by Sergi
This week, attention partially shifted from the league to the National Cup (Copa del Rey), where some unexpected results took place and convinced many people that this new cup format copied from the English league (playing a single game in the lower division team's venue instead of a two-round series) is a good thing, because the games are much more thrilling than the usually boring games in previous years. This way, Valencia lost in the penalties round to Guadix, a team currently at the bottom of the table in 2nd Division B (kind of the third division), and Deportivo lost to 2nd division leader Tenerife. To sum up, quite a few first division teams were knocked out, and Barcelona is the only one alive amongst the 4 big teams, thus the main favorite.
This past weekend back in the league, Real Madrid scored their 7th straight win away against Alaves, in a stadium where few teams have won over the past years, and are looking really solid leading the table along with Valencia - but with one game less. Valencia is still on top after beating Racing 1-0 at home in a boring game, where the fans showed their anger at the team because of their earlier cup K.O. Deportivo lost away 3-1 at Valladolid and seems to be losing ground, with a lot of problems when playing away from home.
Barcelona and Oviedo played a fantastic, offensively minded football game last Sunday. The score was 2-3 to Barcelona, but it could have been bigger because both sides played an attacking style that provided a lot of chances and a fantastic show to all fans watching the game. For Barça, Rivaldo played very well, suprising us with a bunch of nice passes to his teammates instead of his usual one-man show. If he can keep playing at this level of sharing the spotlight with his teammates while still proving to be a goal-scoring threat for the opposition, Barça's performance could increase dramatically.
click here for the latest Spanish League table.
