On this evening, there will be exceptional 27th round matches in the Spanish La Liga championship. Two teams competing for the title - "Barcelona" and Madrid's "Atletico" will meet at "Camp Nou" stadium.
For Atletico, this is a crucial battle to maintain fairly good chances to fight for the first position. However, Barcelona is still undefeated in the Spanish championship this season, and changing this statistic for their opponents from the capital will be very difficult. The match in Barcelona will start at 17:15 Lithuanian time.
Teams' results: Both teams had matches in the middle of the week in the La Liga championship, but the performances were different - Madrid's Atletico crushed their opponents, while Barca unexpectedly and controversially lost points to Las Palmas.
Barcelona has been almost unbeaten this season, but recently they have been sharing points with their opponents. In the last five matches in all competitions, the Catalans celebrated victories only twice and settled for draws three times.
In addition to the match against Las Palmas, Barcelona also failed to defeat Chelsea (Champions League) and Getafe from Madrid. Under Barcelona's feet fell Girona (6-1) and Eibar (2-0).
Diego Simeone's team is in much better sporting form, securing victories in the last eight consecutive matches. At the beginning of the season, Atletico struggled to win by a larger margin, but lately, their offense has been shining.
The Madrid team sent four goals to Leganes, five to Sevilla, defeated Kobenhavn by a minimal margin, and triumphed over Athletic Bilbao with a score of 2-0, as well as crushed the Danish club on the road with a score of 4-1.
This productivity is boosted by Antoine Griezmann returning to his best form. The Frenchman scored an incredible eight goals in the last two matches.
In the league table, Barcelona leads its opponents from Madrid by a 5-point difference. In case of victory, the difference would increase to a solid 8-point advantage, but a loss would bring much more intrigue to Spain - the first and second positions would be separated by only 2 points.
Teams' news: Both teams have some slight losses. Barcelona will be without Nelson Semedo and Atletico without Stefan Savic. It is still unknown if Lucas Hernandez is ready for the match, but the defender has already trained with the team.
Expectations of starting lineups: Barcelona: (4-3-3) Marc-Andre ter Stegen; Sergi Roberto, Gerard Pique, Samuel Umtiti, Jordi Alba, Ivan Rakitic, Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta; Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Philippe Coutinho.
Atletico: (4-4-2) Jan Oblak; Sime Vrsaljko, Jose Gimenez, Diego Godin, Filipe Luis; Angel Correa, Saul Niguez, Gabi, Koke; Diego Costa, Antoine Griezmann.
Interesting facts: The first match between these two teams in this season ended in a 1-1 draw. Saul Niguez put Atletico ahead, but Luis Suarez equalized at the end of the match.
Barcelona has won 22 home matches out of the last 24 in the Spanish championship. Almost all of them had more than three goals scored, including the statistics of both teams.
The Catalan team has been undefeated in 17 consecutive matches against Atletico at home in all competitions.
In the last three La Liga matches, Atletico scored at least two goals, and in the last two games, they kept a clean sheet five times.
Antoine Griezmann, who scored a "poker" in the last match, is currently experiencing a goal drought against Barcelona - the Frenchman has scored only two goals in the last 15 matches against the Catalans.
In these matches, Atletico will need to be most careful of Lionel Messi, who has scored 22 goals in 23 matches against the team from Spain's capital.
