With a demoralised Real Madrid side losing 3-0 at Valencia on Saturday, the champagne was put on ice at the Camp Nou for the expected title celebrations when Barcelona would get the three points they needed at home to Villarreal.
However, as Barcelona showed at Chelsea last week, they don’t like to do things the easy way and after Dani Alves, Keita and Eto’o had given them a comfortable 3-1 half-time lead, they managed to squander their chances of a party by conceding twice in the second half to drop two points. No Chelsea fans would have taken any pleasure in seeing that the equaliser came in the third minute of stoppage time!
Still, with Barcelona eight points ahead with three games left the title race is all but over.
Sevilla seem to have cemented third place as goals from Kanoute, Luis Fabiano and Jesus Navas gave them a 3-1 win over Mallorca, whilst Valencia, Atletico Madrid, Deportivo and Villarreal are just three points apart in the race for fourth.
It was all very similar in Serie A. With Milan and Juventus holding each other to a 1-1 draw, Inter could have gone nine points clear with three games to play. Instead, like Barcelona, they couldn’t get the win they wanted and ended up drawing 2-2 with struggling Chievo. Crespo and Balotelli did their bit, but the defence couldn’t do theirs.
Fiorentina look likely to take fourth place after goals from Jovetic and Zauri gave them a 2-0 win at Catania.
The topsy-turvy world of the Bundesliga took more twists and turns over the weekend when fourth placed Stuttgart beat leaders Wolfsburg 4-1. Remarkably, Mario Gomez scored all four Stuttgart goals.
Bayern Munich, without Jurgen Klinsmann, beat Energie Cottbus 3-1 thanks to Sosa, Demichelis and Podolski.
Elsewhere, Pantelic and Rafael scored to keep up Hertha Berlin’s challenge with a 2-0 win over VfL Bochum.
The top of the table sees just two points separating the top four with Borussia Dortmund and Hamburg only three points further back. The last three games promise to be exciting.
In the mini-SPL, the league that involves only Rangers and Celtic, the blue half of Glasgow took a massive step towards the championship by beating their green and white rivals 1-0. A Steven Davis goal was enough to put Rangers two points ahead of the defending champions.
On the final day of the Dutch season there wasn’t much to be decided at the top as Alkmaar were already crowned champions and FC Twente were already guaranteed second place.
Alkmaar finished the season in style with goals from El Hamdaoui and a pair from Dembele gave them a 3-1 win over Heerenveen.
Ajax took third place by beating Twente 1-0 whilst PSV could only manage a 1-1 draw against NEC.
Porto beat Nacional 1-0 thanks to a strike from Bruno Alves early in the second half. They remain six points clear of Sporting who had a double from Liedson, including one in injury time, to thank for their 2-1 win over Vitoria Setubal.
Benfica dropped to seven points behind Sporting after drawing 2-2 at home to second from bottom Trofense.
The title race will go to the last day of the season as Anderlecht and Standard Liege both had comfortable wins at the weekend leaving them locked together on seventy-one points, fifteen clear of the rest. Anderlecht have a slight advantage with a four goal better goal difference.
Sivasspor have been holding onto the lead for quite a while now but with three games left, they faltered at home, losing 2-1 to Istanbul BB.
That defeat allowed Besiktas to go two points ahead of them after they had an easy 4-1 win at Ankaraspor.
The titles were also wrapped up this week in Ukraine, Slovenia, Macedonia and Luxembourg. Our congratulations go to Dynamo Kiev, NK Maribor, GP Skopje and F91 Dudelange respectively.
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