We’re at the penultimate round of the first half of the season and the honeymoon period is well and truly over. Stark improvement will be the main priority for all the teams who have under-performed so far and that is precisely what Mallorca And Real Madrid will be aiming for when they go head to head.
Sinking Island
Mallorca were sitting comfortably above the relegation zone prior to the final month of 2008. Four losses in their last five league games though have sent them crashing to 19th spot in the standings, just one point away from hitting rock bottom.
They have not won a single match in La Liga since late October and so woeful has their recent form been that their most impressive result over the past two months was a scoreless draw with Sevilla just before Christmas.
But the midweek 3-1 victory over Almería in the Copa del Rey - their first win in eight competitive games - will give the Balearic Islanders a much needed boost ahead of this weekend’s monumental test against back-in-form Real Madrid. Gregorio Manzano’s men will at least take comfort in knowing that they have very little chance of sinking to the foot of the table as current cellar-dwellers, Osasuna, have an even more impossible a mission when they play host to Barcelona.
Defeat for Mallorca against Los Blancos, however, could all but ensure that they enter the second half of the term as relegation candidates. But over the past few seasons, it’s always the last 19 rounds of football that somehow motivate the Barralets to excel and their fans will be hoping that this term is no different.
Promising Start
Real Madrid picked up 2009 where they had left off in 2008. Back-to-back 1-0 wins over direct rivals, Valencia and Villarreal either side of the New Year, proved to be an extremely critical result as they rocketed themselves back into the top three, albeit still some way off the title race.
It was also a decent enough start for the team’s two newcomers, Lassana Diarrà and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. The French defensive midfielder had a splendid outing, buzzing non-stop all over the middle of the park before leaving to a rapturous ovation from the home crowd. The Dutch striker, on the other hand, had a slightly disappointing debut, but there were enough encouraging signs to suggest a promising future ahead when he eventually regains full match fitness and sharpness.
With the traumatic finish to 2008 over and done with, the season really begins now for the Madrid. New coach, Juande Ramos, and his new arrivals have settled in, the chaotic cloud over the Bernabéu has been lifted, the squad have recovered the bulk of their injured key players and they have also negotiated the toughest sequence of games of this campaign.
The ‘Men in White’ must now start stringing together an impressive run of victories - the kind which led them to their last two La Liga titles - if they are to stand any chance at all of clawing their way back into the title hunt. Since the opening few weeks of the season, they have not been able to piece together anything more than two wins on the trot in the league. And that cruelly obvious disparity in consistency compared to Barcelona’s otherworldly form is the main reason why Los Merengues are 12 points behind the runaway leaders and their fierce nemesis.
