Atlético de Madrid 2-3 RCD Espanyol

Two teams, both ¨from the same side of the tracks¨ as one would say here in the States, one from Madrid and the other from Barcelona, both struggling for the same place on the table, direct rivals if not traditional rivals geographically you might add, and they were facing off this particular weekend and you might have assumed that it was el gran clásico match between Real Madrid CF and FC Barcelona, but this was the other match between those two cities. Call it the clásico menor, the lesser derby match between the two often forgotten clubs, overshadowed by their bigger neighbors, but this was anything but a lesser game. What a game.

Excuse the fact that I am a steadfast Espanyol supporter, with my own side-project on Espanyolusa.info as head of the soon-to-be formed Espanyol Supporter´s club of Los Angeles, but this was one of best games I have seen all year. Just look at the goals:

Luis Garcia takes a penalty in the 20th minute, another in a long line of made penalties for the Espanyol forward that stretches five years since his last miss. Yes, the penalty call was a bit off, Reyes did have his hands close to his face for protection and shouldn´t have been carded on it, but the rebound also produced a shot that grazed Simao´s hand, so in the grand scheme of things I wouldn´t be so quick to call that the reason that lost Atléti two points. In fact that was the call that woke Atléti up. Diego Forlan, playing deeper than he usually does for the colchoneros but more in the manner that he plays for Uruguay, started creating havok in the Espanyol defense.

In response, I´m afraid to say, we started kicking some ankles. It turned into card-fest for a time until just before the half, when Espanyol keeper Carlos Kameni stopped two point-blank shots from Godin, but couldn´t stop Atleti midfielder Tiago Mendes from poaching a goal from the rebound. After the break the game opened up even more. Both clubs, who often suffer from overly cautious coaching, played out of their minds. When it was 1-1 the consensus on twitter was that Quique Sanchez-Flores and Pochettino both former defenders would clamp down on their squads and play for the point, but nothing could have been further from the truth. They came back from the break with no changes until Osvaldo, who played alone up front for the periquitos, made space for himself on the left-wing and as three Atléti defenders converged he rifled a shot that DeGea blocked but couldn´t stop Joan Verdú from tapping in. Quique´s men responded however with a perfectly lobbed pass over the defense from Forlan to Agüero who slotted it past a diving Kameni at the 65 minute mark drawing the teams level at 2-2. There were some calls for Agüero being offside on the goal, but the inexperienced Jordi Amat, who had a great game nonetheless, played the Argentine onside on the goal. The twitter-heads were expecting both teams to play for the point from then on but the action continued. The goal of the match, if not the weekend so far, came from a perfectly lobbed cross from Luis Garcia on the right to Osvaldo who snapped a speculative shot from a pretty severe angle himself on the right past a diving DeGea.

The match devolved into handbags as time ran-out, Sanchez-Flores will probably be sanctioned for losing his temper at Espanyol midfielder Javi Lopez for wasting time at the death of the match and being tossed out of the game, but overall, you couldn´t have done better than watch two evenly matched teams fight it out in La Liga. This is what the Spanish League is all about. I would hope that Monday´s clásico between the more glamorous clubs from these two cities would be as entertaining if not more than this match, but I highly doubt it.