BARCELONA – Displaced from the leadership after drawing in Seville and contemplating the controversial victory of Real Madrid in San Sebastián, Barcelona receives Athletic on Tuesday at the Camp Nou having lost to the Zidane team the command of the championship, a situation that, reached day 30 is usually final.
Only in three of the last twenty years the team that came as leader on matchday 30 did not proclaim itself champion. It would be necessary to move to the 2006-07 season to find the last time that happened: Barça de Rijkaard was leader with 59 points, five more than Real Madrid, and the merengue team, led by Fabio Capello ended up conquering the title for best goal average.
Previously it happened in the 2003-04 season, when the Valencia of Rafa Benítez was proclaimed champion after the leader of Carlos Queiroz’s Madrid on this day, and in 2001-02, Valencia being the leader and snatching the Madrid trophy from him. Vicente del Bosque.
In fact, Barcelona should go back to the Dream Team era to find favorable precedents. In the 1991-92 season he was second after Real Madrid and in 1993-94 he was chasing Deportivo de La Coruña. On both occasions he won the title on the last day and both times he took advantage of the error of the two leaders in that final match … An exceptional situation and not repeated from there.
This ‘new normal’, an unfavorable situation at this point in LaLiga, forces Barcelona to take the last eight days of the championship as authentic finals, knowing that any mistake can permanently dislodge him from the race for the title and more so considering Real Madrid has added the nine disputed points, with or without controversy, after the coronavirus break. Without De Jong (it will be necessary to know how long) and causing more doubts than certainties for his game, the Setién team receives an Athletic team that last season started a draw that would now be tragic but that they lost in their 14 previous visits.
Setién did not miss the opportunity, this Monday, to put on the stage the refereeing controversy, repeating that he can only dedicate himself “to play and forget what we cannot control”, but pending an alignment that must improvise, with the center of the field in the foreground, it is no stranger to that any result that is not a Barça victory against Athletic would provoke a real earthquake around the Camp Nou.
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