RIYAD.- Real Madrid starts as favorite in the Spanish Super Cup – which will be played again in Saudi Arabia-, with a Barcelona that needs joy as a balm for its sporting and financial problems and an Athletic Club that continues under the winning inertia after lifting the Copa del Rey last season.
The first title of the year in Spanish football will be decided from Wednesday to Sunday, with the King Abdullah Sports City stadium in the city of Jedá as the scene of the two semi-finals and the final of a competition between the champions and runners-up of the League and Cup .
The Basques and Catalans will open hostilities on Wednesday in a classic between two teams that arrive with radically opposite moods and form and with many pending scores to settle.
A day later, the League and European champions, Real Madrid, will experience a more unbalanced ‘a priori’ duel against Real Mallorca, with the white team pending the ruling on a possible sanction for Vinicius after his expulsion against Valencia on January 3.
umpteenth revenge
If the presence of the Brazilian star in Arabia is a mystery until the resolution by the competent disciplinary bodies on Tuesday, Barça also goes to the Gulf country with some doubts about the game, results and players.
Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor were no longer registered as members of the culé squad as their club did not meet the financial requirements for registration before December 31. Both have traveled, however, to the Arabian city waiting for the club’s appeal to prosper.
A worrying situation for a team that has squandered its good start to the season with four defeats and two draws in its last seven league games and that has been relegated to third position, five points behind the leader Real Madrid, and with only two more than his rival on Wednesday.
Ernesto Valverde’s Athletic, former Barça coach, with whom he won the Super Cup, starts the year with morale through the roof. In the Champions zone in the League, leaders in the Europa League and alive in the Cup after eliminating the modest Logroñés on penalties, the rojiblancos already defeated the culés in the final of the 2021 Super Cup with a great goal in extra time by Iñaki Williams in a match in which Lionel Messi was sent off.
The fast international striker with Ghana will be accompanied on the pitch by his brother Nico, one of the team’s stars, who will experience his second confrontation with Barça after rumors that placed him in the Barça club after having a great Euro Cup. with Spain.
The Basques also eliminated Barça in the quarterfinals of the last edition of the Cup.
Opposite, Hansi Flick seeks to debut his record in Spain. The German coach can alleviate the foreseeable absences of Olmo and Pau Víctor with the returns of winger Lamine Yamal and center-back Ronald Araujo, recently recovered from their respective injuries. The Uruguayan already reappeared in Barbastro in the Cup last weekend (4-0).
Real Madrid going for the 14th
Real Madrid, current champion of the tournament, wants to add a 14th Spanish Super Cup to its showcases, which would equal its staunch rival in the tournament’s record.
Carlo Ancelotti’s men face a Mallorca side that was only separated from the cup title by penalties last April.
The vermilion team also knows what it means to win the Super Cup. He did it in 1998, with the Argentine coach Héctor Cúper and against Barça, although at that time the title was settled back and forth between only two teams.
But the defeat of Jagoba Arrasate’s men in the round of 32 of the KO tournament against Pontevedra (3-0) does not bode well before facing a title harvester like Real Madrid, the new Intercontinental champions.
The novelty of the tournament this year is that, in the event of equality in the 90 minutes, it will go directly to penalties without extra time.
