Like any good Spaniard, I love watching soccer. The end of the (American) football season shifts my attention to Europe, where the domestic, as well as continental leagues start to ramp up as the teams head down the home stretch. England, France, Germany, and Italy are all seeing some surprising contenders for their titles, with teams like Lens, Union Berlin, Arsenal, and Napoli right in the mix. The Champions League also has one of its most interesting quarterfinal brackets in recent memory as well. All in all, this spring is shaping up to be one of the most exciting in a long time in Europe. But notice how I left one league out. And that league is La Liga, the top flight of Spanish soccer.
Even by its own standards, this season has been incredibly boring, predictable, and competitive for all the wrong reasons. Barcelona is easily running away with the title, 12 points clear of second place. The gap is so massive that as of Matchday 28, Real Sociedad, the fourth place club in Spain, is closer to 19th place Almeria than they are to first place Barcelona. In fact, every team outside the Top 10 should be at least somewhat concerned with relegation. This ginormous disparity in Spanish Soccer has existed since the birth of the league, but it is only getting worse, and that is due to Barcelona and Real Madrid abusing their status as the top clubs in Spain, abandoning their fellow Spanish teams.
In all major European Leagues, there is normally a very wide gap on the field and in media notoriety between the “big clubs” and everybody else. For example, in England, the top clubs everyone knows about are Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Manchester City. In Spain, it is the aforementioned Barcelona and Real Madrid. Along with the on field and media notoriety gap, Barcelona and Real Madrid make nearly double what many of the other teams in their league make. But it is not like this in the Premier League. The Premier League splits its revenue much more evenly with a comparatively “small”£66 million , or $82 million difference between the top earning and least earning team in the league. Compare that with La Liga, where Real Madrid earns over $120 million more than the smallest team in the league, and over $105 million than half the teams in the league. The Premier League is much better at sharing its money, and it shows. La Liga’s teams not named FC Barcelona or Real Madrid are mostly made up of young players developed in house, and barely any outside star power, and that is because these teams cannot outbid other European clubs for star players. However, this is barely a problem in England. Many teams outside the Big Six are able to make big splashes, signing many well known players.
It could be argued that comparing La Liga to the Premier League is unfair because one is so much richer than the other. But there was a time where La Liga was financially larger than The Premier League. In the 2000s and most of the 2010s, La Liga was arguably the largest league in the world. Barcelona and Real Madrid were still running the show, but there was top talent on many other Spanish rosters. However, as time passed, the two behemoths in Spain only got bigger, hogging all the money La Liga was raking in. Well known clubs like Valencia and Sevilla have now fallen by the wayside, as they cannot sign enough star players. As of Match Day 28, Valencia CF is only out of the relegation zone on goal differential, and Sevilla is not far behind. Real Madrid and Barcelona have made La Liga worse for every team that is not themselves. Their greed is a huge civic issue, and if La Liga wants the prestige it once had back, it needs to hold these two teams accountable.
Real Madrid and Barcelona have superstars up and down their rosters, but the rest of the league… not so much
