Good Day, Bad Day - Round 7
Monday 18 October 2010 14:43
The best and worst of the weekend's Spanish football, in handy tapas-sized dishes...
GOOD DAY
Cristiano Ronaldo
It causes LLL immense mental and physical anguish to do so, but the blog must admit that the shiny-faced, stupid-haired Portuguese ponce put in a fairly decent performance against Málaga. Perhaps his best of the season. Ugh!
Marca’s luscious lust figure scored two goals and popped up with two assists for Gonzalo Higuaín, whose own brace in La Rosaleda might for once see his critics off his back.
Monday’s edition of Marca is certainly over-stimulated after 10 goals scored against Deportivo and Málaga sees figures “that are not just those of the league leaders, but of a team that in less than two months have become a solid block that dominates every facet of the game.”
€300m spent to become a “solid block”. Someone at the paper’s editorial department will find a nice, empty desk by the end of the day.
Jesualdo Ferreira
The unsmiling Málaga manager gets a pat on the back not only for giving it a bit of a go against Real Madrid on Saturday night to help make it an enthralling encounter, but also for refusing to answer any questions from journalists from Marca because of the paper’s stirring over the ‘donkey’ comments from José Mourinho made in Portuguese paper Récord back in 2005.
In return the paper has grumbled amusingly about the notion of freedom of speech and in Monday’s top 10 of the weekend, Marca lambasts zero-point Ferreira’s “absurd posture”. “It seems that the Portuguese coach of Málaga wants to control what the media publishes.”
Quite right. After all, controlling the media is the job of Marca’s editors - editors who recently manipulated photographs to make it appear that Pep Guardiola was reluctant to shake the hand of José Mourinho at a manager’s meeting and stuck the subsequent story on their front cover.
Xavi Hernández
The Barça midfielder is still complaining that his tendons are giving him some gyp, but they did not prevent him from pushing Pep’s Dream Boys to a 2-1 win over Valencia with two wonderful assists for Andrés Iniesta and Carles Puyol.
However, that victory over the then league leaders was quickly overshadowed by what is set to be a fantastically vicious civil war between the current Barcelona board and the previous regime over the economic management of the club under the rule of former King of Catalunya, Joan Laporta - a civil war that will be covered in great, delicious detail in La Liga Loca.
César Sánchez
The 39-year-old Valencia keeper may have been on the wrong side of the 2-1 scoreline, but after some cracking saves in the Camp Nou, César is still the blog’s “player of the season so far based on a whim and with no real evidence to support it”.
Levante
After conceding 10 goals in their opening three games - all defeats - Levante have changed their keeper, got the back line defending a little deeper and have now gone four games without defeat - a run that has been topped off by a 2-1 win over Real Sociedad.
“If we carry on like this, then we’ll definitely stay up,” claimed the scorer of Sunday’s opener, Asier del Horno.
Diego Costa
A match starting without Diego Forlán and Kun Agüero normally makes Atlético fans a tad nervous. In recent seasons the Rojiblancos have struggled with ‘third striker syndrome’, the likes of Mista and Florent Sinama-Pongolle failing to fulfill the role in spectacular fashion.
However, upon returning to the Calderón Diego Costa has now scored in Atleti’s last three league games - the third of these strikes coming in the 2-0 win over Getafe on Saturday evening.
Racing Santander
Although the Cantabrian side may be in 16th with just two wins and four goals, Racing have actually been playing some purty, purty football this season. The problem is that the striking duo of Markus Rosenberg and Ariel Nahuelpan have consistently had ‘mares in front of goal.
However, the 1-0 win over Almería owed a lot to the impressive performance of opposition goalkeeper Diego Alves, not to mention the struggling front men producing more misses than that Chilean miner.
Sporting
A mind-popping performance from both the Sporting players and support blew Sevilla away on Sunday night in a 2-0 victory which produced a couple of sizzlers from Gastón Sangoy and Diego Castro.
Espanyol
For a first away goal and a first away win against Mallorca, Espanyol should be applauded a little bit more enthusiastically. But it came via a theatrical box tumble from Luis García - a tumble that the Espanyol striker then turned into a successfully converted penalty.
Espanyol are sixth, and LLL is not entirely sure how.
BAD DAY
Deportivo, Osasuna
In another brilliant insight, this blog predicted a 0-0 between these two teams and so it came to pass. However, it seems that the tie was perhaps not as dull as it was thinking, with only Osasuna keeper Ricardo preventing what would have been 1-0 goalfest for Deportivo.
Real Zaragoza
It may have been a defeat for Zaragoza, a club that it is still without a win this season, but LLL could just... just... just... see some signs of a recovery for the Aragonese outfit in the 2-1 loss at Athletic.
Almería
It seems that coach Juanma Lillo is set to spend the season just one bad result from the sack. So after the loss at Racing Santander, that’s where he is at the moment.
Ibai
The Athletic youngster came on for his debut against Zaragoza in the second half of the 2-1 win over Zaragoza - but the midfielder was taken off just three minutes later after falling awkwardly.
Adrián Colunga
The Getafe forward is sort of supposed to be the replacement for Roberto Soldado this season. And although the former Recreativo man runs about in an impressively enthusiastic fashion and appears to have won over the Coliseum crowd, you suspect that he isn't going to cut the Primera mustard this season.
And don’t get LLL started on Manu del Moral - one good game in about 10. But that’s still better than Juan Albín...
Tags: Real Madrid, Gonzalo Higuain, Racing Santander, Jose Mourinho, Barcelona, Sevilla, Carles Puyol, Malaga, Deportivo, Espanyol, Valencia, Atletico Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo, Getafe, Joan Laporta, Mallorca, Almeria, Levante, Real Sociedad, Osasuna, Andres Iniesta, Jesualdo Ferreira, Real Zaragoza, Sporting Gijon, Luis Garcia, Asier del Horno, Mista, Diego Costa, Diego Castro, Cesar Sanchez, Ariel Nahuelpan, Diego Alves, Florent Sinama-Pongolle, Ibai, Markus Rosenberg, Adrian Colunga, Xavi Hernandez, Gaston Sangoy
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About Tim Stannard
La Liga Loca is the playground for the evil, more childish half of Tim Stannard’s psyche to be let loose. The other 50% is a contributor to FourFourTwo magazine, Football365, Sabotage Times as well as other publications such as UEFA Champions Magazine and When Saturday Comes. He is also a regular guest on Real Madrid TV’s Extra Time show and works as a TV producer extraordinaire for hire. To contact Tim directly email laligaloca@yahoo.co.uk