Atleti seek the winter champions crown in the final matchday of the first half of the season. LALIGA EA SPORTS returns this weekend, with the final eight fixtures of Matchday 19 taking place across Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The four teams participating in the Spanish Super Cup have already played their fixtures from this round, with Athletic Club defeating Real Madrid and FC Barcelona overcoming RCD Mallorca. Now, the other 16 teams conclude their first half of the campaign, and there are several fascinating games on the schedule.
Rayo Vallecano host the first of the weekend’s games, when they welcome RC Celta to Vallecas on Friday night. After finishing 2024 with three impressive draws in a row, against Real Madrid, Villarreal CF and Real Betis, the capital city side will now hope to carry those good performances over into 2025.
Deportivo Alavés vs Girona FC is the first of four matches taking place on Saturday, and the fans at Mendizorroza will remember how this game turned out last season. On that occasion, a 99th-minute Jon Guridi goal earned the Basque side a 2-2 draw and a point against the Catalan outfit, at the very end of what was a thrilling back-and-forth match.
Bottom-placed Real Valladolid are in action on Saturday afternoon, taking on Real Betis at the Estadio José Zorrilla. With just 12 points from their first 18 games, Los Blanquivioletas will hope to pick up three more here. Even though they’re guaranteed to be inside the bottom three at the halfway stage of the season, fans hope that new coach Diego Cocca can kickstart a revival this weekend.
The final matchday of the first half of the campaign brings up a meeting of two of the newly promoted sides: RCD Espanyol and CD Leganés. They have had similar starts to the season and enter this round just three points apart in the standings, with Lega on 18 points in 15th and with the Catalan outfit on 15 points in 18th.
On Saturday night, at 21:00 CET, there is a meeting of two historic clubs when Sevilla FC host Valencia CF. However, both these teams are enduring difficult seasons so far, with the former in mid-table and still well behind the European positions and with the latter sitting second-bottom and seriously fearing the risk of relegation. These two clubs are used to battling for big prizes, but this weekend it’s a bottom-half-of-the-table duel.
There are two games on Sunday, the first of which takes place in the Canary Islands. There, UD Las Palmas face off against Getafe CF, and it’ll be a meeting of two teams with quite different styles. They both have a goal difference of minus four, but UD Las Palmas have achieved this with 23 goals scored and 27 conceded, while Los Azulones have done so through 11 goals scored and 15 conceded. It’ll be an interesting tactical battle this Sunday.
At 16:15 CET on Sunday, Atlético de Madrid vs CA Osasuna takes centre stage and Diego Simeone’s side have two major objectives in mind. Firstly, if they win then it’ll be 14 consecutive victories across all competitions, which would be a club record. Secondly, three more points would make Atleti the winter champions, the virtual title claimed by whoever sits top of LALIGA EA SPORTS at the midway point of each season.
There is just one more game to come in Matchday 19, and that’ll be the fascinating duel between Real Sociedad and Villarreal CF on Monday night. It’s a meeting of the teams currently in seventh and fifth position, so this is a hugely important game in the race to qualify for Europe, even if we’re only halfway through the season.
Watch LALIGA EA SPORTS live this weekend on SUPERSPORT LALIGA.
STORY: LALIGA CONTENT HUB
