Spanish La Liga Previews Week 23: Saturday's Matches

Barcelona vs. Santander

Barcelona tasted defeat for the first time this season after a 2-1 loss to Atletico Madrid last season. Pep Guardiola is certainly interested in renewing the team’s morale after such a long run of no defeat. He will also want to get the Catalonian’s season back on track as the defeat allowed Real Madrid to close the gap to just two points with still the second El Clasico left in this season.

Racing is coming off of a 3-0 loss to Malaga. However, recently, they beat Atletico Madrid 3-2 and this could serve as a motivation for them that Barcelona is beatable, such a loss for Barcelona is rare, so don’t get your hopes up to high for another Barcelona loss.

Mallorca vs. Sevilla

Sevilla barely managed a 1-0 win over Osasuna to continue their fight for the third spot in the league. Mallorca can stop Sevilla’s third place ambitions and make it their own ambitions with a win over Sevilla, as they currently sit fifth and just two points behind their weekend opponents. 

The 1-0 loss to Tenerife was quite a shocker for the ONO Estadi outfit that played relatively well, and if the loss is any indication that they have either burned out or are out of form (the latter seems realistic, as Mallora doesn’t seem to be capable of scoring more than one goal a game lately), facing Sevilla at the moment might not be the best situation.

Luis Fabiano can easily torment defensive lines and especially with much talks of the Brazilian potentially moving to England this week, he will certainly want to prove that he is a Sevilla man and the best way for an attacker to do that is by scoring goals. Expect Sevilla to barely escape this road game.