MADRID (AP) \u2014 Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior scored two second-half goals and Real Madrid beat Espanyol 2-0 to keep Barcelona from clinching its second straight Spanish league title on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Barcelona beat Osasuna 2-1 on Saturday to open a 14-point gap over Madrid entering Sunday\u2019s matches. Anything but a win by Madrid against Barcelona’s city rival would have allowed the Catalan club to celebrate its 29th league title this weekend.<\/p>\n
Barcelona will have a chance to clinch the title next weekend when it hosts Madrid in a \u201ccl\u00e1sico\u201d at the Camp Nou.<\/p>\n
Barcelona’s lead stayed at 11 points heading into the final four rounds of La Liga.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a big game against a great rival and they have been playing well,” Madrid coach \u00c1lvaro Arbeloa said. “It\u2019s a special game for the fans, for us. We are going to rest and prepare well for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunday’s result kept Espanyol winless in 17 consecutive games this year, with 10 losses. It sits in 13th place, five points from the relegation zone.<\/p>\n
It was a hard-fought match until Vin\u00edcius broke the deadlock in the 55th minute after a nice fake move to get past a couple of Espanyol defenders inside the area. The Brazil forward added to the lead in the 66th with a shot into the top corner after a beautiful back-heel set up by Jude Bellingham.<\/p>\n
Espanyol defender Omar El Hilali was shown a straight red card for a foul on Vin\u00edcius in the first half but the call was changed to a yellow card after video review.<\/p>\n
Madrid lost left back Ferland Mendy 10 minutes into the match because of an apparent muscle injury.<\/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, Cucho Hern\u00e1ndez opened and concluded the scoring for fifth-place Real Betis in a 3-0 win at home over last-place Oviedo, a result that left the visitors on the verge of relegation.<\/p>\n
AP Sports Writer Ciar\u00e1n Fahey contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID (AP) \u2014 Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior scored two second-half goals and Real Madrid beat Espanyol 2-0 to keep Barcelona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9297,92,9296,7795,91,82,1452,1561,1562,1558,1560,1559,9298,9299],"class_list":{"0":"post-16852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-barcelona","8":"tag-augusto-batalla","9":"tag-barcelona","10":"tag-barcelona-real-madrid-spanish-la-liga-title","11":"tag-inigo-perez","12":"tag-jude-bellingham","13":"tag-madrid","14":"tag-omar-el-hilali","15":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","16":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","17":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","18":"tag-product-32554-ap-online-soccer-game-stories","19":"tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","20":"tag-randy-nteka","21":"tag-sergio-camello"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16852","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=16852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}