– Rakitic has scored three goals in his last three appearances against Betis at Benito Villamarin in La Liga (two for Sevilla, one for Barca).
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“I don’t think either of the other two are going to drop points so we have to win our games”, said Barca boss Luis Enrique.
Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid will now all kick off at the same time in the final run in to the end of the 2015/16 season.
Barca were far from their sparkling best against Betis after thrashing Sporting Gijon 6-0 and Deportivo La Coruna 8-0 in their previous two games, but were helped by Heiko Westermann’s sending off in the 35th minute for a second booking.
Luis Enrique’s men struggled to break their rivals until Rakitić opened the scoring in the 50th minute on a defensive mix-up by the hosts.
Barcelona are now top of La Liga on 85 points, level with Atletico Madrid who beat Rayo Vallecano 1-0 earlier in the evening. The German defender was shown his first yellow in the 28th for a foul on Messi, and the second came less than 10 minutes later for a foul on Rakitic. Time and time again this season we’ve seen Suarez put the ball into the net and he was at it again on Saturday.
An attempt from Ruben Castro from just outside the box was headed over the bar by Javier Mascherano, before Bruno’s header from the resulting corner forced Barcelona goalkeeper Claudio Bravo to tip the ball over his own goal.
“Everybody does their duty there – they play all for one and one for all”.
And Real coach Zinedine Zidane refused to accept he will prioritise the upcoming second leg with City ahead of their trip to Anoeta. “The important thing for us was to get the three points, because if we didn’t get them today, La Liga would have become more hard”.
Madrid was without Ronaldo and Benzema because of hamstring injuries ahead of Wednesday’s Champions League semifinal against Manchester City. The Croatian global was also prepared to overlook the fact that Valencia had several unsafe attacks during the course of Sunday’s game, including a glorious late chance for striker Paco Alcacer, as he said: “They only attacked us twice, but they scored two goals”.
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The teams last played in December 2015 and Real Madrid won the game 3 – 1. Those accidents were wake-up calls, because we now have no more room left for error.
