Barcelona has had a pretty good week so far. On Sunday, Atletico Madrid traveled to the Camp Nou to face Barcelona. Atletico Madrid is currently second in La Liga, and came into the game trailing Barcelona by only six points in the league. However, Madrid left the Camp Nou trailing Barcelona by nine points, a much more substantial margin. Barcelona not only beat their closest competitor, they handled them quite comfortably. They ended up winning the game 4-1, with Lionel Messi scoring two of the goals.
As Barcelona cruised to victory, their rival, Real Madrid, stumbled to another draw, tying Espanyol 2-2. This latest draw leaves Real Madrid 13 points behind Barcelona and likely out of the title race. Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho even believes it will be difficult to win La Liga for a second straight season.
“’I think it is almost impossible,’ [Mourinho] told reporters after the match. ‘What we have to do is play every match to win without worrying about whether we are first, second or third or whether our direct rivals won or lost,’” according to ESPNFC.
Even though Barcelona now has a comfortable lead at the top of La Liga following the weekend’s results, Barcelona fans may be more excited about what happened off the field. Lionel Messi has agreed to a new contract with Barcelona, which will keep him at the club through 2018. Barcelona also signed both Carles Puyol and Xavi Hernandez to extensions. Their contracts will go through 2016.
Barcelona fans will be rejoicing that their Argentinian star will remain at the club and continue to help Barcelona win trophies while scoring an outrageous amount of goals. So far this season, Messi has 25 goals and five assists in 16 La Liga games. He also has scored 90 goals to this point in 2012. Things are looking pretty good for Barcelona at the moment and their fans should be very excited.
Written By: Eric Stoyanov, Contributing Writer, soccerprose.com
