Monday, October 05, 2009

Viva Sevilla

Real Madrid had started the Spanish season with five consecutive victories before yesterday's match against Sevilla, just as the defending champions of FC Barcelona, and I think that most outside observers of Spanish football considered that the Spanish league will be a question of FC Barcelona versus Real Madrid, and all other teams are just to be observers. However, this clearly ignores that FC Barcelona has been as awesome as last season (they have still won all their matches after defeating Almería this weekend), and that Real Madrid, in spite of its victories, has not really gotten its game flowing, while other teams are strong too.
One of the teams that is to try to bid for the title, Sevilla, played Real Madrid last night. Before today's match Sevilla had only lost one match (on opening day to Valencia), but had since won everything. And last night they continued on their winning streak while stopping Real Madrid's, when winning 2-1, on goals by and outstanding Jesús Navas and Renato, taking the second spot in the league behind Barcelona.
Real Madrid reminds of the "Galacticos"-team: Full of stars who don't really play together, and thus entirely dependent on one star doing something spectacular. One of these stars, Cristiano Ronaldo, was not playing last night, and a continuosuly shaky defense was only saved by the world class goalkeeper Iker Casillas, without whom Real Madrid could have suffered a huge defeat.
There is only one team in Spain, FC Barcelona, and they are the team to beat - not Real Madrid.

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