Given the financial troubles that they faced at the start of the season, Barcelona looked unlikely to win its second league title in three seasons, especially after its arch-rival Real Madrid signed Kylian Mbappé, arguably the world’s best player, during the offseason. Mbappé has been as good as advertised, scoring 28 goals — the most by a Galacticos debutant in a La Liga season — and still, the Blaugrana are almost certain to win the title. At the start of the season, Barcelona were +350 to win, with Real Madrid holding the shortest odds.
Hansi Flick’s men are just 90 minutes away from officially securing themselves the La Liga trophy and becoming the fourth team in Europe’s top five leagues to confirm their domestic glory. Barça currently leads Real Madrid by four points, but that margin would grow to seven with a win over 16th-place Espanyol, a city rival, at 3:30 p.m. ET today. With each team having two matches left to play, it would be mathematically impossible for the Galacticos to catch up.
Barcelona is a -290 favorite to win today at DraftKings Sportsbook, with Espanyol at +550. There are +425 odds that the team will draw, which would leave the Catalans five points ahead of Madrid with the title not yet mathematically secure.
FC Barcelona at RCD Espanyol prediction, pick
Madrid has an easier schedule than Barça moving forward — it plays 14th-placed Sevilla and 12th-placed Real Sociedad in the last two weeks of the season, while the Blaugrana have fifth-placed Villareal and fourth-placed Athletic Club — so it’s no surprise that Flick is going all-out to secure the title today in the Derbi Barceloní. Although he hasn’t yet announced his starting lineup, the Barça squad is nearly back to full health, with Alejandro Balde returning prior to the win over Madrid last Sunday. Robert Lewandowski is probably set to start after Ferrán Torres underwent season-ending appendicitis surgery.
This game should be more of a coronation than a challenge, given that Espanyol hasn’t beaten its northeasterly rival in the domestic league since 2009 and hasn’t won in the derby since moving into its new stadium, the RCDE Stadium, that fall. Los Periquitos do have something almost as important as the title to play for, though; three points would move them mathematically clear of the relegation zone, as they currently lead Leganés by five points and after today, both teams will have two matches to play.
The problem is, Espanyol simply isn’t very good, having lost three matches in a row, including a 3-2 defeat to Leganés last Sunday that significantly boosted the latter’s odds of survival. All the games have been close, with each having been decided by just one goal, but a loss is a loss. The attack simply hasn’t been good enough; Los Periquitos have only generated more than 1.5 expected goals’ worth of chances once since the start of 2025 and they’ve produced the worst chances of any team in La Liga overall. It’s a shame that Espanyol has only scored more than one goal eight times, because goalie Joan García is a rising star — already linked to both Barcelona and Arsenal — who leads the division in saves by a huge margin and ranks sixth in save percentage. García has only given up multiple goals 11 times this season, which shouldn’t lead to a 10-9-16 record.
The Blaugrana do have some issues at the back, having given up two or more goals in six of the last eight matches, and in addition to Jules Koundé still being out, Iñigo Martínez is suspended after picking up his fifth yellow card of the domestic season and Pau Cubarsí has been dealing with an illness, so if Cubarsí rests and Flick doesn’t trust Uruguayan Ronald Araújo, Danish veteran Andreas Chirstensen might get a rare start. It’s also likely that Wojciech Szczęsny will start, as he has done in all of the team’s important matches over the last few months, but Marc-André ter Stegen, who’s now fully recovered from his patellar tendon tear in September, is simply a better shot-stopper. Los Paraquitos’ front three of Javi Puado, Roberto Fernández, and Antoniu will need to take advantage, and to be fair, Espanyol does rank second in the league in goals over expected.
It doesn’t matter if Los Paraquitos happen to show up against a banged-up Barcelona defense, though; who’s going to stop Lamine Yamal, Lewandowski, and Raphinha? The teenager seemingly improves game after game with well-timed goals and clinical dribbling, Raphinha is well on his way to a possible Ballon d’Or, and the ageless Lewandowski has nearly bagged a goal per 90 minutes, which ranks in the 97th percentile among strikers in Europe’s top five leagues. There’s a reason why Barça is on track to become the first team to score 100 goals in a La Liga season since they and the Galacticos both did in 2016-17, during the height of the Messi-Ronaldo era. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see all three of Yamal, Lewandowski, and Raphinha find the back of the net.
Let the floodgates open and the (non-alcoholic) champagne flow. Barça will make a statement this afternoon in claiming the La Liga title.
