Real Madrid's pursuit of excellence may still have some way to run but their quest for a 31st league title has drawn to a successful conclusion - with three matches still to go in the La Liga season. Barcelona visit the Santiago Bernabéu on Wednesday night for what should have been a showdown between Spain's football behemoths. Instead the Catalans will arrive in the capital knowing that a 2-1 victory over Osasuna last night means the trophy already belongs to Madrid, and with the humiliating obligation of handing their most bitter rivals a champion's guard of honour as they run on to the pitch.

When Fabio Capello was sacked in the summer despite securing the league, the president, Ramón Calderón, insisted that winning was not enough - Madrid had to win in style. He presented the new coach, Bernd Schuster, as the man who would lead Madrid in "the pursuit of excellence"; too often, he declared, Madrid's fans had been "bored". If offloading the man who had ended the longest title drought in over half a century appeared a president's folly, it has not cost Madrid. And if it has not consistently brought the beautiful game to the Bernabéu, it has given way to a more convincing march to the title.

Beneath Calderón's aesthetic rhetoric lurked recognition that Madrid had been fortunate to win the league last season. Capello's side secured the title after an astonishing run-in that followed a disappointing season. They won seven of the final eight games and drew the other. Every single of one of those matches demanded a turnaround of the score: 2006-07 was a league built on impossible comebacks, the suicidal collapse of Barcelona and barely credible dramatic last-gasp victories.

This time, there has been nothing lucky about Real Madrid's success, though there was no shortage of drama last night. Arjen Robben and then Gonzalo Higuaín scored in the final moments for Madrid in Pamplona to trigger wild celebrations after they had fallen behind with only eight minutes remaining and had Fabio Cannavaro sent off early in the second half.

On occasion, this has been a campaign that has left supporters cold. One columnist declared his desire for this year's league title to remain unclaimed as "no one deserved it", the former Spain coach Javier Clemente insisted that "Madrid and Barcelona don't play any football at all" and even the rabidly pro-Real Madrid newspaper As, noting the depressing familiarity of the performance, claimed that Madrid's display against Deportivo was the worst in their "entire history".

Yet, Madrid have had a relentlessness, a variety and an efficiency that others have been unable to match, as well as having the finest goalkeeper in Spain, Iker Casillas. They have comfortably scored more goals and conceded fewer than any other side in La Liga, and have stepped up when they needed to: their finest performances have come against second-placed Villarreal, whom they hammered 5-1 away, and Barcelona, whom they controlled at Camp Nou, winning 1-0 via a Julio Baptista goal.

Victory over Villarreal put Madrid top in week two and they have not given up that position since. Victory over Barcelona saw them go into the Christmas break with a seven-point lead. And although Madrid suffered a mini-collapse in January and February, going out of the Copa del Rey and the Champions League, losing nine times in 18 in all competitions, the fall of Barcelona was even more devastating. Rather than cutting that lead, Madrid have extended it. Only Villarreal kept the title race remotely alive, as Madrid's early results saw them through the dip in form.

Last night, Schuster's side mathematically wrapped up the league, but it was over at Christmas. Madrid may not have been superlative but they have been strikingly superior from start to finish.

原文地址:http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/05/serieafootball.acmilan?gusrc=rss&feed=sport