Spain's woes in Europe continued this week, with Sevilla bowing out of the UEFA cup without scoring a goal in the two legs against Parma, and Zaragoza surprisingly falling on the away goal rule to Austria Vienna, even though David Villa got his name on the scoresheet again. Villarreal didn't fail though, and after a score-less draw on Wednesday in their rescheduled first leg match against Steaua Bucharest, a Riquelme penalty helped them to finish things off on Sunday. With all four sides out of the Champions' League, the "Yellow Submarine" are the only La Liga club still in Europe at the quarter final stage.

Villarreal's league match against Osasuna was postponed as a result, as was Athletic Bilbao's against Getafe a couple of weeks ago. The game was played midweek, with the Madrid based side presenting a bunch of flowers to the statue of the original "Pichichi"' as is traditional for teams visiting the San Mamés stadium for the first time. The unsettled Santi Ezquerro opened the scoring for the hosts, but they lost the match in the end.

Athletic had better luck at the weekend though, veteran striker Urzaiz coming on as substitute to score as they beat Levante 3-1. The other two were scored by a name to watch out for in the future, Llorente (full name Fernando Llorente Torres), the under 21 international's first goals in the league. Meanwhile his namesake Fernando Torres was celebrating his 21st birthday, but couldn't get his name on the score-sheet against Zaragoza.

Elsewhere Baptista closed the gap on leader Samuel Eto'o to two goals with a controversial penalty in Sevilla's match at Mallorca, more of which can be seen in our villains and white stick sections. Di Vaio scored again as a revitalized Valencia closed back up on the Champions' League spots, and Marcos Assunçao was on target as Betis moved up to third. Real Sociedad's Kovacevic also got his second in consecutive games to join the group on nine goals in all competitions. (21.03.05)