4th place, a tie, Espanyol and Athens next week?

By: Javier | March 5th, 2009

I love me some intense football. Doesn’t everyone? One thing I started loving about La Liga this season is how close the race is. O r at least how intense it is to have more then just two good teams in the League. Enough bashing about the EPL, I’m just pissed off due to United winning today and crushing all hope for Liverpool to progress. Boring, old news, what else is new. Now back to Spain where football is actually fun to watch and somehow always a little darker to see (I think my TV could be on the frits..)

La Liga: Real Betis 2 Villarreal 2

Back to what I was saying, exciting football. Villarreal goes off to Sevilla and takes on Betis to win us some points to get us out of the 4th place chair. Our previous game with them ended in a 2-1 with us winning, so this wasn’t exactly going to be Sporting Gijion. Villarreals offensive and defensive side has been increasing in progress, which can delight any yellow sub supporter.
First Half
I got my Cheese-Its, beverage of choice ready and holy shit, is that a goal already? Not only is it a goal but quite the unique little one at it. Santi Cazorla sides on over and loses the defender to get quite the ball off the top bar. Great goal and great start for Villarreal. Placing dominance in the first half is key! Yesh. Rossi seems a lot more comfortable with this formation aka the non Senna formation as I like to call it. Not that Senna doesn’t do anything, its just the idea of Rossi playing more as a midfield/striker then just having him as a lone forward. Kinda like the Italy team against Spain in the Euro. When they had a 5-4-1 formation with Luca Toni standing all alone. Rossi’s attacks on goal either resulted in a offside position, or just a simple miss. Jersey boy will get one in there once someone notices how he can pull a Torres run when timed right. Santi Cazorla gets another beautiful touch to shoot it down the bottom 90 of the goal. 2-0 and the first half is right at the end. Minimal chances, good defence, good attacking, good eats, what else could you ask for in a football game? Nada.
Second Half
Diego Godin wasn’t the only one hitting the ground after that little screw up. We just started the half as well. Goes to show that you really do have to pay attention when the ref blows the whistle to start the game…Diedgo >_>. We recovered from our mistakes and started playing offensively again. Not bad, only to fall short once more in the defense. This time it isn’t entirely our fault..and by not entirely I mean the through ball to the cross, yeah, we didn’t have control, but who the F*** was covering Ricardo Oliveira. If you count our goalie as someone, then ok, but usually you put a defender to do that job. Another goal conceded and thank God for that. Nothing went our way after that. Small touches turned into big mistakes and could of make the difference in the game. Luckily Betis was happy enough with the tie, or so it seemed.
Final Score 2-2 and a broken Cheese-It found somewhere under my chair. (Hate when that happens)
I guess 4th place and gaining one point isn’t too bad. Better then getting nothing, mirite?

Espanyol

We’ve tied you at home, we can certainly pick up some points here as well. Villarreal isn’t exactly how Man City is when they play home compared to away, but we do have quite the significant edge when were at home . Espanyol has been taking their hell month with facing Barcelona and Real Madrid one after another. Surprisingly enough if you remember my previous post or are a Barca fan, you remember the win they got against them (and surely their downfall). Real Madrid placed a threat and buried them 0-2. Now riddle me this, how do you lose to Madrid but win against undefeated Barca. Quite the enigma we have here. This game should be a good one to watch, and if I’m not mistaken, it will air on GolTV on Saturday. I’ll provide edited details/links if that happens to change.

Going to see the next Champions League game? Fear not Villarreal has you covered!

Straight up from villarreal.com tells about how they’re getting all the supporters ready for some Champions League football by planning some hotel trips and food plans. For the great price of € 1275 you can get all of this! Quite swell if you ask me. Athens can be quite the scary place, and Villarreal has you covered. I doubt theres any Valencians here that actually have club membership, but I thought it was quite the interesting read from the website.
Whats up Zeus?