- Barcelona ( 43 Points , Goal Difference +42 )
- Real Madrid ( 41 , +27 )
- Villarreal (33 , +16 )
- Valencia ( 28 , +5 )
- Espanyol ( 28, -4 )
- Atletico Madrid (26 , +8 )
The gulf between Top 2 and the rest is going on increasing !!!
Real Madrid v Sevilla (1-0)
77' Di Maria
Espanyol v Barcelona (1-5)
63' Osvaldo
19' , 61' Pedrito
30' Xavi
76' , 84' David Villa
Top 6 , After 16 Rounds
- Barcelona ( 43 Points , Goal Difference +42 )
- Real Madrid ( 41 , +27 )
- Villarreal (33 , +16 )
- Valencia ( 28 , +5 )
- Espanyol ( 28, -4 )
- Atletico Madrid (26 , +8 )
The gulf between Top 2 and the rest is going on increasing !!!
La Liga- Tope 10 transfers of the season
10
Pablo Osvaldo
Espanyol
The Argentine-born Italian initially joined Espanyol on loan in January 2010 from Bologna but made his move to the Cornella-El Prat permanent this summer for around €5 million. After scoring seven goals in his 20 half-a-season appearances last term, he has already bagged six goals in 11 outings for the Blanc-i-Blau so far. It's a more than respectable return for an under-rated striker, one who is a key component in an Espanyol side lacking a reliable finisher.
CASTROL RANKING: 37
9
Filipe Luis
Atletico Madrid
Atletico Madrid's backline may not be the most solid defence in the world, but one player in the side who has been a stand-out is Filipe Luis, signed from Deportivo La Coruna for €12m. The archetypal marauding Brazilian full-back is not only a consistent performer at the back, but his wing play gives Atleti extra width and dimension in attack.
CASTROL RANKING: 1026
8
Tino Costa
Valencia
Despite a fairly hefty price tag of €6.5m, Tino arrived in La Liga from Montpellier as a virtual unknown. But it didn't take long for followers of Spanish football to stand up and take notice of the 24-year-old midfielder with a killer left foot when he scored a gem of a goal on Matchday One of the Champions League. Not content with that, his two goals in La Liga so far have been absolute show-stoppers: a volley against Getafe, and a Roberto Carlos-esque free-kick against Real Sociedad.
CASTROL RANKING: 157
7
Roberto Soldado
Valencia
Soldado just edged his Valencia team-mate Aritz Aduriz into the top 10. Signed from Getafe for €8m as a replacement for David Villa, Soldado has a better conversion rate in La Liga - five goals in 1029 minutes - compared to Aduriz's six in 1136 minutes. Plus, Soldado has been more consistent and prolific in Champions League competition.
CASTROL RANKING: 45
6
Mesut Oezil
Real Madrid
Kaka who? Young Oezil has made Real Madrid fans forget all about Kaka's long-term injury spell thanks to his dazzling, vibrant displays in attack. The German playmaker, signed from Werder Bremen for €15m, picked up where he left off at the 2010 World Cup, adapting quickly to his new club environment to become one of Los Blancos' most important players so far this term, as his four goals and six assists will attest.
CASTROL RANKING: 53
5
Borja Valero
Villarreal
The crafty deep-lying playmaker may only be at Villarreal on loan from West Brom, but he has made an instant impact at El Madrigal. Voted as the Best Spanish Player in the 2009-10 season by Don Balon during his loan stint with Mallorca, Borja has carried that form with him to El Submarino. He has been rewarded for his consistency with his first ever call-up to the senior Spanish national team in October, not an easy feat to achieve these days.
CASTROL RANKING: 238
4
Angel Di Maria
Real Madrid
The Argentine was Real Madrid's most expensive signing this summer when he moved from Benfica for €25m. The versatile winger has come to his team's rescue on numerous occasions so far, either providing sumptuous assists or scoring vital goals when Los Blancos were in need of some inspirational magic. In 16 La Liga games, he has netted five times and created four others.
CASTROL RANKING: 819
3
David Villa
Barcelona
'El Guaje' took a while to get going in a Barcelona shirt following his €40m move from Valencia. His first two months were littered with highlights of glaring misses and wayward shots, and a vast collection of offsides. But as his Barca team-mates clicked into gear after a tepid start to the campaign, so has Villa and he is once again demonstrating his prolific scoring touch: nine goals in the last eight La Liga games of 2010, he is now third in the Pichichi race.
CASTROL RANKING: 13
2
David Trezeguet
Hercules
The most typical of typical target strikers, Trezeguet has wasted no time making his mark in La Liga with tiny Hercules. The 33-year-old, signed on a free from Juventus, has netted against Valencia, Sevilla, Villarreal and Real Madrid among others. He has scored eight goals in total in 14 starts, just three shy of Villa at this stage of the season, but with nowhere near the attacking luxuries that the Barca forward has at his disposal.
CASTROL RANKING: 630
1
Ricardo Carvalho
Real Madrid
Never would anyone have thought that the best bit of business done by Real Madrid would involve a defender. It may not come as a surprise for some that Carvalho has impressed - considering his experience and his understanding with coach Jose Mourinho - but it is something of a surprise that he has settled in so quickly and effortlessly in a Madrid side that perenially suffers from defensive woes. And for a bargain price of just €8m, he is La Liga's best summer signing.
CASTROL RANKING: 63
Originally Posted by samsha22
Thanks Samsha
thanks samsha.. nice article..
Every flight begins with a fall.
Upcoming fixtures
Sunday, 2 January 2011
02 JAN11 08:30pm Athletic Bilbao v Deportivo
02 JAN11 10:30pm Barcelona v Levante , Live on Ten Action Plus
02 JAN11 10:30pm Sporting Gijon v Malaga
03 JAN11 12:30am Sevilla v Osasuna , Live on Ten Action Plus
03 JAN11 02:30am Valencia v Espanyol , Live on Ten Action Plus
Monday, 3 January 2011
04 JAN11 12:30am Atletico Madrid v Racing
04 JAN11 12:30am Mallorca v Hercules
04 JAN11 12:30am Zaragoza v Sociedad
04 JAN11 12:30am Villarreal v Almeria , Live on Ten Action Plus
04 JAN11 02:30am Getafe v Real Madrid , Live on Ten Action Plus
This is the time for lists, the last day of the year, a time to line up the best and the worst, the highs and the lows, the top tens — and all other kinds of lists. But what follows is none of these. It is merely a celebration of beauty seen through a single pair of human eyes and enacted by a bunch of preternaturally gifted and inventive bunch of footballers playing in the Spanish La Liga
Welcome the boys of Barcelona FC, a team of footballers who have played as cultured and classically graceful a brand of soccer this year as any team might have ever put on show in the long history of the sport.
In the year of the football World Cup, a year in which Sachin Tendulkar proved that age is nothing more than a state of mind as he scaled peaks that might have seemed insurmountable even to the great man only a few years ago, during a season when Rafael Nadal became the first male player since the legendary Rod Laver to win three Grand Slam titles in a row in a calendar year, to zero in on the very best objectively is almost impossible.
In the event, this is not an attempt to pick the Sportsperson of the Year, which could well be Sachin or Rafa, or even the team of the year, which is undoubtedly the Spanish football side that won the World Cup in South Africa.
On the other hand, this is this column's salute to a team that has authored a style of football that is the very definition of what Tele Santana described as Jogo Bonito (Beautiful Game).
Beauty in sport, as in life, is not an objectively definable quality, but this much is true: the Barca symphony orchestra has stirred responses that have only rarely been touched by sport. Watching them at their best is an experience quite like savouring the rich lyricism of Rubinstein's Chopin.
Prosaic into poetic
Messi, Iniesta, Xavi and Co. have turned the prosaic into the poetic while proving, yet again, that to the finest of sports teams, how they play matters as much as the result. And, for connoisseurs who believe that the journey itself is the destination, Pep Guardiola's boys have offered some of the year's most uplifting moments on the field.
If beating arch-rivals Real Madrid 5-0 was an operatic performance, then the geometric precision of Barca's short-passing game left many football fans in a dizzy state. And they have played with their customary creativity, passion and brilliance for a good part of the last three years
Jose Mourinho, the highly accomplished Real Madrid coach, said after that match that the Barcelona attack made his team feel “impotent.” Then again, seldom do we get to see such a potent attack. Barca's inventive midfield and rampaging frontline played with tremendous confidence and panache against the richest football club in the world with a hugely impressive line-up featuring Madrid's poster boy Cristiano Ronaldo.
In sport, there is always the tension between diametrically competing impulses, not the least when an individual or a team is supremely gifted. Do you follow your instincts or fall back on conservative (read that pragmatic, if you wish) reasoning? This is something that every top player and coach has had to wrestle with.
And, the beautiful game is fraught with risks, as several great sides, including Johan Cryuff's wonderfully creative World Cup side in 1974 and the Brazilian team featuring Zico and Socrates — which produced moments of sublime football before an inspired Paulo Rossi taught them a lesson in the 1982 World Cup — have found out to their dismay.
This is precisely why we should celebrate Barca, for they have consistently managed to create awe-inspiring moments on the field while courting success for the most part. They won six major titles in 2009, including a Spanish treble and the Club World Cup.
Comparisons galore
Inevitably, there are comparisons to some of the great club sides of the past — the Real Madrid team of 1960 starring Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo di Stefano, Pele's Santos in the early 1960s, Benfica in 1961-62 with Eusebio as its hero, Matt Busby's Manchester United featuring the peerless George Best later that decade, Ajax and Bayern Munich in the early 1970s showcasing the skills of Cryuff and Franz Beckenbauer respectively.
“The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art,” wrote Leonardo da Vinci, whose own timeless works of art go way beyond what anybody can accomplish with his legs on a football field.
But all these legendary stars have indeed produced minor works of sporting art while turning their teams into formidable, world-beating club sides. And this Barcelona team should rank right up there with the all-time great club teams.
“Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports”, wrote David Foster Wallace in an essay on Roger Federer, “but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.”
Barca does not consciously aspire to create beauty. Messi and his colleagues embrace it as a matter of habit.
Every flight begins with a fall.
Results
Barcelona v Levante (2-1)
47' Pedro
Valencia v Espanyol (2-1)
Sevilla v Osasuna (1-0)
Athletic Bilbao v Deportivo (1-2)
Sporting Gijon v Malaga (1-2)
Getafe v Real Madrid (2-3)
Villarreal v Almeria (2-0)
Atletico Madrid v Racing (0-0)
Mallorca v Hercules (3-0)
Zaragoza v Sociedad (2-1)
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