Barcelona’s start to the season has been difficult. As if two Spanish Super Cup games against Athletic Bilbao were not hard enough, they travelled to Georgia to play Sevilla in the European Super Cup. And all that after a poorly organised pre-season tour to the United States, where players were frustrated by the amount of travelling.
All of those games come with the success of becoming treble winners, a problem most managers would love, but Barca hoped for an easier ride from the fixture list. Their first Uefa Champions League game was away at Roma, their first three away league games at Athletic, Atletico Madrid and on Wednesday night, at fourth-place Celta Vigo, part of a full midweek of fixtures in Spain.
To underline their quality, the Galicians beat Sevilla away at the weekend and did so with a game kicking off in the midday Andalusian heat, a significant disadvantage to players used to the cooler climes of Spain’s north.
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The kick-off time bothered their coach, Eduardo “Toto” Berizzo, but his players were inspired in the sun, racing into a 2-0 lead after 25 minutes and leaving the Europa League winners bottom of Primera Liga.
Celta were so well coached by Luis Enrique in 2013/14 that it gave Barcelona the confidence to appoint him. When Enrique’s Celta beat Real Madrid to knock them out of the 2014 title race, it did his case no harm either.
Enrique got Celta, a team who had yo-yoed between the top divisions for most of the past decade, playing good football, and they have carried that on under his replacement Berizzo, a former Vigo player.
“Toto was a defender when I played there at the start of the century,” said former striker Benni McCarthy, who remains a cult hero among Celta fans for the manner in which he scored and celebrated against neighbours Deportivo La Coruna.
“Toto is not your average Argentinian. They’re usually loud and up front; Toto is quiet and serious. If I stepped on his toes in training he said nothing. If I slapped him in the face he said nothing. He was one of the smartest defenders I ever played with. Slow as a turtle, but really wise.”
Berizzo had been assistant to Marcelo Bielsa with the Chilean national team and also has coached in Argentina. His former master has influenced his philosophy of a high pressing game, and he has followed Enrique’s blueprint in raiding emerging talents from Barca, with left-back Carles Planas one of their best performers last season. They also have local hero Iago Aspas back and playing well up front after his unsuccessful spells at Liverpool and Sevilla.
Celta, who are heavily in debt, have an annual budget of €39 million (Dh159.5m), which is less than a 10th of Wednesday night’s opponents, and is one of the smallest in the league, but they are pushing ahead with developing their Balaidos home.
“Celta are run better than when I played there,” McCarthy said. “My wages were always late; everything was always ‘manana, manana’. But I got on with their fans, especially the Celtaros ultras group.”
Former Barca cantera graduate Nolito leads the forward line where McCarthy once starred and has been linked to bigger clubs. They will come up against a Barca side who must rethink their penalty taker after Lionel Messi missed his 16th spot kick from 65 for his club. It is the only weakness of the world’s best player. And his ratio is getting worse: he has missed six of his last 12.
Celta have scored two more goals than Barcelona this season, though the Catalans are Spain’s only team with a 100 per cent record. Barca have a chance to level that up Wednesday night, but Enrique knows how difficult it is likely to be and left Luis Suarez and Andres Iniesta on the bench on Sunday as a precaution for Wednesday night’s test.
Navas form helps banish De Gea woes
While Barcelona will be happier with their 100 per cent league record, Real Madrid are proud to have kept four clean sheets in their opening four games for the first time in their history.
Madrid fans hoped that Saturday’s 1-0 win against Granada would be the game when Cristiano Ronaldo broke the club’s all-time goalscoring record. The Portuguese did not score and the headline writers shifted attention to goalkeeper Keylor Navas, who was excellent against a vengeful Granada.
Granada conceded nine in the equivalent fixture last season and felt slighted by Madrid’s official website asking how many goals fans thought their team would score in this season’s fixture.
Navas has only been at Madrid a year, replacing club legend Iker Casillas, but he is hugely popular. Even before the transfer deadline day shenanigans which saw David de Gea’s transfer to the Bernabeu and Navas’s to Manchester United fall through, Madrid fans voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Costa Rican being give a chance as their No 1 this season after the departure of Casillas, a goalkeeper he shares many stylistic similarities with.
Navas is a religious, humble and determined man who waited patiently for his time at Levante and then did so well when it came that Real Madrid and Manchester United’s Louis van Gaal approached him after he had also excelled for Costa Rica at the 2014 World Cup.
Madrid got there first and Navas turned United down because, mentally, he was preparing for the move to Madrid. He left Levante on good terms and keeps in regular touch with the club’s staff, especially his former goalkeeping coach, Pepe Martinez Puig.
“He’s a great boy, really professional, completely grounded,” Puig said on Saturday as he watched Levante at Camp Nou, where Navas had made his away debut in La Liga only two years before.
Navas was not Madrid’s No 1 choice for this season, and was preparing for a move to Manchester United. He even called United the day after the deal fell through and admitted that he cried after he got the bad news waiting for a flight at Barajas Airport. Now he has to get over that and keep Kiko Casilla out of the Madrid goal.
“He has the mental strength of character to prove that he should be No 1 at the Bernabeu,” Puig said.
“He’s also perfect for Madrid where he has to face counter attacks. He has many good years ahead of him.”
The future of Madrid’s goalkeeping situation is not clear, but if Navas continues this season as he has started, the clamour for De Gea’s services will lessen by the week.
Game of the week - Athletic Bilbao v Real Madrid
As well as Celta v Barcelona, Real Madrid are at Athletic Bilbao, a stadium where they are despised. So impressive were Athletic when putting four past Barcelona in the Super Cup last month to win a first trophy in 35 years, the Basques have won only one of their four league games to start the season, and lost at neighbours Eibar, the team with the lowest budget in the league, in their second match. With games against Barca and Madrid in their first five games, they are not the only ones who could have hoped for an easier opening set of fixtures.
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