La Liga winners and losers from Matchday 22: Officiating errors, concussions, Real Madrid upset

¡Buenos días! I’ve been doing this feature about the Premier League for a while now, so let’s shift our attention south to Spain. La Liga is also home to some of the best teams and players in Europe, and their last round of matches gave us no shortage of drama. Here’s the recap:

La Liga winners from Match Day 22

Atlético Madrid

The biggest beneficiary of Real Madrid’s upset loss to Espanyol, los colchoneros took care of business with a pretty routine win over a Mallorca team with European aspirations. There was nothing routine, though, about Antoine Griezmann’s chip over Dominik Greif to seal the victory in stoppage time and bring them within one point of their crosstown rivals at the top of the standings.

Valencia

It has been a grim season for los ché, who are embroiled in an honest-to-goodness relegation battle. So yeah, they needed that home win against Celta de Vigo. We’ll see if the three points help save them from the drop, but in the meantime, they have a Copa del Rey match against Barcelona coming up, and they sure could use the lift going in.

Ante Budimir

He scored both goals for Osasuna in their win over Real Sociedad, as the Basque side seemed to have no reply for the Croatian striker’s size and power. He also drew a yellow card for diving, but I don’t agree with the decision by Juan Luis Pulido Santana. The ref initially awarded a penalty to Osasuna, which was wrong, but the VAR decision that Budimir dived for it was also wrong. See the losers section for more misadventures in La Liga officiating.

Lamine Yamal

It would have been mightily embarrassing if Barcelona had been unable to beat relegation-threatened Alavés at home, but the French kid saved their blushes with an assist on Róbert Lewandowski’s match-winner. He also had a goal denied him by a great leaping save by Jesús Owono, and a dribbling run through seven defenders that’s the sort of thing every kid dreams of doing.  

Carlos Romero

Espanyol brought him in on loan from Villarreal, and the left back’s first goal for them beat Real Madrid and lifted his team out of the relegation zone. Maybe they’ll ask him to stay.

Augusto Batalla

When Rayo Vallecano conceded a penalty deep in stoppage time that gave Leganés a chance to salvage a draw, the Argentinian netminder coolly saved two penalties by Miguel de la Fuente (after the first was allowed to be retaken) to preserve the win for a team chasing European competition for next season. He’s on loan from River Plate. Maybe they’ll ask him to stay.

Villarreal

Is it 2004 again? The plucky underdogs in the yellow uniforms are once again punching above their weight and eyeballing the Champions League places. This past weekend, the Yellow Submarine smashed five goals past hapless Real Valladolid, and with all the chances that they created, they could have easily hit double figures. I need to reactivate my MySpace page and post a picture of my Juan Román Riquelme jersey.

Real Bétis’ offense

Yes, they only managed a draw at home against a tough Athletic Bilbao opponent, but new loanee Antony (looking happy to be out of Manchester United) had a shot on goal whose rebound was put home by Isco. Left-back Romain Perraud also saw a howitzer of a shot find the net.

Yáser Asprilla

Footie fans of a certain age will remember the Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla, who did everything with reckless abandon whether he was dribbling through defenses or firing guns around people. His son now plays for Girona, and the younger Asprilla’s second goal in La Liga proved to be the match-winner against Las Palmas.

La Liga losers from Match Day 22

Real Madrid

Sometimes elite teams lose despite their obvious superiority through a combination of bad luck and the underdogs converting their one chance of the game. Real’s loss to Espanyol was not one of those. The Barcelona-based team limited los merengues to low-percentage shots while getting forward in attack judiciously, and at no point did you sense that Espanyol were riding their luck. (Okay, maybe once, when Rodrygo’s shot beat Joan García but pinged off the near post before nestling under the keeper’s body.) The madrileños have grounds to criticize the officiating, but they didn’t play well enough to win this.

Antonio Rüdiger

The big Real Madrid defender managed 13 minutes against Espanyol before tweaking one of his hamstrings. Now the German likely won’t be available for Real’s Champions League playoff against Manchester City. Uy!

Real Bétis’ set-piece defending

Both goals in their draw were conceded off corner kicks, with goalkeeper Adrián punching one into his net off the head of unmarked Bilbao defender Aitor Paredes and Álex Berenguer finding space to head home the other one. There are only four people on Bétis’ coaching staff. Surely it’s worth spending a bit of money to hire a fifth coach for dead-ball situations.

Raphinha

He failed to convert that dribbling run by Yamal that I mentioned earlier into a goal, and then the Brazilian somehow managed to draw a yellow card after he had already been subbed out of the game.

Sérgio González

The Leganés captain’s red card in first-half stoppage time opened the door for his team’s 1-0 loss to Rayo Vallecano. He’ll miss los pepineros’ match next week against Valencia, which now looks like a relegation six-pointer.

Mario Melero López and Alejandro Muñiz Ruiz

Working the Girona-Las Palmas game, Melero López and his VAR officials awarded the home team a ridiculously soft penalty, which Las Palmas goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen stopped. Officiating the Espanyol-Real Madrid game, Muñiz Ruiz got bamboozled by Pol Lozano’s oh-no-not-my-beautiful-face playacting to deny Vinícius Júnior a perfectly good goal. Real’s fans are also carping about Carlos Romero’s yellow-card foul on Kylian Mbappé, which they think should have been red. I think that’s more questionable, but regardless, Muñiz Ruiz has now been suspended.

Gavi and Tomás Conechny

The Barcelona midfielder and the Alavés winger knocked each other out cold when their heads collided going for a ball up in the air. Gavi at least managed to make it to the dressing room on his own power, but his Argentinian opponent needed to be carted off. Don’t leave concussion protocol a moment earlier than you need to, guys.