Los Che Ergo Sum Tertia

Excellent mid week round of La Liga on Wednesday, not even remotely because there were some lovely matches yielding exciting unexpected results, but really because the sorely used and abused (much like the phrase used and abused...) title race is finally over. Who it is over in favor of is irrelevant, not even remotely because the team I support had false started and been disqualified from the race, but really because RM won and I'd rather not admit the point relevant thus having to give them any credit. What's relevant though, is that focus has finally shifted to the real La Liga, Valencia down to Santander in a two week finale that sees 5 teams fighting for UCL, all the way down to Sociedad at 14th place fighting for Europa, and Granada below them at 15th still in the 5-team relegation curfuffle. After Valencia lost the critical Malaga fixture while their sole Indian fan missed the game on account of some Himachal snow prancing, a strong comeback 4-0 against Osasuna (who themselves have followed up a really strong 3 months with a home stretch slip up lately) sees Che almost cement 3rd.There's been enough and more said about Valencia's raison d'etre in Liga nowadays, an argument mainly hinging around the fact that they're not good enough to fight for the title, yet too good to ever slip below 3rd - an argument they've tried to rubbish by showing they can quite easily slip to 5th and depend on the incompetence of others to push them back up.

But despite Che fans being quite unforgiving this year about any off game (or...5 straight off games....) in a more unreasonable manner than usual (tell that to Genoa, Roma, and probably Delio Rossi now - each trying to outdo each other in a bid to attract TV viewers to switch from Primetime soaps to Serie A) Valencia's realistic raison d'etre is to be a placeholder in Liga, the pace setter that the league can try and follow, a pace setter that the league leader would be in any other league. They've secured UCL and need 1 more win to seal automatic UCL, although I think they really need just the point. Bilbao have already booked their Europa spot since they're in the Copa del Rey finals so I expect them to cool off and save their breath for Europa finals. I'd hoped Atletico would go for Levante's jugular and along with Mallorca finally boot Levante out the European spots they've usurped undeservedly since... round 1 (so maybe not "undeservedly", but I just don't like their faces...) - but now it doesn't seem possible given Atletico / Mallorca have tough fixtures (Malaga & Villarreal / Levante & Madrid) and the fact that Levante have a better head-head if they end up level on points. So my projection for end of season table - almost unbiased logic-centered projection, if you leave aside the fact that Zaragoza win both their games and Granada lose both theirs to ensure my byutiful Zaragoza escape relegation..... Zaragoza meet Santander whose raison d'etre is to lose, but then finally Getafe, whose raison d'etre is to piss the sh*t out of me so fingers crossed. And yes, this post's raison d'etre was to use raison d'etre as much as possible...