Barcelona’s Messi out 6-8 weeks; Villarreal climbs into 1st place

MADRID Villarreal jumped to the top of the Spanish Liga Saturday with a 1-0 home victory over Atletico Madrid on an early goal from Leo Baptistao.

“We are not going to give too much importance to being top of the table,” Villarreal coach Marcelino Garcia said.

“We are just going to carry on working hard and taking each game as it comes, without starting to believe that we are something very special.”

The Yellows have 16 points from their six matches, which is one more than Barcelona, which beat Las Palmas 2-1 but lost Lionel Messi for two months with a serious knee injury.

In third place with 14 points is Real Madrid, which was held 0-0 at home by Malaga.

Level with Real at 14 is Celta Vigo, which got a late 1-1 draw at sixth-placed Eibar thanks to an equalizer from Iago Aspas.

Saturday’s bad news was the injury suffered by Messi.

“Leo Messi has suffered a tear in the medial collateral ligament of his left knee. He will be out for around six to eight weeks,” Barca said in a statement.

Messi, 28, suffered the injury his first in two years when he collided with Las Palmas defender Pedro Bigas just three minutes into the home match.

He tried to stay on the field but limped off a few minutes later and was taken to hospital where the nature of the injury was diagnosed.

“The injury to Messi was the worst thing about the match,” Barca midfielder Sergio Busquets said.

“We are really going to miss the best player in the world. We tried to put his injury out of our minds during the match, but that was not easy.”

Messi will strive to be fit again for the November 21 Clasico match at historic rivals Real Madrid. Youngsters Munir and Sandro will compete to be his replacement.

Luis Suarez cheered up the Camp Nou by heading in a center from Sergi Roberto in the 24th minute, then made it 2-0 eight minutes into the second half by turning in an intelligent centre from Messi’s replacement Munir.

Neymar then hit a disputed penalty over the Las Palmas crossbar and Suarez came close to completing his hat-trick on five occasions. Jonathan Viera pulled a goal back for the visitors three minutes from the end but Barca managed to play out time.

The defeat in the Camp Nou left Las Palmas in 12th place. Their coach Paco Herrera said: “Barca deserved to win. They managed to overcome the injury to Messi without too many problems.

“But I really think we are on the right track and improving. This was always going to be a difficult match but we were not humiliated.”

Later Saturday, Real Madrid missed the chance to go top, being surprisingly held 0-0 at home by lowly Malaga.

Los Merengues dominated from start to finish but failed to find a way past Malaga’s impressive goalkeeper Carlos Kameni, who pulled off a string of remarkable saves.

Kameni was finally beaten twice, but on the first occasion defender Weligton hacked the ball off the goal-line, and on the second what looked like a good winning goal for Real two minutes was time was wrongly disallowed for offside.

“It’s difficult to play against a team as good as Real Madrid,” Cameroon veteran Kameni said.

“What I try to do is to stay as calm and relaxed as possible, this helps me to make the right decisions. ... Overall, I think we deserved to get this draw, because of all our hard work tonight.”

Meanwhile, Real keeper Keylor Navas who was virtually a spectator all night said: “We are annoyed about this. The referee did not help us at all, with his decisions.

“But there is still a long way to go, this season has only just started. We will have to be careful not to slip up again.”

Malaga who have not scored a single goal in their six matches had striker Nordin Amrabat sent off in a frenetic finale for elbowing Real defender Marcelo.

It was the first time in two years that Real had failed to score in the Estadio Bernabeu.

Also Saturday, Sevilla finally scored their first win, 3-2 at home to Rayo Vallecano thanks to a late winner from Yevhen Konoplyanka.

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