No man is a prophet in his own land, ask Fernando Torres about it. He, who joined Liverpool has matured a lot as a player and has become a Premier League star. With 21 goals on the Premier, the Spanish player is succeeding and developing a well known play style in Spain, but not admired as much as in England nowadays. Fernando Torres, the young natural from Madrid who started to shine on Atletico de Madrid, has become a fundamental player for Liverpool and Premier League while also competing to achieve the title of Golden Boot. Only Luiz Fabiano is opposing him with 23 goals.

The Torresfever as it’s known in England the passion for Fernando Torres, has become a new fashion of the current season, where match after match all talk about how wonderful is the Liverpool’s striker performance. His coach, Rafa Benítez, qualifies him as one of the best world’s strikers because “to score so many goals is not easy, even less for a recently arrived foreigner like Fernando. It is great for him and wonderful for the team”.




With this, Fernando Torres is the second more chanted name by Liverpool’s supporters, behind the so loved captain Steven Gerrard. With only the second leg of the Champions League semi-finals and the last Premier League matches left, we will see how many goals will Fernando score!

After winning Racing and dreaming with a second consecutive Spanish League championship, nobody of Real Madrid players dare to pronounce the word they had in mind, “title”. Even Robinho, Robben and Sneijder put pressure on the referee in order to end the last match. Just at that moment, minute 93, Higuain scored a goal and all exploded of happiness and started to celebrate singing “¡oé, oé, oé!”.

However, despite they act and feel like champions - Real Madrid can win the Spanish League this Sunday if they win Athletic de Bilbao and FC Barcelona and Villarreal lose their matches - they tried to not talk about it with the press. “It is not done yet” stated Raúl “it is a great step but we still need some more points”, added.



Schuster, who neither pronounced the word title, “still not done, we are not there yet” didn’t talk about the possibilities of his team but he described the playstyle as “solid and safe”. There were two key points for the german coach: the defensive line and the effective attack. However, against Athletic de Bilbao, Real Madrid’s potential might not be enough. Are FC Barcelona and Villarreal going to help them?

Finally we can watch a new edition of the catalan derby between FC Barcelona and RCD Espanyol. Both teams are in need of victory in order to overcome their critical situation which assure us a tense and fighty match. The pride of the teams is in game.



RCD Espanyol comes from a horrible month where they have lost all their matches but this is not the worst. From the last 14 matches, they have only been able to get some points in 3 of them. That’s the reason to fall from the top positions of the Spanish League to the eighth place. In fact, RCD Espanyol have been losing positions until getting out of European competition qualifications and nowadays, it seems impossible for them to overcome this negative dynamic. It’s said that with 40-42 points a team can avoid descending to the second division. Maybe Valverde had all of this calculated beforehand…



On the other hand, FC Barcelona, put under pressure by Villarreal at only one point from them, look for a victory to end their poor image in the last matches of the Spanish League. Although they are seconds, the 9 points distance from Real Madrid seems unreacheable and if we add the Ronaldinho affair and the Johan Cruyff’s opinions about the team, then it doesn’t help at all.



For this reason, the derby is going to be a bit atypical where FC Barcelona have a great opportunity to get revenge from RCD Espanyol - the last match between them decided the last season Spanish League champion (2-2) -. However, both teams need to recover their supporter’s faith in them.

Last week José María Gutiérrez Hernández (also known as Guti) signed a new contract of renewal with Real Madrid, the team he has played in during his whole career. The 31 year old player succeeds to extend his contract until June 30 of 2011 and it will be renewed year by year once it finishes if both Guti and Real Madrid desire this. It will be a clause of auto-renewal if he plays a minimum of 30 official matches per season. Also, his salary will be of 1.8 million euro, a bit lower than his current one (2.1 million euro) but we can’t forget that this new contract will be for life.

With this agreement, Real Madrid expand to three their number of players with a contract for life - Iker Casillas and Raul González signed their contract last February 14 - and prevent other teams to tempt them. After thirteen seasons at Real Madrid, Guti is now recognised as one of the Spanish team’s emblems as stated by Ramon Calderón. This means they are part of Real Madrid, even after they retire from playing football.

Essential or not, the truth is Guti renewed his contract and he promises to bring Real Madrid as many victories as he can while he is still an active football player. Against FC Barcelona, he has sworn to not be merciful.

The Spanish League is going to end soon but there is nothing decided yet. The goals of Atletico de Madrid and Real valladolid are an example of this, two teams who are fighting for different purposes without hesitation. On one hand, Atletico de Madrid want to assure their place for the next season’s Champions League. However, Real Valladolid only aim to survive one season more in the Spanish League.

Both teams showed us which are their main strengths during the last date of the Spanish League. Atletico de Madrid scored six goals against Almeria (6-3) while Real valladolid won Levante for 0-3 with an easy victory that puts some distance between them and the last positions of the Spanish League by five points. With such an impressive presentation, it was unavoidable a match between them that will take place the next April 13. We expect a clash of titans in need of keeping alive their goals, good football and more important, the remind of the Spanish League first leg match, where Atletico de Madrid won Real Valladolid for 4-3. The “pucelanos”, playing as the home team at Nuevo José Zorrilla stadium, can become the great surprise of this new date of the Spanish League! Will we be able to watch in this match as much goals as both teams are used to score on their matches?

What are you going to do next Saturday? If you like good football, you’ve got an appointment at 15.00 hrs in the Emirates Stadium (London). The team in Europe that is playing football better (Arsenal) against a team that has recently changed his manager, and from now on, will try to play more entertaining football (and have better results, that would not be very difficult…). In conclusion, Arsenal against Newcastle, a great match!

Arsenal come from defeating Fulham 0-3, in Craven Cottage, one of the London derbies. Especially superb was the striker Emmanuel Adebayor, that was considered by Jimmy Bullard (a Fulham player) as “a monster”. He scored a fantastic goal after raising above all Fulham defenders’ head. His extremely easyness for jumping really high has an explanation, as the Arsenal’s forward said, “When I was young, I used to suspend a ball from the ceiling in my mum’s house (in Togo), and see if I could jump high enough to head it, I would shorten the string attached to the ball and try to leap even higher”. A part from being very tall (190 cm), he stays in the air (as high as possible) in a wondreful way, heading balls that much players would not reach. Bullard also said about Arsenal: “They are awesome to watch and awesome to play against… There isn’t really a weak point in their game”.

Newcastle, that has changed the manager recently, has substituted Sam Allardyce, after a very bad first leg of Premier league, for Kevin Keegan (”King Kev”), who played in Newcastle some years ago and leaving a great impression in St. James’ Park. This substitution, a part form giving fresh air in the club, would give, in theory, a better position in the league (improving the way of playing, making it more entertaining). A possibility that encourage Newcastle fans is the incorporation of Alan Shearer, a symbol for the “magpies” (Newcastle fans), as an important member of the staff. The last man-of-the-match (against Bolton) was the goalkeeper: Shay Given, that made a perfect match. His actuation gives hope to a team, that is really needed of hope!

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