As Barcelona seeks to win the Spanish League title again for the first time since 2019, arch-rivals Real Madrid want to focus on the Champions League and reach the semi-finals.
Barcelona, the leader by a large margin, and its runner-up, Real Madrid, are going through two easy trips in the 29th stage of the Spanish Football Championship, when the first lands on Getafe the fifteenth on Sunday, and the second on the fourteenth Cadiz on Saturday.
Barcelona leads the standings by 13 points from its royal rivals, ten stages before the end of the La Liga season, and appears on a confident path to winning its first league title since 2019 and the twenty-seventh in its history.
While Barcelona rested in the middle of the week, Real Madrid came out with a positive result on Wednesday in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals, when it beat Chelsea 2-0 with goals from veteran Frenchman Karim Benzema and Marco Asensio.
Real seems to be focusing its efforts on the continental competition, which won its title 14 times (a record), and is close to its semi-final round, where it will meet the winner, if qualified, between Manchester City and Bayern Munich (3-0).
“I think the result is good, but so is the performance,” said his Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti. “I know football very well and my players understand that we have 90 minutes to play and we will be ready despite the difficulty.”
Barcelona seeks to compensate for the tie with Girona
After overcoming Getafe in the first leg with an away goal, Barcelona visits the outskirts of the capital on Sunday, in search of restoring the winning tone that stopped after four consecutive victories in the last Girona match.
And about the big difference between the Catalan team and its rivals, Real Madrid, coach Xavi said, “I do not know if they threw the handkerchief or not. But if they decided to do so, the reason is related to us. I do not care what Real Madrid is doing as much as we do.”
Despite the wide difference and Barcelona’s approach to the La Liga title, he had received a moral slap from Real when he suffered a humiliating loss 4-0 in the second leg of the Cup semi-final, so that coach Ancelotti’s players qualified for the final, where Osasuna awaited them.
It is true that the last draw with Girona did not give Barcelona the three points, but it kept a clean sheet in 21 out of 28 games.
