LAS PALMAS VS BARCELONA PREVIEW & PREDICTION
FC Barcelona takes the plane to the Canary Islands on Thursday night, to take on the local pride against Las Palmas. The Catalan leader this season is undefeated in La Liga, but in the Estadio de Gran Canaria is undoubtedly a hot night!
Las Palmas :
With eighteenth place, Las Palmas is still in the relegation zone, but the island club has found its way up again in recent weeks. Thanks in part to three clean sheets in the last four rounds, the yellow shirts managed to reduce the backlog in the safe seventeenth place to only one point. Also last weekend, goalkeeper Leandro Chichizola kept his goal clean again in the scoreless draw to visit Leganes. Despite the recent departure of star player Jonathan Viera, the team of coach Paco Jemez still has a good chance of life retention.
With recent victories at Valencia (2-1) and Malaga (1-0), Las Palmas has been doing very well in their own Estadio de Gran Canaria in recent weeks, but El Submarino Amarillo will need an absolute top night to beat FC Barcelona. . “Lionel Messi alone is worth ten times as much as we are all together,” Jester Jonathan Calleri joked. However, midfielder Vicente Gomez is hopeful: ‘Each season FC Barcelona makes about two or three slips. We have to be realistic, but if we are lucky we can get points.
Barcelona :
FC Barcelona took out last weekend hard in the 6-1 victory over a local and is thus one step closer to the Spanish national championship. The title struggle is not yet decided, because also close attacker Atletico Madrid is working on a nice series and follows the Catalans on seven points. The Blaugrana thus still enjoy a comfortable lead, but have to be careful. In any case, coach Ernesto Valverde does not care about: ‘We are in a hurry and we want the national championship as soon as possible.’
Nevertheless, Valverde is planning to rotate something on Wednesday evening. It is from Barcelona just a three hour flight to Las Palmas and with the cracker against Atletico Madrid from upcoming Sunday in the prospect the coach will probably give some key players rest. Among others, Luis Suarez, Ivan Rakitic and Gerard Pique seem to be prominent candidates for a snipp day, while Jordi Alba will not be there anyway because of a suspension. Lionel Messi will almost certainly appear at the kick off in the Canary Islands. The little Argentinian showed again against Girona last weekend what kind of an aggressor he is. Former Real Madrid coach Carlos Quieroz said it strikingly this week: ‘Cristiano Ronaldo is the best player in the world, but Lionel Messi is not from this planet.’
PREDICTION: Both teams to score / YES @ 1.83
