Villareal - Barcelona; Sunday 3pm EST: The Legacy of Juan Roman Riquelme
By: Isaiah | April 20th, 2007
After a week that pushed Barcelona 4 points clear in the league and included a ridiculous goal by Leo Messi in the Copa del Rey, they play at Sevilla’s El Madrigal with an eye on shoring up their advantage over Sevilla and Real Madrid. Sevilla plays Athletic Bilbao while Real Madrid take on Valencia at the Bernabeu in the what has to be termed the game of the week in La Liga, if not Europe as a whole.
Back to the Villareal match, which comes with a full plate of interesting statistics. Villareal have lost 2 in a row and haven’t won in the 4 matches, not since beating Levante 0-2 on March 10. It is a team, however, that has beaten Real Madrid and drawn with Sevilla in the second half of the season. They aren’t particularly proficient in front of net, having netted only 29 goals yet allowing 39 (league average is 34.75). Barcelona have 60 goals scored and 27 goals allowed, it’s just that on the road they’ve scored 24 and allowed 18 while at home Villareal have 15 goals scored and 16 allowed at home, meaning a draw looks pretty inevitable except that Barcelona have Ronaldinho returning to recreate the “trident” as the Spanish press call the combo of Ronnie, Messi, and Eto’o. Villareal lost Matias Fernandez and Jon Dahl Tomasson to injury.
Here’s another reason Barcelona are going to beat Villareal: the leader in assists for “the Yellow Submarine” is one Juan Roman Riquelme. That Riquelme plays for Boca Juniors now is the most obvious point, but his numbers are 6 assists for Villareal during this season and he hasn’t played for them since lord knows when (November/December 2006?). That no one has since been able to get even that many assists for the whole season is emblematic of what has gone wrong for Villareal. They can’t score because they can’t create, which they can’t do because they can’t keep posession. Against Barcelona there isn’t going to be a ton of time in which to create because posession is Barcelona’s game.
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