Champions draw smiles on Real

A busy weekend in La Liga, with plenty of top-of-the-table clashes in store, was necessarily overshadowed early Friday by the Champions League and Europa League draws.

The former, the first out of the Swiss tombola, favored Real Madrid reasonably well. The Liga leader will play relative minnow Apoel Nicosia in the last eight, and one of Olympique Marseille or Bayern Munich in the semifinals.

Barcelona, meanwhile, faces a significantly trickier path to the final: it must first beat Milan, which gave Pep Guardiola’s men a spot of bother in the group stages, and then Chelsea, which showed huge resolve to overturn a two-goal first-leg deficit against Napoli in the previous round — only the fourth time in the history of the competition such a feat had been achieved.

In the meantime, Real hosts Málaga at the Bernabéu as it aims to maintain its ten-point advantage over Barcelona in the domestic stakes. Manuel Pellegrini’s team has quietly sneaked into the Champions League spot and will not lightly relinquish the gold mine that qualification represents. A win at the Bernabéu, though, may be beyond it, though Pellegrini would no doubt dearly love to stuff Mourinho’s “small club” jibe down the Portuguese’s throat — not that he would admit so in public of course.

Barcelona has an away trip to Sevilla to contend with, but the erratic stylings of the southern side this season suggest that the troubles Guardiola’s team has experienced on the road this season will not resurface in the Sánchez Pizjuán. However, Sevilla’s recently appointed coach Míchel will relish the chance to take on the best in show, and may let loose his attack dogs, in view of the widely acknowledged truth that La Liga’s also-rans have little to lose against the champion.

Athletic and Valencia, both in the Europa League last eight along with Atlético, play each other at San Mamés on Sunday with the fight for the Champions League places to the fore.

Valencia were dropped from Europe’s premier club competition into the Europa League, a sort of ugly sister to the glittering princess that is Uefa’s primary cash cow, while Athletic, in knocking out Manchester United in scintillating style on Thursday night, surely deserves to make the step up to the top table next season.

Three points either way will be a significant result with the chasing pack, led for now by Málaga, hot on the heels of Unai Emery’s perennial third-placers.

In Friday’s Europa League draw, the Spanish participants avoided direct confrontation — good news for Spain’s chances of a continental double this season. Athletic will play Raúl’s Schalke 04; Valencia has been paired with Dutch team AZ Alkmaar, while Atlético will face Hannover. If both Atlético and Valencia triumph, they will play each other in the semifinals.

Levante and Osasuna may also still yet have a say in the European pie-sharing for next year. They occupy sixth and fifth respectively, and further point-accruement beckons this weekend as the former hosts 17th-placed Villarreal and the latter travels to woeful Zaragoza, which cannot buy a decent result for love nor money at present.