Who will finish on top in this mediocre La Liga campaign?
At the beginning of the season, I wrote an article on the upcoming La Liga campaign, weighing up the chances of Barcelona retaining their crown. I argued that Real Madrid’s increased discipline and organisation under Fabio Capello would present a different challenge to Rijkaard and co., and that Valencia would also have a say.
Whilst Valencia’s title challenge seems to have petered out – they were defeated 2-1 by Real Madrid on Saturday evening, and now find themselves in 5th position – the title race is very much undecided. Barcelona currently lead the pack with 59 points, above Sevilla with 58 and Real Madrid with 57.
Barcelona last night had the chance to open out a 4 point lead over Sevilla – the biggest margin by which any team has led the league up to this point. However, the blaugrana lost 2-0 at Villareal, and were a shadow of their former selves. Whilst keeping the ball fairly well, particularly in the first half, Samuel Eto’o demonstrated that he is far from match fit, missing a couple of excellent chances, and neither Ronaldinho nor Messi could spark a comeback. The Villareal opener was an excellently constructed goal, finished off by Robert Pires on his full debut, a cameo performance that showed to what extent he has been missed by the Yellow Submarines this season.
Barça needed an injury-time own goal to beat Mallorca last weekend, and are playing without any fluidity. Real Madrid have performed with mediocrity throughout the majority of the season, with Capello being heckled on numerous occasions by the peñas of Madrid, the result of which has seen Real have a far better record away from the Bernabeu than at home.
Sevilla continue to play with gusto and skill, but will their fairly limited squad manage to keep up the challenge on three fronts? Will fringe players such as Chevanton be able to efficiently replace stars such as Kanoute, joint top goalscorer in the league this campaign? Real Madrid are still to host Sevilla and travel to Zaragoza, Barcelona are still to travel to Atletico Madrid, and Sevilla face a tough trip to Deportivo, as well as that game at the Bernabeu.
I’d be equally interested in hearing what you have to say about the relative mediocrity of La Liga this season. Long touted as the best league in Europe, La Liga’s top sides (with the exception of Sevilla) have foundered in 2006-7, a fact reflected in the absence of Spanish sides in the last four of the Champions League, as well as in the relatively low point totals (with 31 games played, Man United had 78 points, compared to Barcelona’s paltry 59).
The abundance of Spanish teams in the last four of the UEFA cup is not necessarily an effective counter-argument; Spurs-Sevilla would have been fit for the final of the competition, whilst I have no doubt that teams like Espanyol and Osasuna would struggle against most of the Premiership’s top ten.
Who do you think will win the Spanish league this season? Do you think winning the Spanish title would be enough to keep the now unpopular Fabio Capello in a job?
Sevilla are out, Valencia are out. If Real can keep their nerve at home, they’ll push Barca till the end. If they can’t, Barca will take it.
Funny Mr. Stecklemacher – I have no doubt that teams like Espanyol or Osasuna would not struggle against teams outside England’s “Big Four”.
The points you mentioned in the article I think complement one another and provide us with an explanation. But first let me mention, in 2004-05 I believe Spain also had no representatives in the Champions’ League semifinals. Liverpool were winners. And the English press began writing about the decline of La Liga.
The following season Spanish teams won the Champions’ League and the UEFA Cup, beating English sides in the final. So out with that theory…
But this year it’s cropped up again. And it’s ridiculous. Leagues don’t go from being very strong to in decline over the course of one summer, except for rare circumstances, say if your historically most successful club is relegated and two other top 4 clubs are docked points due to a cheating scandal.
In Europe’s second tournaments, now the UEFA Cup but also the Cup Winners’ Cup when it existed, Spanish clubs have consistently performed very well, making semifinals and finals on a regular basis, and winning tournaments occasionally as well. In 2000 there were 3 Spanish sides in the CL Semifinals. In 2003 there were 3 Italian sides. And in 2007 there are 3 English sides. This has as much to do with the quality of the league as it does to the draw teams receive, what time of the season the ties are played, etc. When there are consistently 3 clubs from the same league in the CL semifinals say 3 seasons in a row, I’ll be the first to take my hat off. But until that happens you can’t use it as justification to say one league is better than another.
Which is precisely why UEFA uses a rolling coefficient system based on the performances of all clubs in all competitions, over 5 years.
In any case my point is that the middle ground of Spanish football is quite healthy. Phil Ball recently wrote an article making the same judgment. Combine this with Real Madrid only beginning to get back on it’s feet after years of mismanagement and it’s extremely dividing fan base (as can be seen at matches, in the Madrid-friendly press, etc); Valencia having horrible injury problems and at times sacrificing emphasis on the league for a run at Europe; Sevilla only recently reaching these heights and perhaps not prepared, both mentally and in terms of squad depth, to take on three competitions simultaneously (in my opinion if they had focused all their energies on the league they would be runaway leaders right now), and the “galactization” of Barcelona – with Eto’o both injured and conflictive, and Ronaldinho’s head clearly somewhere else (my guess, it starts with M, ends with N, and has ILA in the middle), problems between these two, and a lot of the pressure on the shoulders of a 19 year old who thanks to his history of hormonal treatment is already having the type of injury problems (and consequently, missed matches) which are not normal for someone his age, and you have what we see this year: three teams within 2 points at the top, 9 points between 1st and 6th place, and only 23 points between Champions´ League (4th) and Relegation (18th) places. To compare, in England, we’d be talking about 15 points between 1st and 3rd, 28 between 1st and 6th, and 30 between 4th and 18th.
AVRV – you should sign up and write a counter-point article
Good points btw.
I agree that about the debatable nature of my judgement regarding the relative strength of the leagues, and accept that the performance in European competitions is not NECESSARILY a reliable yardstick next to which the quality of the respective leagues ought to be judged. However, surely you cannot deny that by its own standards this year’s La Liga has been a frank disappointment? I personally feel that the narrow margins between 1st and 6th and 4th and 18th are revelatory of a general mediocrity (particularly in terms of inconsistency), with teams struggling to pull themselves out of the mire of averageness, much as has happened in the Championship this season. The only teams exempted from this judgement are, in my eyes, Sevilla, Zaragoza (who have been a breath of fresh air, especially going forward), and perhaps Getafe.
Incidentally, you claim that Real are moving towards the resolution of their period of mismanagement РI believe that they remain right in the middle of it. Until the mediocre players are shipped out and the whole squad is revamped, until the players look like they WANT to be playing for the club (the only players who seem to care at the moment are Higuain, Casillas, Ra̼l, Helguera and Ramos, and at least two of these players (Helguera and Ra̼l) are no longer of sufficient quality to represent the team), Real will continue to struggle.
Finally, I believe that a squad-for-squad comparison of Espanyol, Osasuna, Atletico and Recreativo with Tottenham, Bolton, Newcastle, Portsmouth and Everton would favour the English sides – only players such as Aguero, Raúl Garcia, RodrÃguez could stake a genuine claim in the English teams. As I said, Zaragoza are an exception – with quite a few of their players good enough to perform at an extremely high level – Real Madrid must continue to kick themselves for having pulled out of the deal to sign Gabi Milito.
You forgot Torres in that list, Hugo.
Yes, I did – oops. There are a few others, like Talmudo…he has rediscovered his form as of late.
unless real madrid will bring back del bosque,capello should stay next season
Hugo, did you read Sid Lowe’s latest piece? Once you get back the nauseating attempts at fluff, he makes a couple of decent points.
Real Madrid winning the league? Perfect sending off gift for Becks
Here are the two Real Madrid goals (Ruud and Becks assist, couldnt resist):
Ruud volley
Becks assist, Ramos header
Sid Lowe’s is basicly an idiot. That man clearly hates Real Madrid & Valencia more then anything. He has never writen anything nice about those clubs in his entire career while on the other hand, he praises the hell out Barcelona.
Steckelmacher:
I dont see how having 2 teams run away with the league necessarily makes one league better then the other. One could even argue that the other league was more competitive because of the small gab between first & fifth place.
Also, doing a squad-for-squad comparison would be a good thing if the game was played on papir but its not. Tottenham would have a better squad-for-squad comparison then Sevilla but they in the actual match, Sevilla won.
So far this season, La Liga has a better coefficients then any other league, even the English Premier League.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/data/method3/ccoef2007.html
Can people please call me by my first name? Or are you trying to highlight my Germanic roots? At least Redondo spelt it correctly, however. My argument was not necessarily about two teams running away with it, but about the POINTS TOTAL, as well as citing the inconsistent, or consistently abject, performances put in by the top sides.
Incidentally, I did not state that I prefer the premiership – I generally am much more fond of La Liga. However, this campaign has really only impressed me with its insipidness, and most Spanish fans I have spoken to are not filled with excitement about the finale, rather scepticism and even boredom.
Spurs-Sevilla as the final in UEFA cup would have been nice…but a better one would be Werder Bremen vs Sevilla…which is still on the cards.
Bremen are definitely a better side than Tottenham (man for man and even as a team)
[...] A couple of weeks ago I wrote about what I perceived as a general mediocrity in this year’s La Liga campaign. [...]
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