The final weekend of Spain’s domestic season already looks like it could be vital, when Barcelona play Atletico Madrid at Camp Nou on May 18.
The pair reached the league’s halfway point at the weekend by playing each other at the Vicente Calderon. As in their two previous matches this season, neither won in another fascinating tactical battle between two highly disciplined teams.
Both teams reached 50 points after 19 matches and have near-identical records of won 16, drawn two and lost one. Barca’s superior goal difference – they have scored six goals more and conceded only one more – makes them Spain’s winter champions, a nominal that matters for a week before the teams repeat the league programme.
Unlike in Argentina, where a title is awarded for the “opening” and “closing” half of the season, Spain only have one trophy to award.
Atletico’s coach Diego Simeone, who called his team a “village side” in an attempt to portray them as underdogs to Barcelona’s “technically superior players”, asserted that the only obvious difference was the €400 million (Dh2 billion) annual gap in the respective revenues of both clubs.
Both can take positives from the game, but Real Madrid were the beneficiaries of the dropped points. They closed the gap from five points to three by beating Espanyol away 1-0, after which Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti opined that the champions of Spain were likely to hit 100 points this season.
That has only happened twice before, with Madrid in 2011/12 and Barcelona last term. Such tallies were indicative of the duopoly of the big two. The other major leagues of Europe, where more teams challenge for the title, are typically won with 85 points.
In Spain, 85 points is good enough for third, but as recently as 2007 Madrid won the league with 76 points. That was also the last time that there was a genuine third title challenger, in Sevilla.
Now, the title is likely to be won on how the leading three do against each other in the second half of the season. Real Madrid lost to both Atletico and Barca in the first half, their only defeats.
Atletico finished last season with 76 points, the highest-ever total for a third-place team. They are on course to smash it this season.
Winning the league and coming close to 100 points will be an incredible achievement, but Spain appreciates the need for another challenger to stop the rot.
People agreed with Simeone when he repeatedly said that the league had become boring and needed another challenger, though he also kept saying that it would be “impossible” for any other team, including his own, to win it.
Doubts persist as to how long Atletico, with an excellent yet weaker squad, can keep up. They have been expected to fall away all season, even their own players conceded their squad would struggle to go the 38-game distance, but signs of fatigue are few.
Theirs has been the most impressive performance in any European league this season.
Before the second half of the season starts this weekend, Spain’s leading three will all play the second legs of their Copa del Rey last-16 matches. The cup comes to the fore during the gap between the Uefa Champions League group stage and knock-out stage.
Holders Atletico played Valencia at the Calderon on Tuesday night after a tight 1-1 first leg. Real Madrid are at Osasuna on Wednesday night, having won the first leg 2-0 in the Bernabeu. Barcelona play at Getafe on Thursday night, having also been victorious in the first leg 4-0.
Both legs of the quarter-finals will be played later this month, with the semi-finals concluded by February 12 so that they can switch their focus back to another knock-out tournament, the Champions League.
All three teams are in all three competitions. Spanish football has not been this exciting since the television contracts combined with a wider economic crisis helped create such a vast disparity.
sports@thenational.ae
