While José Mourinho's team await their fiesta, Rayo's 7-0 home thrashing by Barcelona leaves them clinging on in La Liga
The goddess was all dressed up with nowhere to go: her hot date wasn't coming after all. Not tonight, anyway. She was just going to have to wait; probably not for long, but wait nonetheless. Sitting atop her lion-drawn chariot in front of the most elegant post office in all Christendom, Cibeles had been preparing since Saturday. The barriers had gone up, the platform had been built, and she'd even had a wash. TV stations prepared specials, just in case. It is here that Real Madrid celebrate their successes, with thousands of fans, open-topped busses and trophies getting crushed under the wheels. It was to here that they would return on Sunday night, celebrating the league for the first time in four years, since the oddly forgotten title won by Bernd Schuster's team in 2008.
A 3-0 win over Sevilla on Sunday at noon took José Mourinho's Real Madrid to 112 goals and 91 points, 10 points clear of their rivals. More importantly, it put them just three points from the title. Nine and a half hours and five and half kilometres away to the south-east, Barcelona were due to play Rayo Vallecano. Lose and the title would be officially Madrid's. It felt like there was a chance that Barça would lose too; in eight days they'd lost the Champions League and their coach – "I haven't died, I'm just leaving," Pep Guardiola insisted, pretty much summing it up – and had also conceded defeat in the league following the clásico. They had the substitute José Pinto in goal.
Madrid's players left the Santiago Bernabéu at 2.30pm, but they were told not to go far; if Barcelona lost down at the other end of town, they would be back again at 11pm, ready to board the bus along the Castellana. There was just one problem with the plan: Barcelona were one-up by 9.45pm, two up before 10, and four up by 11. When the final whistle went they were seven up – the score, not the drink. Cibeles was going to have to wait. Not particularly anxiously: Madrid travel to Bilbao to face Athletic on Wednesday knowing that a victory will make them champions and that a Barcelona defeat at home against Málaga will do the same. Even then, there's Granada away and Mallorca at home in which they could clinch it. But still, she was going to have to wait.
Her and the rest of the Spanish league. They were going to have to wait to find out when they were playing – the penultimate week of the season will go ahead on Saturday at 9pm, something the Liga de Fútbol "Profesional" helpfully announced on Monday – and they were going to have to wait to find out what they'd be playing for. One thing they won't have to wait long for is to play again: week 36, which is officially week 20*, starts on Tuesday at midday in Getafe. By Saturday, things should be clearer. Or less clear than ever. This weekend only one thing was definitively clarified: Racing Santander finally confirmed what was already obvious and went down, 10 years after they came up and 15 months since Ahsan Ali Syed, the businessman blocked from buying Blackburn, bought the club and promised to make it Spain's third force.
Everything else in the rest of the league got tighter. Madrid and Barcelona have 112 and 104 goals, respectively. Valencia and Málaga, third and fourth, have 105 between them. Madrid are 36 points clear of the two of them. This weekend they faced each other: Málaga beat Valencia, but only beat them 1-0, taking them level on points but leaving them trailing on the head-to-head (Valencia had won 2-0 at Mestalla). Meanwhile, Levante continued to refuse to toddle off back to their "rightful" place and beat Granada 3-1, staying within reach of a miraculous Champions League place. Atlético drew with Betis, Osasuna drew with Villarreal, and Athletic lost to Zaragoza. All of which means that with three games to play, there are just three points separating Valencia [55], Málaga [55] and Levante [52] for third and fourth. It also means that there are only four points from Atlético in sixth [49], the final European place, to Getafe in 12th [45].
At the bottom, the conclusion also does not look quite so foregone. Zaragoza's miracle continues and so does Sporting's: Zaragoza beat Athletic 2-0 and have now won five of eight; Sporting Gijón, virtually down a month ago, defeated Espanyol 3-0 and have now won three of four. Every week, they are on the edge of the abyss; every week, they climb a little closer to safety, but not quite close enough. Not least because the teams above them slip towards them. Identifying teams who could go down carries a flaw: there are more than three of them. Financial crisis and institutional chaos should be an indicator but for the fact that it is not as much of a differentiator as it should be.
Villarreal have led each of the last three matches but drawn them all and have now won just one in six; Granada have won only one in five. Sporting and Zaragoza both have 34 points, Villarreal have 38, Granada 39. Zaragoza have two home games in a row: Levante and Racing. They finish the season at Getafe, who are likely to have nothing to play for. As for Sporting, their last two matches are Betis at home and Málaga away. Before that on Wednesday is a huge match, one that will go a long way to defining the final two weeks and the final league table: Villarreal travel to Sporting. They then have to play Valencia at home and Atlético away. As for Granada, unexpectedly close to trouble, they face Espanyol, followed by Real Madrid and Rayo Vallecano.
So what? Here's what: no one has slipped like Rayo Vallecano. Four games ago, they beat Osasuna 6-0. They were up to 40 points with seven weeks to spare; they were safe. In fact, there was even talk of a European place; between weeks 21 and 28 they had won six in eight and one of those defeats was against Real Madrid – a defeat they didn't deserve. They were bold, daring. They went for teams. Their coach José Ramón Sandoval turned all torero to insist that there were two ways to leave a stadium: through the main gate, a hero hoisted upon shoulders, or through the door to the infirmary. This risk now is that it ends up being the latter. The fear in Vallecas was palpable on Sunday night; players admitted that they are acojonado, a testicular term for terrified.
Rayo are still six points from the relegation zone and need a solitary win. They might not even need that win: there are still four other clubs below them fighting over two places. But they have won just one of the last eight and go away to Mallorca and Sevilla, before facing Granada on the final day.
There is a case to be made for arguing that their early season results were not normal, that their president was right when he insisted on Sunday night that had they been offered 40 points with three games to go at the start of the season they would have said yes immediately. There is something to be said for saying that these results now are normal. "You can't win a war with water pistols," Sandoval said.
Even by La Liga's standards, Rayo's financial and institutional crisis is acute. On the day they defeated Osasuna they had gone on what Sandoval described as a Japanese strike. The club's administrators had insisted that he repay a bonus earned for last year's presentation. This week, the administrators demanded that the players pay it back too. The Barcelona game was also declared día del club – the ultimate in stupid cynicism, where even season ticket holders have to pay for their seat – so fans responded by turning up and paying in small change, carrying heavy bags of shrapnel to the ticket office. On Sunday night they vacated their places and held a banner across the empty seats asking: "Is this what you want the stands to look like?" Underneath another banner aimed at the president declared: "20 Euros is what your mother costs."
Before all that, there was a banner that declared: "We crap on this crappy league." It is a crappy league to which they cling. Rayo Vallecano and Real Madrid inhabit different ends of Madrid; they inhabit different worlds too. Both must wait. Madrid await their fiesta; like Granada, Villarreal, Sporting and Zaragoza, Rayo await their fate.
* Confused? Yes, so are they. Week one was cancelled because of the players' strike and crowbarred in where week 20 would be, with week 20 being squeezed in between weeks 35 and 37.
Results: Getafe 1-3 Mallorca, Levante 3-1 Granada, Espanyol 0-3 Sporting, Real Sociedad 3-0 Racing, Villarreal 1-1 Osasuna, Real Madrid 3-0 Sevilla, Zaragoza 1-0 Valencia, Betis 2-2 Atlético, Rayo 0-7 Barcelona.
• Latest La Liga standings Read More [category Sport][tags La Liga, Real Madrid, Rayo Vallecano, European football, Football, Sport]
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