Athletic Bilbao take on the visitors Real Madrid in the round 18 match of Spanish LaLiga. The match will be played on Sunday, January 22nd at Estadio San Mames (Bilbao).
Athletic have a limited potential - they are traditionally use exclusively by local footballers. Nevertheless, it turns out to stay in LaLiga permanently, without taking off even once in the entire history - hence the status of “classic” in the matches of the representative of Bilbao with the clearly stronger Real Madrid and Barcelona. And sometimes even take trophies - so Marcelino began his work at San Mames with a victory in the Super Cup. But all that he did next was to stabilize the football of the wards, to return them to the number of middle peasants in Spanish football. Therefore, in the summer they decided to take the chance to return Ernesto Valverde to the post. He started again successfully, and autumn ended up in the top quartet for the first time in recent years. But only in the winter it turned out to win only in the framework of the Spanish Cup. It is noteworthy that they did not win against potential competitors: there were goalless draws with Betis and Osasuna, and in the derby with Real Sociedad it was 1-3.
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Real Madrid seriously deflated lately. They had a great past season, with plenty of success, winning La Liga and the Champions League. In principle, in both of these tournaments there is still a chance to repeat the success by defending the title. But the Super Bowl is already lost this time. Carlo Ancelotti was able to beat his former footballer, Gattuso, and then Valencia were knocked out only on penalties, after 1-1 in playing time. But only in order to get 1-3 in the decisive “El Clasico” from Xavi. Earlier this season, in the middle of autumn, they defeated Barcelona with the same score. By the way, just after that, the current problems of the Galacticos began. Back in the fall, we were 1-1 with Girona and 2-3 with Rayo Vallecano (and this is not counting the defeat of RB Leipzig, because everything was clear in the Champions League by that time). In winter, they tortured the victory over Valladolid and continued their march in the cup, but even before the trip to the Super Cup, there was another misfire, in the form of 1-2 with Villarreal, because of Los Blancos lost leadership in the standings.
Real Madrid had a streak of 4 wins in a row in this variant of El Clasico. But a little less than a year ago, within the framework of the cup, Athletic took a home victory thanks to the only goal of Berenguer in the 89th minute. Both clubs gradually deflated after a strong start. And now they need to achieve results, and not somehow please the fans. So what we expect from the confrontation between such experienced masters as Valverde and Ancelotti, rather boring “total under 2.5 goals scored”.
Prediction for the match: Under 2.5 scored goals.
