevilla
'Gary Neville's Valencia'
Gary Neville is staying with Valencia rather than travelling with England during the international break, according to Reuters (h/t the Guardian), after his team lost at home again. But the scoreline doesn't tell the whole story.
Los Che had a period of at least 40 minutes when they were comfortably the better side, constructed good attacking moves and looked by far the more likely the team to open the scoring.
A real negative, though, is the mentality of the squad that was on show from the moment Celta Vigo scored their opener, a fantastic flowing move finished off by John Guidetti in the 80th minute.
From then until the final whistle, Celta created a further five clear chances to score, and only the profligacy of Fabian Orellana left the scoreline looking even vaguely close. It could have been 5-0 by the time the 90 minutes were up, as Valencia completely gave up the chase, leaving gaps, not tracking back and with nobody doing their job.
It's not acceptable from the players, and onlookers will have their own point of view on whether that's down to the management or the individuals on the pitch.
What should have been a home three points, going by the first 75 minutes, could have ended up in a rout for the away side instead.
Neville might be staying in Valencia over the international break, but more ends to matches of this ilk and he won't be there for much longer.
Points of Authority
- When your luck is out, it's out. Levante are bottom and battling to survive and lost at Depor thanks to an own goal from goalkeeper Diego Marino with just five minutes to go. Lucas Perez's shot hit the post, bounced onto the goalkeeper's back and rolled into the net between two defenders. Fine margins. Levante are still 20th.
- Real Sociedad: Appalling. That's the only possible verdict on them after an inept home loss to ever-improving Las Palmas, leaving La Real five games without a win. Seven victories in 21 games gives Eusebio Sacristan a 33 per cent win ratio—a very marginal increase on David Moyes' 29 per cent rate.
- It's not looking good for Atletico Madrid, a team based on defensive solidity. Diego Godin missed Saturday's injured, Stefan Savic has been sidelined since the UEFA Champions League first leg against PSV Eindhoven in February and Jose Gimenez is set to be out too, pulling a hamstring as he chased a ball late on at Sporting. The centre-back pairing is likely to be Saul Niguez and Lucas Hernandez if Godin doesn't recover—not exactly an established duo to face Barcelona's MSN with in the next round in Europe.
- It's almost certainly three from five for relegation, as we suggested a few weeks ago. Four wins in five for Las Palmas means there's a five-point gap between 15th and 16th in the table.
Tactical Notes
- Zinedine Zidane had his BBC front line available, and the players had a huge impact. But Zidane showed improved arrangement of his Real side too. They were 4-3-3 in attack, but Gareth Bale dropped off to make a four-man midfield out of possession in the first half. It didn't completely stop Sevilla's counters, but it gave the home team a more compact look and an easier first out ball rather than having to bypass midfield entirely.
- Sevilla's attempts to block up the channels, meanwhile, failed miserably. Unai Emery fielded four full-backs to try and stop Real attacking via their wide forwards, but poor on-the-ball contribution meant that after they went behind early on, it was Kevin Gameiro or nothing in trying to find a way back into the match.
- Valencia's 4-3-3 allowed Danilo to surge into the right channel, where he was a real live wire, showing good footwork to beat defenders but also the pace and power to be an outlet on the counter, link play and get beyond the forward line once or twice. A good role for the 20-year-old.
- Sporting continually targeted Atletico's right-back area all game long and had great success in the second half. Jony, playing wide, and Tonny Sanabria, running the channel from centre-forward, linked superbly and were aggressive, full of self-belief and eventually got their rewards.
- Real Betis' 4-4-2 is almost perfect. They have pace and power in the middle, great technical ability out wide, a strong defensive base but nothing in the penalty box. The amount of times they breach teams' back lines and then find no way to convert chances is astonishing.
Good Week, Bad Week
The Good
Youssef El-Arabi of Granada hasn't scored as frequently as he'd have liked to this season (10 goals), but his brace against Rayo Vallecano could turn out to be pivotal. Of course, so could Rayo's equalisers.
Deportivo finally won their first match in 2016—a wait of exactly three months since their previous victory. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the protagonists were attackers Lucas and Luis Alberto.
A minor positive for Atleti comes from looking around the rest of La Liga and seeing how their loan players fared: on Friday night, both the goalscorers in the 1-1 draw between Getafe and Eibar are owned by Los Rojiblancos, Emiliano Velazquez and Borja Baston, who scored his 17th of the season.
The Bad
The refereeing this weekend was worse than Barcelona's penalty-taking record for the season.
Athletic Bilbao were a goal to the good at half-time against Espanyol and looking fantastic on the ball. A win would have put them fifth and on Villarreal's coat-tails. What happened?!
Getafe have taken two points from the last five games, fewer than any other team in the relegation battle. And they fell into the drop zone this weekend. Next up is a huge game at Rayo, then it's Villarreal, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad and Valencia. Could this finally be the season we say goodbye to what has effectively been a Madrid feeder club?
