Real Madrid-Barcelona has left one of the games with the most impact of the season after the 0-4 culé that reactivates the possibility that Xavi’s team can get closer to the leadership, although the advantage is still important for Carlo Ancelotti’s: 12 points, yes, with one game less for the Catalans.
Since the Terrassa coach took over the position, the forecasts of Betfair place Barcelona with the lowest quota of the entire season to win the league championship. The title no longer seems so impossible. According to Betfair forecasts, that Barcelona win LaLiga is paid at a rate that gives it an implicit 7% probability when just four days ago it was trading at a fee that gave it only a 2% probability.
Barça has grown more than 200% its options, according to forecasts. A radical change that responds not only to the cut in distance after this victory, but also to the sensations left by the clash at the Bernabéu. The question now is to know if Barcelona will be able to make what would be a historic comeback. Never in history has a team been league champions after being 12 points behind.
Examples for culé optimism
If they win that match that Barcelona has pending against Rayo, the Catalans could stay nine points behind Real Madrid and that reminds of moments in the past with historical white disasters that can feed the optimism of the culé. Real Madrid is the only team in the entire history of La Liga that has let an eight-point lead slip away. It happened in the 2003-04 season, when the ‘galactic’ team sank in the final stretch of the season with the Portuguese Carlos Queiroz on the bench after Florentino Pérez fired Vicente del Bosque in the summer.
With twelve games to go, Real Madrid was eight points ahead of Rafa Benítez’s Valencia, second classified, after adding 59 points out of a possible 78. ANDl Real Madrid seemed on track to break all records after conceding just three defeats in 26 matchdays. Same defeats as now with 28 days before the visit of Barcelona. Inexplicably, the team sank in the last 12 days of the League championship. Of the last 36 points, Madrid de Queiroz was only able to add 11. Conceded five consecutive losses and could barely win 3 games and draw two others.
Real Madrid was not only surpassed by Valencia, who became champions. Frank Rijkaard’s Barça, who were runner-up, overcame the 18 points (42-24) that the then leader took from them on matchday 18. The white team finished that championship in fourth place, five behind Valencia (77), two behind Barça (70) and one behind Deportivo (71).
It so happens that Xavi’s first goal at the Bernabéu was in that 2003-2004 season that gave victory to Frank Rijkaard’s team against the Galácticos (1-2) and, incidentally, It marked a turning point after which a great Ronaldinho appeared and began a successful stage for Barcelona, with that exhibition in which he signed a double and left the white temple with an ovation in 2005 (0-3).
The ‘cursed island’ and Djukic’s famous penalty
Barcelona can be entrusted to that league and also to its Dream Team stage with those won on the last day against Deportivo and the white team that lost two in a row at the Tenerife field in 1992 and 1993. In 1994, Johan Cruyff’s team was fighting in parallel for the possibility of winning the European Cup where they were looking for their second consecration in the last three years. And that context allowed him to have ups and downs, such as the mini soccer slump that he showed in days 19 to 23, where he got just 3 points out of ten at stake (in those days victories were worth two points).
Of course, after matchday 24 he would not fall again with 13 wins and 2 draws in one of the most epic comebacks in Barça history. Deportivo La Coruña wanted to confirm all the good things it had achieved in the 1992-1993 season, where it had given rise to the “Súper Depor” at the end of third. Barcelona ended up level on points and winning with goal difference in their favor (something that they have now won) thanks to Djukic’s penalty miss that deprived Deportivo of victory on the last day of LaLiga.
The historic League that Real lost
Real Sociedad came close to winning the League in the 2002-2003 season and another comeback that is remembered. The team led by Frenchman Raynald Denoueix finished with 76 points to Madrid’s 78. A defeat in Vigo on the penultimate matchday and the white team’s comeback in the last league leg ousted the royalists from first place in the standings, where they were for much of the season.
With two games to go until the end of the League, Denoueix’s men traveled to Vigo with a one-point lead while Madrid faced Atlético in the derby in the capital. The Madrid team did not fail and ended up thrashing the colchoneros at the same time that Real saw how the League was going in their hands with the defeat against Celta who were playing for qualification for the Champions League.