Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde said in February he was “in a hurry” to wrap up the Liga title and his side will almost certainly get to celebrate a 25th league crown at last when they play at Deportivo La Coruna on Sunday.
Barca need a draw against Clarence Seedorf’s struggling side to clinch the title and the trophy could even be theirs before they kick off if Real Madrid fail to beat Leganes tomorrow and Atletico Madrid are unable to win at Alaves four hours before Barca’s game starts.
The Catalans have led from the front this season, topping the table in week two, and no-one can begrudge them a title which they have looked certain to win since they beat Real Madrid 3-0 on December 23, marching 14 points clear of their arch- rivals and nine ahead of Atletico.
Barca’s surprise draws against Getafe and Espanyol briefly offered Atletico hope of chasing down Valverde’s side when they closed the gap to five points ahead of a top-of-the-table clash in March, but a superb free kick from Lionel Messi gave Barca a 1-0 win to lift them eight points ahead.
They never looked back and are still unbeaten in the league, five games from becoming the first team since Real Madrid in 1932 to finish a La Liga campaign undefeated and the only side to do so since the league was expanded to more than 10 teams.
The title win would also complete the club’s seventh double after they hammered Sevilla 5-0 in the King’s Cup final on Saturday, an utterly dominant victory which went some way towards healing the wounds from their shock Champions League elimination by AS Roma.
While Barca are preparing for a title party at Riazor, Deportivo might end up feeling like they are at a funeral as the Galicians will be relegated back to Spain’s second tier for the first time since 2014 if they do not beat Barca and Levante win at Sevilla today.
“We still have chances to survive and we have to push until the end,” said defender Raul Albentosa.
“We have the game against Barcelona and must take it on in the best way,” he said.
Gooooal! Messi scores in EU court battle to trademark name
Lionel Messi, the world’s top earning footballer, won a legal battle yesterday to register his name as a trademark to sell sports goods after an EU court ruled that he is too famous to be confused with other businesses.
The Barcelona and Argentina attacker rode out a seven-year challenge by a Spanish cycling gear manufacturer called Massi, which protested that his trademark was too similar to its own.
“Lionel Messi may register his trade mark ‘MESSI’ for sports equipment and clothing,” said a ruling by the General Court of the European Union, the bloc’s second-highest court.
“The football player’s fame counteracts the visual and phonetic similarities between his trade mark and the trade mark ‘MASSI’ belonging to a Spanish company,” the Luxembourg-based court said.
The ruling comes days after it emerged that Messi has overtaken Cristiano Ronaldo as the highest earner in world football, according to France Football magazine.
The Barcelona attacker is making 126 million euros ($154mn) in salary, bonuses and commercial revenue for the current season while his great Real Madrid rival is making 94mn euros.
Messi first tried in 2011 to trademark his own name with the EU’s intellectual property office for use on “sports and gymnastics clothing, equipment and protective equipment and instruments”.
The boss of the Massi cycling goods company filed an appeal the same year, saying there was a “likelihood of confusion” with its own trademark.
The trademark office agreed, and dismissed an appeal by the five-time world footballer of the year in 2014.
‘Public figure’
But while judges admitted that the trademarks “are very similar phonetically”, they said the IPO was wrong to assume that Messi was only known by people who were interested in football or sport.
“Mr Messi is, in fact, a well-known public figure who can be seen on television and who is regularly discussed on television or on the radio,” the court said.
“It seems unlikely that an average consumer of those goods will not directly associate, in the vast majority of cases, the term ‘Messi’ with the name of the famous football player.”
It is not the first time that Messi’s business interests have ended up in court.
In 2016 a Spanish court sentenced him to 21 months in jail and fined him more than two million euros for tax evasion, although the prison sentence was later commuted to another fine.
He was found guilty of using companies in Belize, Britain, Switzerland and Uruguay
to avoid paying 4.1 million euros in taxes on income he earned from his image rights.
While Messi’s finances go from strength to strength, despite the Spanish case, he is at risk of missing out on a sixth Ballon d’Or this year.
He has locked down the footballing award in duopoly with Ronaldo for a decade, but Egypt’s Liverpool star Mohamed Salah threatens to break their stranglehold after a stunning year.
But Messi’s fame keeps soaring -- he has been unveiled as the subject of a painting modelled on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of a football club in Buenos Aires.
In it he features as Adam being touched by the “Hand of God” - belonging to Argentina football legend Diego Maradona.
In this photo taken on March 18, 2018 Barcelona’s forward Lionel Messi celebrates after scoring during the La Liga match against Athletic Club Bilbao in Barcelona. (AFP)
