Well it’s official, Barcelona are the 2015/16 La Liga champions. Barcelona secured the title with its 3-0 win over Granada today. The game was never in doubt, and Barcelona cruised to their 6th title in 8 years, the 24th in their history.
Luis Suarez is in the midst of his greatest season as a professional. He’s scored 56 goals in 51 appearances for Barcelona and could end up with the Pichichi, awarded to the top goalscorer of each La Liga season. At only 29 years of age, the Barca striker should be at the top of his game for some time yet.
Forbes have released their annual list of the world’s richest clubs, and the results reveal a dramatic shift in global football. While Real Madrid occupy the top spot for the fourth consecutive year (valued at $3.645 billion), English clubs now occupy six of the top 10 spots. Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur have each seen their value increase by over 40% in one-year.
In an interview with ESPN, Lionel Messi detailed his ambitions for the remainder of the club season. Messi and Barcelona will be looking to capture two titles in the space of a week — a victory over Granada on May 14 will see them capture the La Liga crown, while Sevilla await in the final of the Copa del Rey on May 22.
Barcelona is back on track to retain their La Liga crown after they handed out a 5-0 thrashing to city rival Espanyol in the Derbi Barceloni on Sunday. The victory was especially sweet for Barcelona, as during the last meeting between the two clubs, Espanyol keeper Pau Lopez stomped on Messi after the Barca star went down in front of the goal.
Outside of Leicester City, one of the most improbable feel good stories of the year is the rejuvenation of French winger Hatem Ben Arfa's career. On January 4, 2015, Ben Arfa was released from his contract with Newcastle United, making him a free agent. Now, a little over a year later, he’s on the verge of signing for Barcelona as a vital back-up for their heralded front three of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez.
Do you like jazz? Do you like Lionel Messi? Do you like one and not the other? Well, either way you're in luck. A redditor created a video that compiled all of Messi's passes with the sweet sounds of piano, bass, trombone and trumpet playing in the background. One thing you'll notice in this video is actually the amount of opportunities missed by Messi's teammates after he feeds them pin point passes. Alas, the Argentine still has 15 assists in La Liga, which is good enough to be tied for first in the league with his teammate, Luis Suarez.
Barcelona came into their game against Real Betis knowing that they needed to win to stay in first place in La Liga over Atletico Madrid via head-to-head point differential, but they came out of the gates like a team with little to play for.
Seven yellow cards were given out between Barcelona and Betis in the first half, more than the number of shots taken by both teams in that time, six.
It's pretty clear that Lionel Messi is naturally talented. Even when he was 17, you could see that he was just inherently special. That being said, Lionel Messi didn't make it to where he is by pure talent alone. It takes a lot of hard work and discipline to play at the top level and produce the kind of numbers that Messi does. Needless to say, the Lionel Messi diet is probably a pretty good one.
Here are some numbers concerning Barcelona's La Liga form during the last two weeks, none of which we are making up.
Barca have scored 14 goals in their last two games, eight against Deportivo la Coruna and six against Sporting Gijon. They have not been scored against. Eight of those goals were scored by Luis Suarez, four in each game. Four of those goals were assisted by Luis Suarez, three against Deportivo and one against Sporting.