Now I don’t know how closely people tend to follow a single league, but if you’ve followed La Liga over the last decade I think you’ll agree how sad the state of La Liga is.
Theres about 5 clubs that play attractive football at a decent level and 3 that try but have the quality of a midtable championship side.
Ignoring the non footballing issues, from consistent racial abuse to sexism etc (Rubiales and Vini cases are only the tip of the massive iceberg). There’s terrible refereeing and more time wasting than any other of the top 7 leagues.
The football being played is just sad, Spain is still thought of as a league with highly technical sides playing one touch passes and building complicated structures. Well other than Barca and Madrid(who arent defined by their possession play anyways), not a single club does this at a European level.
Sociedad, Villareal and Betis come close but have lost key players this season since they have no financial power either, despite being top 6 clubs in the league. Also lost players to injuries thanks to too much football being played.
Simeone and Atletico have ofc evolved over the years, but barring Griezmann theres not a single player in la liga that is a star outside of Madrid and Barca.
Girona and returning Las Palmas play with their defined style and do a good job but clearly lack the quality and talent to be a top side, they can’t attract even half decent players and nor can they afford it. Watching them play against top 7 sides is sad.
Athletic Club are interesting in so far as they play mostly academy players due to their self imposed Basque players only rule and then lose any player who outgrows them anyways, they havent had a player who could finish off chances in my living memory.
Celta Vigo and Valencia used to be top 7 sides competing for European spots. Peter Lim has suceeded in destroying Valencia meanwhile Celtas philosophy for 5 years has been Aspas and InshaAllah. Tho I’m hopeful with the arrival of Benitez, Bamba and hopefully Larsen improving.
Watching Getafe is the saddest thing in life. (Noone will disagree here, not even Bordalas. And yes they just got Greenwood).
Mallorca, Cadiz, Deportivo and Granada aren’t even worth talking about. Almeria would be there if they hadn’t just spent good money this season and nabbed Arribas!
Vallecano have Isi Palazon and Alvaro Garcia, if one of them leaves they are a relegation team. Sevilla have been destroyed by Monchi. Osasuna have managed a spectacular 7th last season but with terrible underlying numbers.
I’d say theres 5 clubs in Spain that would not be relegated if they were in the EPL. Barca, Madrid, Atletico, Sociedad and Villareal.
This is a massive decline in quality in the league. Everyone but Madrid is a selling club now. I’d be happy to see La Liga be reduced to 18 teams. The only other top 5 league with a bottom half this weak is Italy. (Atleast the french league produces great talents and are a young league).
Are there any national leagues with competitive play? I feel like the UEFA Champions League has fueled national super teams that can afford much better teams than their competitors, and it shows in the variance of play.
Athe very least the top 10 teams to smth interesting in Italy and Germany. Meanwhile the quality of football in England is, if not competetive for the top spot, high quality and still competetive for the rest. Sides like Brighton, Brentford, Aston Villa are doing fascinating stuff. And they are outside the traditional big 6 (plus Newcastle as 7). I’m not an EPL fan or anything, but with the money they have, they’ve become the only league where you can put on any game and expect to see good football.
They (and the other major Continental leagues) need to take a page out of the English playbook and spread out the TV money across the league, instead of letting Barca and Real take their enormous share.
English dominance in the sport right now is built on them having a strong base of support well down the pyramid, and lucrative rewards beyond that for simply existing in the Premier League. Continental pyramids have the same theoretical structure, but with PSG, Bayern, etc hoovering up all the attention and getting payouts to match, their competition is left in the dust and continues to decline. By contrast, English clubs get substantial revenue sharing assistance, and invest it into making their teams credible competitors domestically and in Europe.
To oversimplify further, top English teams cede a much larger percentage of the revenue “they” earn to their inter-league competition, and are rewarded with a high quality and ultimately even more lucrative final product. Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, etc do far less revenue sharing, and the top teams gorge themselves on lacklustre competition as their leagues slowly fall further and further.
Seems it’s like a death spiral of low viewer -> reduced income -> can’t afford more technical players -> play unattractive football -> lower viewers.
Incentiving players to play in Spain maybe can be a good start, but not sure what best to do that
The only way they are escaping the death spiral is for teams to adopt attacking styles of play while also investing in, cheap, young attacking talent. Football is an international sport and outside of Barca and Madrid the other teams need to attract new fans and they won’t be doing that with murder ball. I’m the average fan the league needs to attract and I personally don’t want to watch a bunch of teams play 60-70 mins of slow, defensive and occasionally brutal football.
Brighton have made a case for smaller teams who want to compete and it’s time for some teams to start looking at how they can adopt some of Brighton’s philosophies and emulating them.
Or maybe there needs to be a rethink as to what competitive football looks like in Europe. Right now, it seems nation based that leads into a European championship, but maybe the better option is to create several European leagues to allow for better games in medium and smaller countries.
I have to confess I was the one person who supported the Super League.
But hot take, if a major change in the football landscape is incoming it’s the fifa club world cup gaining relevance. I say this bc if Saudi Arabia can have 6 teams stacked with top players and a decent league around that you have another massive league, meanwhile Qatar and the MLS are attracting top players too.
But if that happens, quality players will be spread across even more leagues and these bottom half teams will get worse and worse.
Best case scenario, the domestic season becomes an 18 game season with 10 teams in the top division with the fifa club world cup in whatever was its formatted being the primary revenue generator for top clubs.
I wouldn’t say it is the World Cup gaining relevance, but that you have new regions of the world that can now compete with Europe on a pay scale.
Saudi Arabia seems fine with spending enough money to create a local league that can compete with Champions League teams with Europe. It might be sportswashing, but I can see the Middle East having several leagues with teams run as prestige projects the same way that some EPL teams are run.
The USA could be both a market and source for talent, but it will likely be taking talent rather than making it at first. You also have the problem that MLS games are going to have better times for South American countries to watch. Messi’s Argentinian fans can watch his games in their timezones. I can see that being very attractive to South American talent going forward.
If Europe is going to compete, it may need to accept that it needs continent wide resources. I think the major argument against the Super League was the lack of relegation; a version of that league with relegation may be needed to support the talent race.
Yessss
The middle east can have 3 leagues, Qatar and UAE have gotten a few marquee signings but what Saudi are doing is simply unprecedented.
And yes the MLS can and has generated talent of its own. The US talent development pipeline is spectacular (in their big 3 sports atleast), so it is likely they’ll have a more sustainable league that could and is gathering south american and mexican talent and targettimg those markets. The issue is those are low value markets except for the US itself.
I say if Saudi can keep this project running for three years, they’d want to compete against the preestablished juggernauts of the sport. And any change coming to the sport will come from Saudi.
Who does it even benefit having Europe being the sole footballing power? UEFA? Cant see anyone else wanting Europe to keep talent and power. A global competition would integrate many markets.
I mean madrid and barca have gone to the US for their pre seasons 2 years in a row and there was a la liga proposotion to play a few games in the US a few years ago if i remember correctly.
I feel like the Super League only failed because it cemented some teams in sports culture where all teams can fall from grace and there is some value still in the national leagues. If you correct the relegation issue, I can easily see another attempt being made, especially in some markets with a weak national league.
Imagine a second attempt including Paris Saint-Germain and Ajax, or even teams from countries like Poland. Allow for new teams to enter, but only at the lower league level. Even better, create the 2nd & 3rd European leagues to get relegated to immediately so you can pull some mid-market teams to really mess with UEFA. Relegation keeps regulators off your back, and pulling in strong teams from weak leagues will make it harder to legislate at the union level.
After that, all this league would need to do is allow for national leagues to join, which they might as they lose clubs left and right to the Super Leagues.
That’s what they are currently restructuring it as.
La Liga’s FFP rules are crippling growth.
Yeah proactive instead of reactive.
This is a good point. Generally I tend to agree. But I do think barca is kind of defined by their possession play. Also real and barca are still cutting it at the highest levels. However I think if the trend continues then Spanish football will continue to slump.
