BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Barcelona is looking to city rival Espanyol for a favor to celebrate another Spanish league title.<\/p>\n
Espanyol hosted second-place Real Madrid later Sunday with the visitors needing a win to prolong the title fight for another week at least. Anything less than a Madrid victory would hand Barcelona the title with four rounds to spare.<\/p>\n
Barcelona opened a 14-point lead over Madrid with a 2-1 win at Osasuna on Saturday. It next hosts bitter rival Madrid in a La Liga \u201ccl\u00e1sico\u201d next weekend, when it could clinch the title without relying on help from others.<\/p>\n
Rayo Vallecano prepared for its Conference League semifinal against Strasbourg with a 2-0 win at Getafe.<\/p>\n
Rayo coach I\u00f1igo P\u00e9rez was able to rest many of his first-choice players with the Conference League semifinal second leg on Thursday in mind. Rayo won the first leg 1-0 at home.<\/p>\n
Sergio Camello and Randy Nteka scored in each half for the visitors, while Rayo goalkeeper Augusto Batalla also saved a penalty, to lift the team from the Madrid district of Vallecas to 11th ahead of the rest of the round.<\/p>\n
Celta Viga boosted its hopes of European qualification with a 3-1 win at home over Elche that left the promoted team among a host of clubs still in danger of relegation.<\/p>\n
Celta moved above Getafe into sixth. <\/p>\n
Also Sunday, Real Betis hosted last-placed Oviedo. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Barcelona is looking to city rival Espanyol for a favor to celebrate another Spanish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1528,1527,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-16279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-ap-sports","9":"tag-associated-press","10":"tag-madrid"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}