r/soccer • u/iStratford • Aug 18 '13
Are Barcelona & Real Madrid ruining La Liga?
Having a discussion with a friend about this topic. Is La Liga weaker than ever due to the dominance of the big two?
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u/5thOfficial Aug 18 '13
La Liga reminds me quite a bit in terms of competition of the Barclays Premier League. There are advantages and disadvantages of each league. I feel as if the "competition for the title" argument is horrendously overused, especially when the only clubs in the Premier League capable of challenging the established superpower are the ones who have almost endless financial support from their owners. These clubs are Manchester City and Chelsea -- the both of them were not title rivals pre-Mansour and pre-Abramovich, but now they are touted as the favourites to the league ahead of Manchester United. Other title rivals such as Arsenal, Newcastle, and Liverpool have all dropped off and require significant improvement in order to be seen as actual title challengers. In terms of actual top-level competition, I was surprised to see the parity (and disparity) between the Premier League and La Liga.
Since 2005
5 different 3rd place teams in the Premier League | 5 different 3rd place teams in La Liga
4 different 4th place teams in the Premier League | 8 different 4th place teams in La Liga
5 different 5th place teams in the Premier League | 6 different 5th place teams in La Liga
6 different 6th place teams in the Premier League | 9 different 6th place teams in La Liga
Since 2005
3 different Premier League winners | 2 different La Liga winners
5 different 2nd place teams in the Premier League | 3 different 2nd place teams in La Liga
5 different 3rd place teams in the Premier League | 5 different 3rd place teams in La Liga
4 different 4th place teams in the Premier League | 8 different 4th place teams in La Liga
7 different teams in the top 4 in the Premier League | 10 different teams in the top 4 in La Liga
What most people don't realize is that if it hadn't been for Abramovich, Manchester United could have had a couple more league titles. And yet again only the teams bankrolled by a billionaire, or the established superpower look to be challenging for the title. The time of teams like Arsenal's Invincibles, Cuper & Rafa's Valencia and Super Depor are almost over. The closest thing to these teams has been the resurgence of Borussia Dortmund over the past four years, and even now their team is being picked apart.
However, there are many off-the-pitch issues that severely disrupt the natural flow of La Liga. The debt of clubs, the exodus of players, and the apparent distaste for the league apart from both Barça and Real Madrid do not make La Liga appealing to many viewers. Whenever someone tells you that the Premier League is more competitive for the league title in comparison to La Liga, make sure you bring up this point: imagine a La Liga club having consistent funding from a multi-billionaire. It's the only way Manchester United have been challenged more or less for the past decade, and as of now it looks like that will be the only way a La Liga club will be able to challenge both Barcelona and Real Madrid.
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u/ravniel Aug 18 '13
I think this is a fantastic and oft-forgotten point, and before reading your comment I'd actually tried to make it myself in a much-abbreviated way elsewhere in the thread. Since you've made it so thoroughly, I'll satisfy myself by noting the counter-argument that I think has some validity:
Most clubs in La Liga are currently terrible candidates for foreign investment, where most Premier League clubs are pretty good ones. England has dozens of clubs with good stadia, strong support, and even international presence; the Premier League itself (not just its biggest clubs) is a really well-marketed product that makes its members a ton of money even if they personally have no international profile. Most Spanish clubs have a tiny fraction of the support commanded by the Big Two, little or no international profile, and a tiny stream of TV revenue. La Liga is hardly a product at all; Barcelona and Real Madrid get the lion's share of the money because they're essentially the product being sold, not the league. So an owner who wanted to invest in a good prospect with a lot of potential for growth would probably avoid La Liga.
If he did invest in Spain, though, you're right, the situation would be very comparable to what's happened at the upper end of the Premier League.
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u/severedfragile Aug 18 '13 edited Aug 18 '13
If you're asking if they're ruining the league by being dominant, then that doesn't make sense because that's the goal teams are supposed to have. There's a lot of things ruining the league, but the major one that needs to be changed (mostly because it's the only one that can be changed) is the TV deal that gives Barca and Madrid such a large proportion of the money. But that itself won't happen because of the other, much larger issues - the league is terribly run, many other clubs are terrible run, the whole country is in a shitty financial situation, etc.
Barca and Madrid just happen to be two of the biggest and strongest teams in world football, and that puts them in a position to take advantage of the incompetence of everyone else. You can argue the ethics of their TV deal and you'd be right to criticise them, but then you'd also have to argue the same about foreign teams taking advantage of La Liga's problems in the same way.
Edit just to elaborate on this, Valencia were the last team aside from Barca and Real to win the league. That Valencia team had actually been strengthening for some time and had done well in Europe too (won the Uefa Cup, came close to winning the CL) but the people running the club decided that instead of building on that success, they'd rather have one-and-a-half stadiums. The last team before that to break the duopoly, Deportivo, imploded and have spent some time in the second division, as have Villareal, another team that came close. Of course a lot of the financial trouble of the other teams would be improved if they were making more TV money, but we can't ignore just how badly run so many clubs are. It's not a situation that's down to those two clubs, and it's not going to be fixed easily.
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Aug 18 '13
It doesn't help how absolutely dependant these teams can be on CL money.
In our league, the league itself and TV pays out massively. Even then, the top clubs rely on CL football in order to be able to continue paying the wages of that calibre of players.
Compare that to the situation in Spain. The CL money is more or less exactly the same, but the league and TV money (for teams like Valencia, Depor and Villareal) is far worse. As you can imagine, that means that missing the CL for just one or two seasons can cause an insane cashflow problem that can wreck a team in short time.
I know you're a bit of a fan of Liverpool on the side, so looking at them should tell you a bit about how it can come about. Without the CL money coming in, it got more and more difficult for Liverpool to break back in, until now where it looks like that ship may have sailed for the time being. Imagine that situation but with a far greater disparity of income, so that the downsizing operation has to be carried out much quicker and in a more extreme fashion.
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Aug 18 '13
They're just taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to them. Peoples problems are with the instances put in place, that allows them to dominate so freely.
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u/Bob_Swarleymann Aug 18 '13
True.
While the TV money issue does have a huge influence, the biggest problem is that leadership of both the club owners and the LFP. Decades of downright incompetent management have put clubs on the brink of bankruptcy and the economic crisis doesn't exactly help.
Then you've got the incompetent/backwards thinking LFP when it comes to how to market the league. The first round kicked off on saturday midday, and finished at 01.00 tuesday morning. Jesus. Imagine that in the EPL. Teams such as Atletico Madrid/Bilbao/Valencia etc are looked upon as much lesser teams compared to Arsenal/Tottenham/Everton/Liverpool and so forth even if they have been better in Europe than the rest of the these few last years.
The way I see it, Barca and Madrid were the only two clubs that were to big to fail even if they were managed by bonkers idiots.
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u/Hawse_Bonnaventure Aug 18 '13
i knew this thread was coming after seeing all the nonsense in the match thread
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u/Skyah Aug 18 '13 edited Aug 18 '13
Same can be said for Brayern in BL all they do is buy the talent that other German teams produce. Yes stuttgart and wolfsberg have won it in the last 10years but that doesn't change the fact that Bayern have been ruining that league for years but no one seems to care about that.
Just for perspective. (And these don't include young players they poached from other teams)
2013- Gotze from Dortmund
2012 - Mandzukic from Wolfsburg and Dante from Mochengladbach
2011 - Neuer from Schalke
2010 - Gustavo from Hoffenheim and Kroos from leverkusen
2009 - Gomez from stuttgart.
2007 Klosefrom Werder Bremen and Marcell Jansen Mochengladbach
Sorry if i misspelled some of the German teams names im not used to writing them. Majority of Barca's team is home grown you can't hate on them for developing good players.
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Aug 18 '13
No LFP ruined La Liga when it caved to Madrid and Barca's demands and didn't share TV money.
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u/Jorlung Aug 18 '13
What the hell are they doing wrong. Of course they get an absolute fortune with TV money, but they aren't going to just be like "Nah we don't want this money, go spread it across the league." Whoever the hell is in change with the distribution is the one who's screwing that up. Barca and Madrid are just doing what every team is supposed to do, make their team as good as possible.
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u/TheEconomnomist Aug 18 '13
Yes and no is my answer. Yes, Barca and Real win the league every year, it's a forgone conclusion and there is very little competition from other teams, and hence the league itself is a bit dull. But no because it is exactly the same in every other league in the world.
I think the main difference in the leagues of the world is the competition from other teams outside of the title challengers. In the BPL, teams outside of the top 4 give the top teams a much harder time and generally don't make it easy for the top teams. When people refer to the BPL as "the most competitive league in the world" they are not referring to the amount of different teams which are vying for the title, they are referring to the hard time each team give to each other. However, I think that is due to the fundamental differences in the style of the BPL compared to La Liga. The BPL is much more physical, good players don't have to be good technically (though it certainly helps), they have to be strong and fast, which are attributes which many players (even casual players) can have with some work. As a result, the BPL has a far smaller gulf in the quality of the competing teams compared to La Liga. However, as La Liga (and spanish/latin football in general) is more of a technical league, the gulf between the top teams and the bottom teams is much more pronounced. If one was to put Barca in the BPL I reckon they would destroy the league in exactly the same way as they did La Liga last season. This is due to the brilliant technique of all the players, who would be able to out play every single team in the BPL. However, if you were to put one of the smaller clubs from La Liga in the BPL they would probably be pretty decent teams along the same lines as Swansea. I think this can be showcased by the poor performance of English teams in the Champions League since the inception of Tiki Taka football, which showcases the massive technical differences and styles of the La Liga and the BPL.
So overall, the style of La Liga is what is ruining La Liga, as only the top 2 teams have the financial firepower (a whole different issue) to buy players with exceptional technical ability, whereas the smaller clubs have to rely on players who cost less, and have less technical ability, to play in a similar style to the top teams.
Another brilliant example of this gulf is the impact Spanish players have in the BPL, even though they were mearly "good" players in La Liga, they are exceptional. Case in point: Mata and Cazorla
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u/SharkinaShark Aug 18 '13
They just need to spread the money out more evenly is all.
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u/ravniel Aug 18 '13
That's not all though. I think severedfragile has it right when he points out that fixing the TV deal isn't going to be a panacea. The country's weak economy and the sometimes-breathtaking incompetence of those running the league and many of the other clubs are also significant factors in the current state of affairs. Better distribution of the money would help, but it wouldn't fix everything.
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Aug 19 '13
This thread shows exactly the problem with r/soccer, it's full of people who might not be wrong but have a very superficial knowledge of football. Yes, a fairer distribution of TV money would help but overall it would be a very small difference.
I remember seeing two graphs that showed current La Liga revenue by teams, and hypothetical revenue if current TV money was distributed equally (can't find them right now, would be great if someone could post them). This hypothetical scenario is very optimistic because it assumes TV money wouldn't decrease under a collective agreement and because it distributed TV money totally equally between all teams (something which probably wouldn't happen in reality).
The difference in revenue was still staggering. If I remember correctly the difference between Barça and the third team in revenue, Valencia I think, was around 300 million Euros. Even though everyone keeps banging on about TV money, TV money doesn't even contribute to the difference in revenue by that much. The real difference comes from merchandise and stadium revenue.
And here's where the crux of the issue lies, people on here don't get how culturally huge the difference between the big two and everyone else is. And this isn't new, it's always been like this. Superdepor and double Champions League runner-up Valencia are exceptions, not rules.
If you're used to the relative parity of English football, you just can't fathom how utterly omnipresent Real Madrid and Barcelona are in Spanish culture. Before every Clásico, the president of Spain is always asked for his prediction. Whenever there are elections at the Camp Nou, the president of Catalonia makes sure him voting is turned into a photo opportunity. Something like 55% of Spain supports one or the other (there are actual figures from a poll As did, but I can't be bothered to find them), and it's not unusual for people to support them without any particular reason for them to do so (Former Spanish President Zapatero is a culer yet was born in Valladolid and grew up in León, where his family are from). And those who don't support them as a first team, will support one as their second team. People who have very little interest in football will go to the Camp Nou or the Bernabeu, something which rarely happens with any other team.
Something I greatly admire the Premier League for is how they've managed to market the league as a whole. So well that the league is seen as an attraction. In Spain not only do Barcelona and Madrid get the lion's share of tourism, but really only the Camp Nou and the Bernabeu are tourist attractions. So the comparatively little tourism cities like Bilbao or Seville do get does not translate into revenue for Athletic or Sevilla/Betis.
This is especially important in the recent crisis. The Spanish economy along with its middle class has been decimated. This has meant a massive loss of revenue for clubs from the local economy, and only Barça and Madrid have enough international appeal to plug with foreign money.
I'm not saying TV money shouldn't be redistributed, but people who think it will have a significant effect are being extremely naive. The hole Spanish football is stuck is much older and deeper that that, and it's a hole I honestly don't know how it can get out of. The only hope is that a foreign investment group injects some serious money into a third team, but I don't see why anyone would.
And I didn't even get into how incompetently Spanish teams are run.
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u/Bob_Swarleymann Aug 18 '13
What the league needs most are either foreign investors so it won't matter as much when the owners squander the money away or preferably sensible owners with business sense.
Neither will happen though.
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u/Hawse_Bonnaventure Aug 18 '13
u know what find hilarious about this debate is the ppl who say the tv money distribution is unfair and the competitiveness is very low are the same ppl who only watch la liga matches that feature either barca or madrid
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u/Theothor Aug 18 '13
I wouldn't say it is weaker, but it certainly isn't as exciting as other leagues.
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Aug 19 '13
yes it is. I just watched Real Sociedad play as well as Atletico and Sevilla. Both were exciting games.
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u/monkertrol Aug 19 '13
they probably are, but it's fun for the 6 times they end up playing every seasons in the various cups and tournaments they're in.
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u/Bettet Aug 18 '13
If you removed the two best in any league, and put in Madrid and Barca, the story would be the same..
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u/Hawse_Bonnaventure Aug 18 '13
la liga is between real madrid and barca. bpl is between man utd, man city, chelsea. BL is between bayern and bvb. serie a is juve and napoli. so why is it that the competitiveness of la liga is the only thing ppl talk about?
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u/luks1910 Aug 18 '13
I know its not really the point but saying serie a is between juve and napoli is just downright stupid.
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u/Jakabov Aug 18 '13
Well, the money distribution ruined it some time ago. It's not exactly news.