Liga Preview: Barcelona-Real Sociedad, Saturday 4pm ET,

They’re talking about refs, lots of draws, and the possibility of Guardiola not renewing. None of this concerns me. None of this is remotely interesting. Real Sociedad is playing at the Camp Nou this weekend? Okay, then. We’ll focus on that for 2 hours Saturday afternoon. We’ll purchase Gareth Bale in the summer, Iniesta will recover from his injuries and score the greatest goal known to man when he jumps 50 feet in the air and doesn’t a double somersault flying chilena from his own box. Guardiola will renew. These things are written in stone.

The powers that be can’t keep a good man down. First Guardiola screams about how you can dry out the pitch all you want but Captain Caveman will swing in on his Tarzan vine and decimate your careful planning. Then he takes his kids to a basketball game. My friend CJ and I discussed it:

Another draw? Not that anyone predicted it or anything, but yeah, another away draw. This time, though, it was in the Copa del Rey and gives the team an away goal to work with. Valencia have to score to progress, which may not be as easy a thing to do as one suspects, given that only 3 teams have done so all year at the Camp Nou and only 1 visitor has kept a clean sheet there.

But the big deal seems to be Pinto’s handball outside the box with Roberto Soldado bearing down on him. It was a handball and it was outside the box. That much is clear and indisputable thanks to the video evidence. That it comes on the heels of Sandro Rosell’s statements about refs seemed just perfectly on so many levels. The press knows how to play this softball lobbed down the middle. They had their hook baited and someone snapped it up at the first asking, which is all they could ever hope for.

Yet live, I thought it was on the line. Live, I thought there was no way it was a penalty. The ball rebounded off his arm and that was a close call, but damn, well done to stay in the box. No ref can really call that, either, since he’s looking at it from behind and probably a good 40 yards away. So it’s up to the linesman and I’ll admit to ignorance on where the linesman was standing, but if it was anywhere other than directly in line with the play, perspective tells us he probably couldn’t make the call well either. The linesman in the second half got it wrong against Valencia too, having lined up incorrectly when the ball was played, he didn’t see through 2 Valencia players to Mascherano (I believe) behind him.

Referees do make mistakes, that’s for sure. Lassana Diarra wasn’t sent off, but Sergio Ramos was. Pinto wasn’t sent off, but then again, there were several fouls that were worthy of yellow cards that didn’t get one and they would almost certainly have led to second yellows later. Remember when Eric Abidal was sent off against Chelsea for a non-foul on Anelka? These things happen. And sometimes they go your way and sometimes they don’t. I thought the reffing was rather sad throughout the match last night, but, in the end, it evened out and the 1-1 draw that could have been very different was probably the right outcome. Sport called the whole Callejon-Rosell thing pretty well, though, I have to admit.

What’s best, right now, is to stop talking about referees and start wondering where the midfield dynamism will come from over the next couple of weeks. Xaviniesta, esta es una injury fest. Damn.

Your review is coming up this evening. Hasta mañana.

PS this, forever:

Copa Preview: Valencia-Barcelona, Wednesday 3pm ET, GolTV

You may know them as the perennial third-place team, a team of despicable bat-men, or perhaps they’re your “second” team in Spain. Perhaps they’re even you’re first team in Spain and you’re slumming it at BFB with your second team (or maybe you come here simply to read the outrageously well-written articles by graceful, erudite Adonises and Athenas). Whatever your affiliation with los che, it’s probably sufficient to say that you’re not going to underestimate them. They are, after all, the perennial third-place team and used to be big on the European stage. They’re still capable.

Yet it’s the Copa del Rey. It’s the thing Sergio Ramos couldn’t even care enough about to not smash under a bus. Sure, it’s the semifinals and we all love hardware. The Triplete was all the more magnificent because it wasn’t a Doblete. And yet. It’s the type of preview that makes me want to curl up in a ball and not write for a couple of days.

The cavalry rapidly arrived in the form of my friend CJ, instant messaging me:

CJ: http://www.minijuegos.com/Messis-Hand/11767#
Me: Thank you. Now, write my Valencia preview. I’ve already started it for you.
CJ: Just make it a Hleb is gone party post.
Me: HLEB IS GONE!?!?
CJ: He is! Officially!
Me: OH PEACH SCHNAPPS
CJ: And [Jonathan dos Santos] got promoted.

From there it sort of devolved into a bunch of blathering about Guardiola being wonderful in press conferences (actual quote from CJ : “kfhsdjkgykfhgjkdfhgjkldf”) and me trying to get work done and somehow not go dancing through the cubicle maze. Cuenca also renewed and was promoted (and now wears number 23 and signed through June 30, 2015), so it’s going to be fun to talk about how big our squad is once everyone has recovered. For now, it’s 18 to the copero front lines.

Valencia smacked the molasses out of Levante in the quarters (4-1 and 0-3), but succumbed to Racing Santander 2-2 in the league this past weekend, ensuring their bad run of form in that competition reached 4 matches. They haven’t won since beating Malaga 2-0 at the Mestalla to end 2011. They’ve drawn against Villarreal, Osasuna, and Racing and even lost to Real Sociedad. Yet they’re still in 3rd. We can beat them, but we won’t.

Official Prediction: 2-2. Newspapers scream about crisis and we all have aneurysms.

Oh, did I mention that Hleb is gone? Pop the champagne, Laporta-style:

Liga Preview: Villarreal-Barcelona, Saturday 4pm ET, ESPN Deportes/ESPN3.com

I was optimistic about their chances going in. They had retained all but Santi Cazorla and Joan Capdevila over the summer (and that perennial goal-monster Jozy Altidore, of course), meaning they had the majority of their team intact. They were missing a playmaker, yes, and a very hit-or-miss left back–also true–and I wrote “Villarreal appears set for a dive down into the table, but the weakness I see in other teams is the ballast that will keep them up at periscope depth.” I was wrong only about one thing: Villarreal was not going to be buoyed by my terrible nautical terminology.

It turns out they’re terrible. They just defeated fellow relegation battlers Sporting Gijon (Preciado’s mustache must have been trimmed for the encounter), but that’s just they’re 4th victory of the season. Their other victories were against Mallorca, Rayo Vallecano, and Real Betis. All have been at home, where they’re a solid 4W-4D-1L (15GF, 10GA). It is virtually identical to Barcelona’s away record: 4W-4D-1L (16GF, 10GA). Roughly speaking, it’s an even match between the 2nd placed side and the 17th placed side.

With Real Madrid facing off against last placed Real Zaragoza at the Bernabeu in the match prior to their own encounter, Barcelona are likely to be facing another 8 point gap. I think it would be fair to say that anything less from los blancos could be fairly treated as an epic tropiezo. The La Liga equivalent of this. For Barça, though, there’s a match to be played regardless of that outcome (no doubt if they lose, Mourinho will ride in the ref’s car all the way home berating him).

Villarreal are no true slouches. Yes, they’ve lost a large number of games (8) and they have the T-15th worst defense in the league with 28 goals allowed, but they have the T-8th best defense at home (10). They drew with Valencia 2-2 at the Madrigal and before that they drew with Real Sociedad at home. They’re capable of stealing points, that’s for sure. Anyone thinking that their 17th place situation is going to stop them from playing their hearts out in front of their own fans is crazy or hasn’t been paying attention the last few years to what goes on in that stadium.

Villarreal’s squad is this: Diego López (GK), César (GK), Mariño (GK), Joan Oriol, Mario, Gonzalo, Ángel, Marchena, Zapata, Musacchio, Marcos Senna, Bruno, Cani, Camuñas, Borja Valero, De Guzmán, Castellani, Marco Ruben, Joselu.

That squad is missing even more key ingredients, including Nilmar as well as long-term injury Giuseppe Rossi. They’ve signed no one in the transfer window, but have also not let anyone go. They remain dangerous given that it’s Marco Ruben that’s their leading goalscorer with 6. Borja Valero comes in with the most assists (4) and holds down their midfield region alongside Marcos Senna. He’s not particularly goalscory this year with just 3 to his name, but he’s capable when the mood takes him, as it did last week with this stunner (better quality at 4:50 here).

Barça are down a few players, yet can still field a rather competitive starting 11. The squad sent to El Madrigal is thus: Valdés, Pinto, Piqué, Fàbregas, Puyol, Xavi, Messi, Thiago, Mascherano, Sergio Busquets, Adriano, Abidal, Alves, Pedro, Jonathan dos Santos, Isaac Cuenca, Sergi Roberto, Cristian Tello.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pep tinker with the lineup even though he knows it’s extremely risky. There’s Valencia on Wednesday in the Copa semifinals, after all. Yet losing any more points to Madrid is, as it was before, an invitation to losing the league, even this early. 5 points is surmountable, but 7 or 8 points seems extremely unlikely. So why not start a solid 11 and get the points? Then bother about Valencia on Wednesday. We’re already missing Iniesta and Alexis from this past Wednesday, so tinkering is a must, but not the point of starting, say, Pedro, right?

Valdes, Alves, Pique, Mascherano, Adriano, Busquets, Xavi, Thiago, Cesc, Messi, Pedro

Official Prediction: 1-2. A very hard game that wears the team down even more and causes a loss in Valencia on Wednesday. Which is okay if we beat Real Sociedad on the rebound. Goals by Adriano and Messi.

Copa Preview: Barcelona – Real Madrid, Wednesday 4pmET, GolTV

Fame and fortune appear to have different effects on different people. Keith Richards describes Mick Jagger as turning from a likeable guy to a sort of uncontrollable showman once the fame went to his head. The same was true of guitarist Brian Jones, but that mostly acid doing the talking after a while. And yes, I’m reading Richards’ autobiography, Life. It’s pretty interesting even though I don’t know much about the Stones or the time in which they came into being. Still, it got me thinking: people who are under intense pressure to produce the best thing in the world at whatever they’re doing (painting, music, football), are as likely as anyone else to crumble or change. Bernd Schuster said that Pepe, a man he signed for a lot of money, is a different person when he puts on his jersey. He wasn’t defending Pepe’s actions–indeed it seems he was doing the opposite–but he was pointing out that the red mist, as a Marine friend of mine called it, descends and you’re changed until it lifts.

That hat is super imposed, isn't it?

You become aware of your own privilege and your own expectations rise to meet that thought. When you’re wronged, there’s a propensity to overreaction. That willingness to cross the line after you’ve been humiliated, shown up, or antagonized (whatever you wish to call what Barça does to RM), is wrong. Perhaps more importantly for what we’re talking about here, it’s also a fundamental a weakness. I firmly believe that Busquets’ willingness to go down too easily is a weakness. I think it harms the team by making refs think, rightly or wrongly, that Barça is faking most of the time. The same is true of off-the-ball incidents like Pepe’s footloose moment. If a team is constantly seen stomping on opponents after the play is over or when the ref isn’t looking, the next match they’re more likely to receive harsher treatment for more innocuous fouls.

When Messi is slammed to the ground in the box and there’s no call, that’s probably thanks to someone else’s faking earlier or even in a different match. When Pepe gets a red card for his studs up challenge on Alves (whether there’s contact or not is immaterial), that’s the previous 20 fouls and after-the-fact video evidence calling it for the ref. That’s natural. Most of the time it’s the player in question who gets the next card or no-call, but sometimes the whole team suffers.

The media coverage of Pepe’s descent into the fires of impetuousness can actually exacerbate the situation by putting even more pressure on a player who is already carrying a lot of weight around on their shoulders. That, in turn, can cause Busi to fall over even more and Pepe to stomp even harder. Being called a cheat can simply make you more of a cheater as you try to make up for the perception.

Does that, then, cause your coach to kind of freak out? Both Tim Vickery and Sid Lowe seem to argue yes, though Sid goes through the motions of talking specifically about what Mourinho did to curb the effects of the leak to Marca and then what happened after that. It’s fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way as Mourinho becomes more hunkered down in his storm shelter and the press go in for the kill, sensing weakness and dreaming of such grand carrion. Perhaps it will all backfire, as both Sergio Ramos and Iker Casillas have been quick to point out that they’re going to lay their lives on the line in tomorrow’s game, for Madrid’s pride, for their own pride.

Yet if they do that, if they really do lay it all out there, will they lose even more than they can possibly gain? At the Camp Nou, the crowd will influence the ref. It’s the way these things work, whether you want them to or not. Their performance in the first leg pretty much ensures a raucous crowd full of whistles and fever-pitch partisanship. When Messi is scythed down, there will be howls of the utmost pain from the stands. When it happens again, it will be for blood. Cards will be shown more quickly and the match will settle into a rhythm in which the slightest touch is exaggerated and the ref is constantly forced to make instant decisions regarding the bookability of fouls. It won’t be easy.

The ref for the match is Teixera Vitienes and he’ll have his hands full. Word on the street is that Pepe, Lassana Diarra, and Esteban Granero are all fitness doubts for the match, but I expect them all to be available and to see the first two play. Di Maria and Sami Khedira look set to miss the match with injuries while Carvalho and Kaka seem to be fully recovered and ready to go.

You’ll forgive me, I hope, for not really caring who they put out. Whatever the plan and whatever the lineup, they’re going to try to win by kicking Barça out of the stadium. That should be clear by now. If they don’t try that, they will be trounced. They’ll press high and they’ll try to force mistakes. With their talent and their athleticism, they can keep that up for a while, but not without the occasional foul to keep the tricky little midgets from running around them. As the match wears on, that means the pressure, the need to win, will mount and they’ll find themselves leaving the boot in, studs raking “accidentally” more and more often. Cards will mount. A red card will be shown. And then the polemic will live on for another cycle. So it goes.

That’s pressure for you. And Barça removed a good deal of the negative pressure from themselves by scoring those 2 second-half goals to shift all of that to their opponents. Remember, a 0-1 win for Madrid means Barça goes through (aggregate score would be 2-2 and Barça would have 2 away goals to 1). Madrid must score at least 2 goals to advance, meaning they must come out to play. And could lead to some nasty collisions between the two teams when FCB starts to threaten.

Quickly, the possible outcomes:

• Any win for Barça and Barça are through
• Any draw and Barça are through
• FCB 0-1 RM and Barça are through (2-2 aggregate)
• FCB 1-2 RM and the match goes to extra time (3-3 aggregate)
• Any win for RM other than those mentioned above and RM are through (ex 0-2, 3-4, 5-13–basically: x-x+2)

So there you have it. The simplest way to think of it is: win and we’re through, draw and we’re through, lose and we’re out. That’ll simplify things quite a bit for you.

Who, though, defends the colors against the hordes of capitaleños trying to storm our fair city? Probably:

Pinto, Alves, Piqué, Puyol, Abidal, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Cesc, Messi, Alexis

Just going out on a limb here. Pedro could start, but he’s been playing like butt recently, so that seems unlikely. Cuenca provides width, but has been youthfully, exuberantly missing for a good while now. I actually forgot he was on the field against Betis for the entire first half.

Pinto just signed a contract extension with the team (yay!), meaning he’s certainly going to start the match tomorrow. He remains our Copa keeper and so we’ll start him. Because that’s how we roll, no matter how bad his keeper error in the first leg was. And it was bad. I feel like I would have saved that, that’s how bad a non-save it was. That is not because I am better than Pinto, far from it, but rather because I would have panicked and curled up into a little ball, thus deflecting the ball to safety since it would have been shot straight at me along the ground. And I would have worn the resulting bruise as a badge of courage for as long as it lasted.

Here’s that fame and fortune thing again, though: Barça is full of the most famous and most fortunate (see what I did there?) of players, yet they don’t seem to be succumbing to pressure in the same way. What Madrid has done is built a need to defeat Barça in order to succeed. What Barça has done is nearly the same, but the pressure is off because of the previous wins. Now that Mourinho appears to be Barça’s whipping boy, Barça’s players can go in prepared and focused on a particular game plan instead of nervous that they’ll screw it all up. Guardiola’s position as coach is secure whether he wins a single trophy this year or not. Mourinho’s is not.

The differences between the players seems fairly obvious too: Jorge Mendes is your agent or you are not important. Perhaps I’m wrong about that, but here are the players who Jorge Mendes represents on the RM squad: Pepe, Carvalho, Cristiano Ronaldo, di Maria, and Coentrao. Here is who Jorge Mendes also represents: Jose Mourinho. Is there much doubt why Mourinho gave little known and even less used Castilla defender Pedro Mendes playing time in a Champions League group stage match? No points if you guess who his agent is. One thing that I should note here is that Jorge Mendes appears to be a very, very good agent and has his hand in lots of cookie jars. His clients on RM’s roster are also amazing players (whatever my bias says at other points, they’re talented) so it’s not hard to see why they get playing time. But they were purchased over other, potentially as good players, because of Jorge Mendes. And the case of Pedro Mendes appears (appears–I don’t know for sure!) to be favoritism thanks to his relative lack of playing time even with Castilla (7 appearances in 21 matches if Wikipedia is up-to-date).

Jorge Mendes: fancier (and probably richer) than you

These differences, real or imagined, seem to be galvanizing a sort of terrible anti-Mourinho climate in Madrid. The opposite is true in Barcelona, where (as far as I know) no super agent controls half the locker room and the coaching staff and maybe that’s coming out now. There are haves and have nots in Barcelona, but they appear to be “can you dominar el balon or not?” questions rather than who represents you. In a world where everyone is absurdly talented, little things like who your agent is can be huge things.

As long as Messi, Xavi, and the rest of the team don’t fall into the drugs and rock’n'roll lifestyle of the Rolling Stones, things shouldn’t fall apart. Certainly there will be players who simply don’t mesh with the overall system (Hleb, Ibrahimovic, even Eto’o), but Guardiola appears to be bringing everyone together and making them a cohesive unit rather than building them into a juggernaut capable of ripping everything in front of them to shreds so help me God. That’s part of the away “doldrums” the team has been experiencing, yet they’ve also won twice at the Bernabeu (who else can say that over the last few years?) and have put together the second best away record in the league.

The pressure is off, though. Barça have won it all in the last couple of years and while everyone wants to continue winning it all, they don’t have to. We, the fans, just want them to. If they don’t, we’re not raging against all things Guardiola or whoever we’re blaming for the loss. We’re moving on to the next match, where our expectations shift to “let’s pick this up” instead of “let’s get a manita”. That’s healthy.

Madrid fans are ticked, no matter what’s going on, if they keep losing to Barça and getting bounced from tournaments. The most recent loss must have been extra hard because they have the tools to attack for 90 minutes, but instead chose to go a full match with a regiment of defensive midfielders and an actual trench in front of the goal fronted by barbed wire. And they still lost. So now there’s morepressure to perform at the Camp Nou. There’s more pressure to do something spectacular and finally beat Barcelona in a way that really hurts.

Official Prediction: 1-1. I think the game gets bogged down in midfield (read: fouls) and we squeak out. Our goal by Messi, because it’s in the Camp Nou.

Also, Happy Birthday to Xavi, who turns as old as Gandalf today, but has just as much magic as that old geezer too. Kari demands that I link to this (admittedly awesome) picture of him.

And, yeah:

Let's hope for better field conditions

Liga Preview: Málaga – Barcelona, Sunday 12noon ET, GolTV

It’s the first week of the season, everyone! Time to celebrate! There’s a full 38 matches ahead of us and we’ve got quite the schedule lined up for the next–wait, what? Oh, it’s actually the midway point, we’re just calling it the first match of the season? Why would we do that? Oh, RFEF is completely insane? Right. I’d forgotten about that.

So it’s Málaga now, the new big boys on the block, or so they’d have you think. The odd thing is, I’m not sure why they’re not doing better than they are. Yet I bet against them before the season started, saying they wouldn’t make the Champions League spot so many said they would. They’re rich, they’re talented, and they’ve got a good manager, but they’re not really a team yet. They don’t have an identity you can point to and say “this is how Málaga rolls.” They don’t roll. They’re just Málaga.

Their offseason additions were something you could nod at and say “Shnikies, that’s some good stuff.” Expenditures topped €50m with Santi Cazorla being prized from Villarreal for €19m on one of the final days of the transfer window. They brought in Joaquin and Diego Buonanotte, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Jérémy Toulalan. Sergio Sánchez and Nacho Monreal. Martín Demichelis and Joris Mathijsen. They offloaded a good many players as well, but none of them brought in a red cent. They were positioning themselves behind Qatari oil money (for shame!) for a big run. They were closing the gap between the Big 2 and the have nots with giant strides.

And now, 18 matches in, they’re in 10th with a game in hand over several of their better-ranked rivals. They’re only a point from a Europa League spot, but that point could be hard to come by given the other teams involved. Athletic Bilbao has leapfrogged them and Sevilla looks more than capable of pushing towards Levante’s 4th place spot. Espanyol may be surprising a lot of onlookers, but they’re not half bad and they seem to have hit a vein of form. Levante could be weakening, but they’re hosting last place Zaragoza tomorrow, which should be 3 more points and could put them almost out of reach for Málaga unless the los boquerones can manage something against FCB.

That’s the point, though, isn’t it? Málaga was supposed to be challenging for something, not hoping to get the last seat at the European table. They put up a fight against Real Madrid, but couldn’t close the deal at 2-0 up in the first leg, eventually succumbing 4-2 on aggregate, but that about sums up their season. They haven’t won a league match since November 28 when they beat Villarreal 2-1. Since, they’ve drawn 2 and lost 3, including matches to Real Sociedad and Sporting Gijon. They’re playing like a mid-table club: 10th in goals scored (21) and 10th in goals allowed (24).

The silver lining is that they’re good at home (5W-2D-1L, 13GF 9GA) while Barça continues to have an up-and-down season on the road (3W-4D-1L, 12GF 9GA). That suggests a pretty good, even match is coming our way. They were called Maulaga for a reason the last couple of years, but now they’re trying to play a bit and they’re no longer playing Weligton enough to warrant a real BFB shoutout to the original Pepe. He’s basically a hipster. He was stomping on Messi before stomping on Messi was cool. So he’s a stompster. Okay, I’m going to do it: Boo Weligton!

Everyone scores for Málaga. Cazorla leads the way with 4 goals, but after that, there are 5 players with 2 goals apiece.

Barcelona are traveling with everyone save the injured Fontàs, Villa, and Afelley and Keita who is on ACN duty. Pedro was declared fit and included in the squad, so he’ll be traveling alongside everyone plus the B-teamers Cuenca, Sergi Roberto, and Jonathan dos Santos. I suspect Pedro will be reserved for a substitute role, but that he’ll make an appearance regardless of what the scoreline is. If we’re down or level, he’ll come on to beef up the attack. If we’re winning, he’ll come on to beef up the attack. It’s how things go around these parts. Though, did you realize Pedro only has 1 league goal this year? Well whether you did or not, he only has 1. Crazy!

With Real Madrid hosting Athletic Bilbao, it’s likely that any slip up on Barça’s part will result in an 8-point gap. That can’t be allowed, as Guardiola has noted. No more points can be dropped if the league is to be contested. What I love about that article is that Guardiola notes the danger Málaga presents. Pellegrini is no fool and he’s pushed Barcelona to the brink with a 96 point league haul when he was managing Real Madrid. That’s pretty much the hotness except Barça got 99 points. Crazy, right? Yup. But that’s how things have been going and it’s why Málaga is having such a hard time breaking into the big crowd. It’s quite the gap to bridge.

Play hard, play well, play correctly. Get 3 points. Make the world swoon. Whatever gets you motivated, do it. Get it going. That motor should be purring because if it’s not, there goes La Liga. And remember, it’s only the halfway stage. That’s how messed up this league is.

Predicted lineup: Valdes, Alves, Mascherano, Puyol, Abidal, Busquets, Xavi, Cesc, Messi, Alexis, Adriano

Official Prediction: 1-2. Bitter game, but we get the necessary points. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be physical. And it’s going to be Alves and Cesc with the goals.