La Liga, Week 6: Barcelona Wins 2-3 With Controversial Red Card, Hand Ball

For Fabregas to have the creativity to turn the most innocuous of clashes into a red card is pretty spectacular. And amazingly, it worked.

The referee, who is in the box and not watching the clash at all, showed the red card like he knew what was going on the whole time. His ability to see Fabregas get “mauled” while looking the other direction is mind-blowing. Some people just have extraordinary talents, apparently.

You can never tell when you’re watching a game that you’ll remember in five, ten years. You never just decide to sit down and watch it--well, unless your side is in the final of some competition, and even then you might forget if they lose. No, it’s almost impossible to predict.

Sevilla played a magnificent game tonight. They went ahead in the first half on a smashed shot by Trochowski in the 23rd minute. They matched Barcelona ball-for-ball for good chunks of the game, spearheading a strong defense-counterattack regime that has worked well over the past couple of years. When Álvaro Negredo culminated a brilliant counter-attack in the 48th minute with a golazo of his own, Sevilla looked again like the dominant club it had been a few years ago.

Valencia hasn’t had an easy game in a while; that changed today when they hosted perennial cellar dwellars Zaragoza. Pellegrino’s Valencia has been under a tremendous amount of pressure, for, oh an essentially infinite amount of time at this point--fans of los ché are hard to please, and expect their team to be perennial championship contenders. But with the amount of money being thrown around by the two leviathans of la Liga, it’s looking more and more like Valencia are going to be relegated to a battle for third--sparing any major catastrophe...like the one Madrid might be having right now.

Feghouli got the goals flowing in this one early, when, on 12 minutes, he blasted in a second chance opportunity off a corner. He would be ejected later in the game--a very questionable second yellow--but the first goal was more than enough for Valencia. Viera knocked in the second on 59 minutes, but the game was pretty much over by then. It’s not that Valencia played great--it seemed more that Zaragoza just can’t score, even when they should--but that they played well enough to win.

Sevilla injuries and suspensions

None Reported