Guardiola in a sweat as Madrid cuts Barca lead

Pep Guardiola was lauded by Barcelona fans when his team led by 12 points halfway through the Spanish league season and on course to take the title from Real Madrid.

With that lead down to four points and Madrid on a run of 10 consecutive league wins, Guardiola is under mounting pressure. If this trend persists, he could well be remembered as the Barca coach who threw away a huge lead while handing its biggest rival a third straight title.

In his first season in charge, Guardiola must now lift Barca out of a slump of four games without a win, including back-to-back losses in the league. If he doesn’t, then Barcelona and Madrid could soon be neck and neck in the title race.

“We were on a good run, but we have dropped quite a few points,” Guardiola said. “We have to refocus ourselves because nobody said this would be easy. League campaigns are long, with potholes, but we are still in a good position.”

When Barcelona was building its big lead, the 38-year-old former midfielder — hugely popular with the fans as a player—appeared to have the magic touch as a coach, too.

Playing attacking soccer and setting scoring records along the way, Barca went on a 22-match unbeaten run. Real Madrid was well behind, fired manager Bernd Schuster and appeared to have little chance of winning the title again.

How things have changed in the past month. Now, with eight points sliced off their team’s big lead, the Barca fans are getting nervous. They want to see how Guardiola reacts as Madrid continues to turn up the heat.

After the distraction of a Copa del Rey semifinal against Mallorca on Wednesday, Barcelona aims to end its poor run. Guardiola’s team surrendered a 2-0 lead and conceded an 89th-minute goal to lose 4-3 at Atletico Madrid on Sunday. That followed a 2-1 defeat at home to neighbor Espanyol. Adding a 2-2 draw with Real Betis and a 1-1 Champions League tie with Lyon, that makes four games in a row without a victory.

“We had an advantage and Real Madrid have made up eight points on us in three games three months from the end of the competition, but we will get back up and continue,” Guardiola said. “We will recover and continue to move onwards and upwards.”

Guardiola has to reverse course long before his team goes to Real Madrid on May 3 for a confrontation that could decide the Spanish title.

His team doesn’t have a problem scoring. Lionel Messi and Thierry Henry were both on target against Atletico, and Barcelona has scored in every league game since its opener, a 1-0 loss to Numancia.

Blunders in the defensive end have led to needless goals, with even striker Henry giving away a penalty kick against Atletico.

With Real Madrid surviving injury problems and moving closer with each round of games, Barcelona is now feeling pressure it never thought it would have to face.

While Barcelona hosts Athletic Bilbao next weekend, it hopes that Atletico Madrid won’t hand neighbor Real any easy points and may even end its winning streak.

Center back Carles Puyol says all teams, even Barcelona, must withstand poor stretches during the season.

“It’s a huge blow but we have to continue and be stronger than ever before,” he said. “Football is like this and you have runs like these, but we are working well and we can’t lose our belief in ourselves. The team that is top in the table is us.”

But Barcelona seems to have forgotten how to win. Although it can afford a narrow loss to Mallorca in the cup and still advance to the final, it doesn’t want the winless run to get any longer.

The only good omen for Barcelona? The last time it lost two games in a row while the league leader was in 2006. It went on to win not only the title that year but the Champions League, too.