Valencia to continue resurgence and some pity for Málaga | OneFootball

La Liga is dominant.

If you couldn’t tell from the four consecutive Champions League titles or the ridiculous lead in the Uefa coefficient rankings, Spanish football was once against confirmed as the home of the world’s best at The Best FIFA Football Awards ceremony in London this week.

All three finalists for The Best FIFA Men’s Player played in La Liga last season, as did eight members of the FIFPro World XI.

Oh, and the world’s best coach is a man who spent much of his playing career and all of his short but impressive coaching career in … La Liga.

In other words, if you want to watch the greatest footballers on earth this weekend, you know where to look.

? Game of the weekend: Atlético Madrid v Villarreal

How Atlético Madrid could do with a player like Villarreal’s Cédric Bakambu.

The Congolese has been red-hot for the Yellow Submarine in recent weeks, netting six times in his last three games to take him joint-second on the list of top scorers.

Atlético, in contrast, have struggled to locate the back of the net, with Diego Simeone’s tinkering showing that he is not satisfied with the attacking pieces at his disposal.

They haven’t been entirely convincing at the back either, despite not conceding that many goals.

To make the match-up even more uncomfortable for Atlético, they’ve have been poor in recent meetings against Villarreal, losing twice last season and four times in the past six.

Bakambu’s pace and willingness to make runs in behind the defence should trouble the less athletic Diego Godín and Stefan Savic and may well make the difference.

Easiest 3️⃣ points: Alavés v Valencia

After two consecutive seasons of shambles, Valencia are back. And they are soaring.

Marcelino’s side, who sit second in the table, are yet to lose a game and have scored 21 times in their past five outings.

They’ve done it largely on the back of new signings who had been discarded by other teams.

Simone Zaza is second only to Lionel Messi in the goalscoring charts, Gonçalo Guedes has been a goal-creating revelation and Geoffrey Kondogbia is looking like the midfield machine that we saw at Monaco.

Alavés have been miserable this term — losing eight times in nine games — and should be no match for La Liga’s high-flying phoenix.

? Potential upset: Málaga v Celta Vigo

On the surface, this is not an even contest.

Celta Vigo have played some good football of late and Málaga are still winless and propping up the bottom of the table.

But everyone has to win at some point (don’t they?) and this could just be Málaga’s chance.

The probably hit rock bottom in their absurd injury-time collapse against Numancia in mid-week and it can only be upwards from here. We believe.

Málaga won this fixture very convincingly only five months ago and while it’s hard to see them winning anything comfortably at the moment, they may have enough to scrape out a result.

Keep an ? out for: More refereeing mistakes

“Spain is different,” as we all know.

Unfortunately for fans of La Liga, the Spanish football authorities appear to be taking that slogan literally with respect to the use of referee-aiding technology.

Every other top league in Europe has employed some form of computer assistance to give referees the best chance of getting big decisions right.

Barcelona’s scandalous first goal last weekend against Málaga was just the latest of many blatant errors in La Liga in recent times.

VAR is set to be trialled in the Copa del Rey at some point this year after La Liga and the Spanish Federation finally seem to have found common ground on the issue but the slow progress means that we are sure to see more high-profile and potentially game-deciding mistakes this season.