Kudos goes out to the diminutive striker from Argentina (not as if most all strikers from Argentina are small), the one that everybody forgets about—Javier Saviola.

Having lost the World Club Championship against Internacional of Brazil, Barcelona has played themselves back into the funk that they seemed to have pulled out of, right before the holiday season.

If the Argentine striker’s goals don’t warrant a run of games, at least they will provide a morale booster as Barcelona are currently off the pace of Sevilla in La Liga and are now drawn level on points in 2nd Place with a Beckham-less, refocused, and youth enriched Madrid.

Coming back to Barcelona, after a few years out on exile, delivering silverware for both Monaco and Sevilla, on the purse strings of the Catalan giants, Saviola has barely played a role for Frank Rijkaard this season. Yet, that still did not stop him from stealing the show in the Copa del Rey against Alavés as his 5 goals proved instrumental in both games (Barcelona won 5-2 on aggregate).

Coming off a draw to Getafe and a defeat to cross town rivals Espanyol in La Liga, the forgotten man, Saviola scored 2 away goals in the 1st leg and then ensured progression to the quarterfinals with a hat-trick at the Nou Camp to defeat a plucky 2nd Division Alavés that put in 2 themselves against the reigning European Champions.

Rijkaard will definitely be looking to solidify some composure as Barcelona is set to play bottom dwellers, Gimnastic de Terragona this Sunday though both Madrid and Sevilla also have games that should fall their way against Mallorca and Villarreal respectively.

With the apparent return of Eto’o it will be interesting who Rijkaard shows faith in throughout the rest of Barcelona’s campaigns.

Carvings from the dagger

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Soccer World, Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.