If we have to lose the title, I hope it goes to the better team (Sevilla), and not to Madrid.
If somehow Madrid managed to win it this season, I don't know what I'd do. Like a Madrid fan said on another forum, it would be the biggest robbery in Barcelona's history. I correct that by saying it would be the biggest robbery in the history of both Barca and Sevilla.
We have all had decisions for and against us, but I just wouldn't be able to deal with Madrid taking the league with the kind of football they're showing. And when I remember that they have the world's best player in their team... ugh.
Man, just to think that we couldn't take advantage of Madrid's poor form and Sevilla being stretched between three competitions...
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Strange but true: Real, somehow, are going to win the league
Never mind their myriad shortcomings; Real Madrid have been let off the hook so many times that their rivals will surely end up paying for it.
Sid Lowe
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/20...real_some.html
Tonsils bounce higher than rubber balls. New Mexico's greatest tourist attraction is a nacho. And elbow transplants come from scrotums. Polar bears can eat 86 penguins in one sitting (but only if someone takes the wrappers off first, obviously). Bats can dodge raindrops one by one. And Rhesus monkeys hang from trees by their dicks. Chairman Mao cleaned his teeth with tea, while Ghandi glugged a glass of urine every morning. Djimi Traore won the European Cup. And Real Madrid are going to win the league.
Ridiculous. But true.
Never mind the fact that Madrid have scored fewer home goals than relegation-bound Nàstic; that their second highest marksman has five (but still does the big I-am when he stumbles across the net); or that sarcastic team-mates call striker Higuaín "Igaulín" (samey) because his goalscoring record is just like Ronaldo's, having hit the same number as Andrés Palop. That's Sevilla goalkeeper Andrés Palop.
Never mind all that. Or that the coach is only there because the club couldn't pay him off, that a month ago he'd given up and that his on-field protégée has all the vision, mobility and joie de vivre of Hans Moleman. Never mind that only Iker Casillas has kept them alive, that Ramón Calderón has Presidential Tourettes and that a million sharks and crooks have presidential designs, or that sporting director Predrag Mijatovic summed up the difference between Madrid and Barcelona by griping: "Messi's [Maradona-esque] goal is easily stopped with a tactical foul." Never mind that the Santiago Bernabéu has spent half the season fidgeting in boredom and the other half waving hankies in protest. Because Real Madrid are going to win the league.
And they're going to win the league because they've been let off the hook so many times their rivals will surely end up paying for it. Valencia keeper Santi Cañizares described this as "the league of laments" and he was absolutely right. It won't be won by the best team but the least bad one - which is exactly why Madrid are still in it.
As this column has insisted before, you could count Madrid's decent performances on the fingers of one hand if your name was Abu Hamza, but somehow they keep getting results. At home, they fluked a 1-1 draw with Atlético, needed a penalty to get the same result against Getafe and were grateful for a crazy bobble to avoid defeat to Betis. They defeated Zaragoza 1-0 with a scrappy goal from a half-cleared corner and beat Osasuna 2-0 with the navarrans resting seven first-teamers and missing their best player through one of those cowardly clauses - the same one that cost Nastic their top scorer when Madrid defeated them 2-0 with an own goal and a miss-hit assist.
Away from home, free-kicks saw off Real Sociedad and Mallorca, they got refereeing help in a 1-1 draw against Atlético, with Guti muttering "we are so bad", sneaked past Betis 1-0 via a header from a corner, and beat Celta thanks to some weird confluence of ludicrous luck. At Mestalla, both Valencia strikers were injured and stand-in Miguel Ángel Angulo missed two sitters from a combined distance of three yards before Madrid scored with their only attack, while even their 3-3 draw at the Camp Nou, arguably Madrid's best performance, was against 10 men.
And yet ... And yet Madrid have the league's best away record, those results bring belief, and somehow they've hung in there. Mainly because the rest of the league has allowed them to.
Atlético are a joke, Zaragoza are probably not quite good enough and Valencia have had seven players out pretty much all season. Despite a 4-1 victory this weekend Sevilla are running out of steam with top scorer Freddie Kanouté hobbling from game to game as they fight on three fronts. Barcelona, meanwhile, have missed Henk Ten Cate's bad cop to Frank Rijkaard's good cop as well as suffering injuries to Messi and Eto'o, internal divisions and a dreadful pre-season, during which Ronaldinho was contractually obliged to play every game. Joan Laporta has learned nothing from the galáctico failure: despite a shattered squad, Barça fly off to play in Egypt this week.
And as they stumble - Barça have lost two in three, Sevilla have won just once in four and Valencia have been beaten three times in five - the momentum is with Madrid. So too, all of a sudden, is the football. This weekend they defeated Valencia in a huge clash at the Bernabéu - and for the first time this season they even scored a fantastic goal.
It was, declared Marca, "the move of the season; the perfect play". Which might be pushing it a bit, but it was pretty special - a fast one-touch move that ended with a Miguel Torres cross sailing over to Ruud van Nistelrooy, who battered home a brilliant volley. Valencia fought back to 1-1 through Fernando Morientes but then lost their best player, Joaquín, to injury. And while Quique Sánchez Flores looked to the bench and saw three youth-teamers, a winger he doesn't want and Hugo Viana (yes, that one), Fabio Capello looked to his and saw José Antonio Reyes, Guti, Cicinho, Antonio Cassano and David Beckham - the man whose ability to be reborn is matched only by his ability to get really rubbish tattoos. Becks came on and within minutes had delivered the perfect free-kick for Sergio Ramos to score: 2-1, and three massive points.
But if that was good news, there was even better news from Villarreal last night where Barça lost 2-0. Suddenly the league, as the Spanish say, is "in a hankie". Not because it's a load of old toss, which it is, but because it's desperately close. Barça are top with Sevilla trailing by a solitary point and Madrid one more behind them. Then there's Zaragoza and Valencia, just four adrift. Somehow, a camel can clean his ear with his tongue and Madrid can win the league.
Ugh.
.
There is adifference