An early preview: Real Sociedad - Barcelona, Saturday 1pm EST

By: Isaiah | May 1st, 2007

Estadio Anoeta: beautiful, perhaps deadly

It’s perhaps a bit early for a preview of the weekend matches, but whatever, I’ve written it and I’m sticking to it, with a minor adjustment on Thursday/Friday when the rosters come out. So:

Barcelona can assure themselves of retaining first place in La Liga on Saturday when they travel north to face second-to-last Real Sociedad. On paper this game is already over, but as we learned against Levante, the blaugrana are not in top form going into the final sixth of the season. Still, there are relatively few absentees (Marquez is the most prominent) and the game should go somewhat smoothly. Because I’m an American sports fan, I’ll have to break this matchup down as statistically as possible:

Previous meeting: Barcelona 1-0 over Real Sociedad on December 9 (week 14). Ronaldinho scored the goal in what was a game dominated by Barcelona, but narrowly escaped anyway (sounds like Levante, if you ask me), but that was with a squad being rested for the Club World Championship and without then-injured Eto’o and Messi, not to mention Puyol left in the 27th minute with a slight knock. This time around, Barcelona come with guns blazing and needing a victory far more than they did before they took what amounted to a holiday to Japan. Anyway, Sylvinho got a red card in that game (a second yellow in the 85th minute), but you can imagine that won’t happen again.

Real Sociedad’s home record: 5W-3D-8L (17 goals scored, 21 allowed; 18 pts)
Barcelona’s away record: 5W-5D-6L (24 goals scored, 20 allowed; 20pts)

On paper this is a pretty even match, especially when you consider that Sociedad has improved greatly over the last few weeks, having lost only twice in 7 matches since March 11 (4W-1D-2L, 13pts). Barcelona have exactly the same league record over that period of time (plus a 5-2 beating of Getafe that included that “Messidona” goal) including losses away to Zaragoza and Villareal. That is, obviously, the achilles heel of this vaunted team, who really should be running away with the league at this stage and they would be but for that startling large 6 in the loss column. Not a single loss at home, but venture away from Barcelona and the blaugrana just seem to become, well, mediocre.

The solace one can take from Barcelona’s away losses [Real Madrid (2-0), Espanyol (3-1), Valencia (2-1), Sevilla (2-1), Zaragoza (1-0) Villareal (2-0)] is that only only 2 of those are not against top 4 teams and Villareal is 10th and Espanyol 12th. That Espanyol has extra motivation against their cross-city rivals cannot be forgotten. Few people like visiting Zaragoza, no one likes visiting the Bernabeu or the Mestalla, and Sanchez Pizjuan is quickly rising to those heights as well. The Anoeta isn’t very feared this year, but it’s no walk in the park.