Next Sunday, 11th of January 2015, two Spanish powerhouses, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid, will measure forces at the outstanding Camp Nou for round 18 of the Liga BBVA, on a match of paramount importance for both sides, who don’t want to let Real Madrid run free at the top of La Liga’s table.

Things are working the way they should at Barcelona’s kingdom and the sacking of Andoni Zubizarreta earlier this week is a living proof that, at least, someone in the team’s hierarchy wants to put an end to the turmoil the Catalans have been currently going through. The defeat at Anoeta last Sunday woke up some sleeping ghosts that have kept taunting the team after the departure of Pep Guardiola. The alleged cold and harsh relationship between Leo Messi and the Asturian manager, Luis Enrique, is now becoming more obvious by the day and some Spanish media claimed this week that both the Argentinean star and Neymar were particularly amused when Jordi Alba scored an own goal against Real Sociedad last Sunday. The alleged childish and unprofessional attitude from both players was probably related with the fact that they started the match on the bench and only came in as substitutes during the second-half.

Barcelona conceded their third defeat of the season and not even the smashing 5-0 win over Elche for the ⅛ finals of the Copa del Rey is enough to compensate for their underachieving overall performance from last Sunday. Luis Enrique has a gigantic task on his hands that needs to be handled with extreme care, otherwise it will keep popping in his face as it already happened a few times this season.

As for Atlético, after a less impressive period last month, during which the current Spanish champions lost to Villarreal and conceded a home draw against the modest L’Hospitalet, they managed to bounce back and are now with their motivation levels sky high, following their impressive win over Real Madrid last Wednesday night. Los Colchoneros put up a vintage performance against a truly uninspired Real and built a solid advantage for the second leg match that will take place next week.

The upcoming match against Barça will be another huge test to Atlético’s resistance, but if they manage to replicate what they did against Los Blancos on the Copa del Rey match, they might very well leave Camp Nou with a very positive result.

Barcelona

Stats: W-3 L-1 D-1

Recent Form - WLWWD

Atlético Madrid

Stats: W-3 L-1 D-1

Recent Form - WWWDL

Possible Line-ups

Barcelona (4-3-3) - Bravo - Alves - Mascherano - Piqué - Jordi Alba - Busquets - Xavi - Iniesta - Neymar - Suárez - Messi

Atlético Madrid (4-4-1-1) - Moya - Juanfran - Sequeira - Godín - Gimenez - Tiago - Gabi - Griezmann - Koke - Turan - Mandzukic

Prediction

Barcelona 1 Atlético Madrid 2