Tribal Football

Celta Vigo host Barcelona; Aspas vs Yamal - the legend vs the superkid

Carlos Volcano
Celta Vigo host Barcelona; Aspas vs Yamal - the legend vs the superkid
Celta Vigo host Barcelona; Aspas vs Yamal - the legend vs the superkidLaLiga
There is a huge match coming up this Saturday at the Estadio ABANCA Balaídos, where RC Celta and FC Barcelona will come together. Both teams are having very good seasons, meeting their objectives and playing attractive football at the same time.

These are two of the top-scoring sides in Spain, with Barça the top by a long way with their incredible tally of 40 goals from 13 matches. 

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This weekend, however, FC Barcelona have a very tricky outing at a ground that has not been particularly kind to them in recent years. They have only won on three of their last 10 visits to Vigo in LALIGA EA SPORTS. One of those victories did come last season, though it was a close game and required a stoppage time penalty by Robert Lewandowski to clinch all three points. Across the other previous nine league visits, the Catalans won two, lost four and drew three.

 

Iago Aspas faces one of his favourite victims

Iago Aspas is undoubtedly a LALIGA and an RC Celta legend. And, this matchday he faces one of the clubs he has regularly scored against throughout his career. In fact, he has only scored more goals against Sevilla FC, with 12, than the 11 goals he has netted against Barça in 19 LALIGA EA SPORTS meetings, with the forward having contributed four assists too.

In the last nine meetings between the two teams at the Estadio ABANCA Balaídos, Aspas has scored nine times against Barça. He has often stood out and even scored a brace on a pair of occasions, once in a 4-1 RC Celta win in 2015/16 and also in a 3-3 draw in 2021/22, when the team from Vigo came back from being 3-0 down at half-time. 

 

Lamine Yamal
Lamine YamalLaLiga

 

Rising star Lamine Yamal takes on the LALIGA legend

Aspas has already cemented his legendary status, in the league and for his club, and this weekend he takes on another Spanish player who seems destined to become an all-time great. That is Lamine Yamal, the incredible young FC Barcelona winger who is already one of the best players in the competition and, for many, in the whole world. 

His impact, both with the Spanish national team and with Barça, has been impressive. This season the youngster already has five league goals and seven league assists, while he is the player with the most dribbles with 79, three more than Vinícius. At the Reale Arena against Real Sociedad, Lamine Yamal was unable to play due to injury and his team dearly missed him, as the final result – a 1-0 loss, just their second of the season – proved. 

 

Two high defensive lines and clinical attacks 

RC Celta and FC Barcelona are two teams that are constantly looking towards the opposition goal, while they are both desperate for possession and want to play in the opposition half. Barça are the team with the most goals scored so far this league campaign with 40 goals, which is twice as many as their next opponents, although RC Celta are fourth-top in this category. That shows just how many goals both teams, and in particular Barça, are scoring. 

Since the arrival of Claudio Giráldez to the dugout in Vigo, the Galicians have recovered their essence. Not only are they achieving better results, but they’re also playing the kind of attractive football that used to lead them to European qualification. It helps that Aspas now has several allies in attack, such as Óscar Mingueza, Hugo Sotelo, Williot Swedberg, Borja Iglesias and Anastasios Douvikas. All of them are forward-thinking players who combine quality with clinical finishing, especially in the case of strikers Borja Iglesias and Douvikas. 

Meanwhile, FC Barcelona are the best attacking team in LALIGA EA SPORTS and boast three in-form strikers, in addition to the midfielders who dictate the pace and tempo of each game. The defence is also playing well, mastering the high line and offside trap to frustrate their opponents throughout the 90 minutes. 

The trio of Lewandowski, Raphinha and Lamine Yamal, supported by the dynamism of Dani Olmo, have made FC Barcelona almost unstoppable in attack. These three starting forwards they have combined for 26 goals just by themselves, an impressive stat when considering that no other team in the competition has that many goals across the entire squad. It’s clear, then, that this Saturday’s game at the Estadio ABANCA Balaídos has the potential to be a spectacle of attacking flair and goals.  

 

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