Liga Preview: Osasuna-Barcelona, Saturday 2pmET

Osasuna? You want to talk about Osasuna? Okay, sure, I suppose I have the time for that. I remember the games of old, when it was mud and fog and Messi scoring golazos. I would probably remember the 8-0 we laid on them at the Camp Nou earlier had I been able to watch, but alas, I was cavorting in Hanoi, Vietnam and had no time to watch matches at 4am or whatever the time difference made it. I remember sitting at the laptop provided by my lovely hotel (which is just a straight up classy move) and looking up the scores the following day.

An actual conversation (though perhaps not exact quotes):

Me: Holy smokes.
Mrs. The Lady: What? [puts on concerned face]
Me: Barça just won 8-0 nothing!
MTL: Wow, that’s amaz–[puts on annoyed face] I mean, who cares?
Me: Messi got a hat trick!
MTL: Should we have phở for lunch?
Me: Villa got two. That’s called a brace in England; I assume for asinine reasons.
MTL: We could head over to that bún bò place we saw.
Me: They scored an own goal.
MTL: Ha, that was dum–I mean, [puts on angry face] phở or not?
Me: Fine, fine, pho it is. Hey, how come I can’t say it with the nifty Vietnamese letters?
MTL: [puts on troll face] Poor genetic material.
Me:

That was back when life was good (except for that pesky 2-2 draw with Real Sociedad) and we were absolutely obliterating teams at the Camp Nou (except for that pesky 0-0 draw with Sevilla). And now, now that we are being manhandled by various opposition away from home (except for the 1-4 win at Malaga), well, this one should prove tough. Osasuna, though, haven’t won since a December 18 at home to Villarreal. They’ve lost to Racing Santander and Atletico Madrid while they’ve drawn against Real Sociedad, Valencia, and most recently Sporting Gijon. 3 points out of 15 isn’t exactly the way to maintain your Europa League status and, as you would expect, they’ve slipped from 5th at the New Year to 9th.

The squad list: Valdés, Pinto, Alves, Piqué, Cesc, Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Thiago, Mascherano, Pedro, Adriano, Abidal, Alexis, Cuenca, Dos Santos, Roberto, Tello

Pedro is back (hopefully with his ! in tow), but Busquets has remained sidelined, meaning we’ll obviously bring back Romeu and buy Bale as well as clone a cheaper Yaya. Tello should start because he’s simply better than Cuenca right now. Iniesta might or might not start, depending on health and Pep’s willingness to risk him ahead of a Champions League clash…you know what? Who cares, let’s play:

Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Abidal, Mascherano, Iniesta, Xavi, Cesc, Messi, Tello.

This is how it must be. Guardiola says we will fight, so fight we must. There is no time for fatigue. There is no time for escaping pandas. Wait, yes there is!

Official Prediction: 0-4. Cause we play ball this day.

Copa Preview: Barcelona-Valencia, Wednesday 3pm ET

I know what I’ve said in the past about it. I know that I’ve gone on record saying it isn’t worth our time, it isn’t that important, can’t we just take warm baths instead of sweating it out through too many two-legged affairs? And I still agree with it…for the most part. There’re are only two matches that we might as well win since, hell, we’re here anyway. And that’s this second leg semifinal and the potential final.  And, of course, anything against The Enemy, but that’s something else entirely.

If we win this game, there’s only 1 extra game to play and it’s for silverware, so we might as well win this match we have to play in anyway since we’re in a good position to do so. We’re 1-1 with an away goal and the ball in our stadium. Why not get a little bee in our bonnet and go ahead and take down Athletic Bilbao, who beat poor little Spanish Rudy, Mirandes, 6-2 at San Mames to qualify for the final (9-4 on aggregate). I like Athletic and all–they’re my “second team”…which means they’re my first Toquero–but if it’s Barça vs anyone, I’m going with the boys in blaugrana. Even in a “meaningless” and “frivolous” “ode to flagrant lameness” (all quotes of Isaiah at some point in the last week, though not necessarily about the Copa del Rey…yes, I use the word “frivolous” in conversation sometimes…and I’m often sorry about it).

WATCH OUT IT’S PANDAS ON A SLIDE

Yeah, that kind of just happens from time to time in my life. I’m getting used to it. Sometimes they go on planes like normal people, you know. And now, back to your regularly scheduled second half of the preview:

Valencia is in the doldrums, of sorts. They’ve drawn 3 league matches in a row and since drawing is the new losing, they’re big time losers.  Barça, meanwhile, is getting stronger as both Pedro and Iniesta trained. Puyol, however, apparently tried to eat Iniesta. Bad capita!

With Busquets still injured from his clash with what appeared to be a velociraptor talon, Mascherano will probably take over the midfield role we all kind of expected him to be spending the majority of his time in anyway. Or, perhaps, Pep will field another possession midfielder and we’ll just have 18 of them on the field (they add up in height to 5). That’s always possible.

Pinto, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Abidal, Xavi, Thiago, Cesc, Jonathan dos Santos, Alexis, Messi…Tello, Cuenca, Sergi Roberto, Muniain, Bilbo Baggins…

Official Prediction: 2-1, we advance with 2 goals by Messi. I hear someone called him out. Playing at a low level? It’s on now, buddy boy. Oh yes. It is on.

Oh,  you wanted live panda cams? You got it, friend.

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:

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: