This weekend in La Liga

Last weekend featured a few interesting matchups in Spain with leaders Real Madrid traveling to Galicia to take on surprise fourth-place side Celta Vigo. Although the final score of 3-1 in favor of Real might indicate an easy win for the madristas, it was anything but. Keylor Navas showed his World Cup form making six saves to keep Celta at bay and seal the win.

This week Madrid hosts top-flight newcomers Las Palmas at the Bernabeu. Coach Rafa Benitez let it slip that Navas is suffering from fatigue according to Spanish site marca.com and will not start in the match. Providing a possible opportunity for the visitors as other Madrid stars such as James Rodriguez is still out due to injury.

30 minutes south the other top dawg in Spain Barcelona travels to Getafe in what should be another goal scoring affair for Neymar and Luis Suarez. With or without Messi, Barça should be able to easily dispatch Getafe and come away with the three points.

While we shouldn’t forecast any change at the top of the table, a couple matches worth keeping an eye on is third-place Atletico Madrid against sixth-place Deportivo La Coruña and Sevilla and fourth-place Villarreal.

Atletico always plays hard and aggressive and will have extra motivation as they look to keep pace with Barça and Real as both should come away with a win in their respective games. Though they won’t have as easy of opponents as the leaders, shaping what should be an entertaining match.

Villarreal always have a solid side, and have brought back former Valencia striker Roberto Soldado. After a tough adjustment to life at Tottenham, Soldado isn’t exactly lighting the league up, with only two goals to his name thus far. Still he is due to heat up at anytime. Sevilla are fighting to stay in the mix for a European tournament spot, currently they’re one point behind Deportivo for that final spot. They’ve had plenty of success in Europe before, so this match likely will be the most entertaining after Atletico-Deportivo, unless you like numerous goals. Then you might want to tune in to Madrid’s and Barcelona’s games, it wouldn’t be far fetched to see a lopsided score in those.

 

Photo: Flickr/Dan Farrimond

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