Ultimate Guide to La Liga Weekend: Final Day to Settle Title Race and Relegation
Nine months of hard work, fast playing, exciting action and frustrating losses of form—and it all comes down to this.
The final weekend in La Liga sees the two biggest issues of any season still needing a resolution, with Spain's top division set to crown a champion and lose a pair of relegated sides over the coming days.
Real Madrid and Barcelona kick off simultaneously on Saturday, the final two sides able to win the title this year, and it's the Catalan outfit who will take the trophy if they equal or better whichever result the capital city side picks up. In the natural course of events, two wins would be the expected outcome, with both facing bottom-half clubs.
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The contrasting media opinions in Spain are unsurprisingly biased toward their usual clubs.
Talk in Spain has surrounded "maletines" in the buildup to the game: so-called suitcase payments, a routine occurrence in Spain handed to the Granada players by a third party in order to up their intensity and desire to win in a game with nothing riding on it for them, after they secured survival last weekend.
The "third party" in this instance is, of course, not named as Real Madrid, but as they have the most to gain, the intuitive leap is easy to make.
Luis Suarez hasn't made a fuss out of it, suggesting that the usual factors of professionalism would count for more than money, per Sport:
"A player's pride is to give everything for the shirt they are wearing and to do everything they can to win. To have more commitment and more ambition than us is going to be impossible.
I don’t believe in [third-party payments], I only believe in the pride of the Granada players to want to win. All teams go out to win all of their games, but not for money.
It’s not up to me to decide if [third-party] payments should be legal. Each club already offers bonuses to their own players.
"
Marca, meanwhile, chose to get the party started early for Real Madrid. They (via a Facebook poll by fans) gave almost a clean sweep of Liga awards to Real players: Cristiano Ronaldo the best player and best attacker, Keylor Navas the best goalkeeper, Marcelo the best defender and Luka Modric the best midfielder.
It's almost as though more Marca readers support Los Blancos than anyone else.
The players themselves are in confident mood as they approach the end of the campaign as the only club in Europe who can win both a continental and domestic title.
Modric told Marca: "Hopefully we will win the league. We'll fight to the death and do what we can, then after that we'll just have to wait and see what happens."
Whether or not a win will be enough for Real Madrid remains to be seen, but there's little doubt that their return to form has helped prolong one of the most exciting and watchable La Liga seasons in recent years.
Jornada 38 (KO times via Soccerway)
Friday
Valencia vs. Real Sociedad
Saturday
Deportivo La Coruna vs. Real Madrid
Granada vs. Barcelona
Athletic Club vs. Sevilla
Atletico Madrid vs. Celta Vigo
Sunday
Malaga vs. Las Palmas
Espanyol vs. Eibar
Sporting Gijon vs. Villarreal
Real Betis vs. Getafe
Rayo Vallecano vs. Levante
What to Watch Out for this Weekend
Part 1: Ending on a high note?
Trigger-happy boards and presidents in Spain are notoriously quick to dismiss coaches and put grand new plans into place...which are usually also torn up a few months later for the latest quick fix.
There are a handful of bosses around La Liga who must be hoping for a win to end the season and leave things on a positive note...and who are fearful of losing their jobs otherwise.
One is Sevilla manager Unai Emery; regardless of a UEFA Europa League final to look forward to, finishing the Liga season without a single away victory all year and losing four of their last five games to end in seventh place is a poor return given their investment and expectations at the start of the season.
Pako Ayesteran is the favourite to be at Valencia next season, according to Sport, but there are no assurances, and he is another who doesn't want to end with three successive losses.
It doesn't take much to rile Los Che's fans, and ending the campaign on such a downward turn, having fought to get back into the top half, would be disappointing.
Elsewhere, Victor Sanchez was lauded at Depor after a great first half of the campaign, but he has won just twice since mid-December. Real Betis caretaker boss Juan Merino already knows that Gus Poyet will replace him in the summer.
Part 2: La Liga Stat Watch
- Sevilla play their 19th and final away match of the season at the weekend; they have yet to win a single one
- A clean sheet for Jan Oblak will see him equal the Liga record for average goals conceded per game (38-game season)
- Celta Vigo could finish fifth with a negative goal difference; the highest since Atletico Madrid (sixth) in 2003/04. No team has finished fifth with negative GD dating back to 1993/94
- Luis Suarez needs a final-day hat-trick to hit 40 for the season
- Suarez leads Cristiano Ronaldo by four in the Pichichi race
- Gareth Bale needs one goal to reach 20
- Only once in the last four seasons have teams needed 40 points to be safe from relegation
- Real Madrid can equal the season-best run of Barcelona of 12 wins in a row
- Eighth to 14th could all change on the final day, the seven teams are separated by three points
Part 3: Player to Watch: Lionel Messi, FCB
On a weekend when Barcelona need to win a match, and therefore need to create and score against a team who are not usually particularly strong defensively, there's only one choice.
Lionel Messi might not have had his best-ever season, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been absurdly good at times, and he is finishing the campaign on a high.
Barcelona will take the game to Granada, the best attack against the fourth-worst defence, and it seems unlikely, to say the least, that the Andalucian side will halt the Messi-inspired attack that has netted 21 times in the past four matches.
Even so, pressure to win the title in a win-or-bust game could easily get to some players, and that's why Messi wins out as our man to watch. He's unflappable, utterly composed and would be the man you pick to take a last-minute spot-kick on account of his ice-cool demeanour—which, let's face it, is far more impressive than his actual penalty-taking record itself.
Game of the Weekend: Rayo Vallecano vs. Levante
For this game to be an all-or-nothing tie, Rayo had to take something from any of their past few matches. They didn't, and they head into this fixture on a run of three successive losses, one point from safety and needing both Eibar and Sporting to fail to win as well as win their own game.
They have the offensive armoury to trouble Levante, but as we saw last weekend, the bottom club's relegation seems to have given them a pressure release, and they overcame Atletico Madrid 2-1 thanks to a late counter-attack goal.
Rayo won't be able to walk over their opponents, but they do have to give it everything and take an overdue three points.
After that, it's down to luck and hope, otherwise a final-day win won't be enough to avoid a fall to La Segunda.
Predictions and Tips
- Home wins for Valencia, Athletic, Rayo
- Getafe to avoid relegation, Rayo and Sporting down
- Away wins for Real Madrid, Barcelona, Villarreal, Getafe
- Over 2.5 goals in VAL-RSO, DEP-RMA, GRA-FCB, RAY-LEV
