{"id":432336,"date":"2026-01-25T13:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T13:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/432336\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T13:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T13:30:11","slug":"rival-watch-real-madrid-overtake-barcelona-as-la-liga-leaders-with-win-over-villarreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/432336\/","title":{"rendered":"Rival Watch: Real Madrid overtake Barcelona as La Liga leaders with win over Villarreal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Barcelona will kick off Sunday\u2019s La Liga match against Real Oviedo in second place in the standings thanks to Real Madrid\u2019s hard-fought 2-0 win away to fourth-place Villarreal on Saturday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u00c1lvaro Arbeloa\u2019s men weren\u2019t very impressive and mostly took advantage of the Yellow Submarine\u2019s mistakes to create chances, and that\u2019s how they scored the winner when Pape Gueye failed to clear a fairly simple cross inside the box and Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 was quickest to the loose ball to find the net early in the second half.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Gerard Moreno missed a giant opportunity to equalizealmost immediately after the goal, and that turned out to be the home team\u2019s best chance as the rest of the game had a ton of transitions and fouls but very little quality from either side, until Mbapp\u00e9 was fouled by Pedraza inside the box and scored the penalty in added time to seal Madrid\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Los Blancos have now won five straight in the league and three in a row in all competitions since the debacle at Albacete on Arbeloa\u2019s coaching debut, and they are league leaders again for at least a few hours before Bar\u00e7a have a chance to reclaim top spot on Sunday if they are able to beat bottom of the table Oviedo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona will kick off Sunday\u2019s La Liga match against Real Oviedo in second place in the standings thanks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,179913,82],"class_list":["post-432336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-rest-of-la-liga","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}