week 19 of la liga

yes barcelona are still running away with the title but there were still some good games this past week in spain....
including barca getting a bit of a scare against my bilbao. the basque boys didn't show up to just defend - they actually did some attacking of their own from the start and it paid off. llorente scores for bilbao and bless his little heart: with a yell of "bilbao", he's in tears. this is what the game can be about - not fame & fortune but the love of your team. if you haven't noticed by the choice of most of my teams, i am a hopeless romantic. *sniff* anyways, it was a great pass from yeste, one of my fav players in spain, for that goal. but it's not all over for barca. of course not. after that high point, bilbao's luck changed. there was an accidental handball in the box & barca gets a penalty. and once barca score again, bilbao never look likely to get back in the game. they do manage to frustrate barca - a few sets of handbags towards the end of the game - and deco loses it completely & throws a punch at a bilbao player & is red carded. but let's face it, with a bench like barcelona's, are they really going to worry about his replacement for the next outing?
my other underachievers, atletico madrid, also have a mess of a game. but which was worse: the 1-0 defeat against betis or torres' hair? both teams were pretty pathetic: easy to see why this is not a season to remember for either team full of hopefuls.
real madrid, on the other hand, pick things up & win 4-2 against sevilla mainly due to a zizou hattrick. yup, the old man scores his first hattrick for madrid & he should give a lot of thanks to guti who has really stepped into the captain's role with raul out.
the poor spanish internationals have been dropping like flies: in the valencia win over osasuna we see vincente go down & he's out with an ankle injury for a possible 6 weeks! at least that gives him time to get a haircut. and what happened to mista's hair? he used to be a blond surfer boy & now it looks as if he has dyed his hair red. very strange. but not as strange as the grandma in the stands who celebrates the valencia goals by waving around a bright orange dildo. no, seriously. what the hell goes on in that spanish sun???
we should ask that question of the ref in the racing santander v villareal game. he seems to have it in for racing, who to their credit, still managed to win this 1-0. but they were down to 9 men fairly early in the 2nd half after one boy is straight red carded for touching sorin who goes down like a sack of potatoes & then the captain chalks up 2 yellows and he's off. at least villareal go down to 10 men after their sub, font, gets 2 yellows but the problem is that this wasn't that rough of a game. the ref was just card happy. there was some great goalkeeping from racing - he saved the penalty from that sorin red card & i figure out that it's #35, thomas, who was my racing cutie from last week.