Recreativo Huelva - Barcelona: Saturday 4pm EST (GolTV)

By: Isaiah | April 11th, 2008

While El Mundo Deportivo reports that a Ronnie-to-Milan deal has been reached for €30million, the focus for the team must be on Recreativo Huelva and regaining some sort of foothold on the league title — or at least not slipping further behind Real Madrid. With that in mind, we travel to Huelva with the following squad:

Valdés, Pinto, Abidal, Thuram, Sylvinho, Zambrotta, Puyol, Milito, Edmílson, Márquez, Touré Yaya, Xavi, Gudjohnsen, Messi, Eto’o, Giovani, Víctor Vázquez, Ezquerro.

Oh. Hell. Yes: MESSIIII. It’s so great to see him back in the squad list, even if he doesn’t start. It’s perhaps best to start him and then take him off once he tires, but Rijkaard tends to sub on recently injured players at around the 65 minute mark, so expect that. The bad news, of course, is who will start if he doesn’t? Read the squad list again and note that there’s no Iniesta, Henry, or Bojan thanks to injuries. Marquez looks like he get some time, despite having reinjured his foot in practise this week. So what lineup do we start with?

Valdes, Zambrotta, Sylvinho, Puyol, Milito, Sylvinho, Toure, Xavi, Gudjohnsen, Messi, Eto’o

That’s what I’m going with, but you could easily see Guddie or Messi replaced by Gio. If the game goes well, the first sub off should be Messi (perhaps so even if it is going badly). Sylvinho gets the nod, I think, because of Abidal’s lack of effort/ineffectiveness against Schalke; perhaps Rijkaard is going to take subtle revenge for Puyol’s card by keeping “Abi” on the bench.* We don’t have a midweek game this week, though, so perhaps Abidal will get the start after all, especially if Sylvinho can be used as an attacking sub later on since we’re missing so many offensive weapons.

Let’s do some statistical analysis, shall we? It can’t hurt, can it? At worst I’ll make an “informed” guess at the scoreline and get that wrong. At best I’ll make an “informed” guess at the scoreline and get it right. We have so much to look forward to!

It’s an away game for Barcelona, which hasn’t been pretty this year: 4W-7D-4L. In terms of wins, that puts us tied for 11th with Sevilla, Betis, and Recre themselves. Our goals scored (22) is 4th best, while our goals allowed (20) is 7th best. Away points: 19 points away after 15 matches, meaning we’ve left 26 points on the table in away games alone. Yowza. This becomes an absolute must-win game if we’re to challenge for the title, especially since Real Madrid host 19th placed Murcia at the Bernabeu.

Recreativo Huelva, however, are 17th for a reason and that reason would be their home form: 5W-5D-5L with 19 goals scored and 20 allowed. So, in a lot of ways, the form between the teams is even (they’ve left 25 points on the table at home). They’re 7th worst in terms of goals allowed and tied for 11th best in goals scored at home. Their leading scorer is Florent Sinama-Pongolle with 9, by the way. The team also comes into the match on a streak of 2 Wins, 1 Draw, and 2 Losses in their last five league games (compare that to Barcelona’s 1 Win, 2 Draws, and 2 Losses). We’ll see which team shows up, the one that gave Real Madrid a 3-2 run for their money in early February or the side that fell to Mallorca 7-1 the following week.

I think that they’ll play hard and will come at our meager lineup with a large amount of venom. It will be all that we can do to keep the ball out of our net, but having Puyol and Milito in there together will help solidify things and get us back on course. 2-1, baby, both our goals by Eto’o.

*When it comes to nicknames, no one beats what Amare Stoudamire of the Suns did on Wednesday against the Spurs: after receiving a nice pass from Steve Nash, Amare went up and superdunked the ball from about 800 feet away (he can fly). Fortunately he was “WIRED” by the ESPN crew that night and we all got to hear him say “Nice pass, Two Time,” which is apparently what he and possibly others call the two-time league MVP. Can we come up with some nicknames like that for our squad? Maybe Ezquerro can be “One Time” for how many appearances he makes in a season? Any other ideas?