Can anyone explain how La Liga isn't a terrible sporting league?

[kc78]

I don't have a ton of knowledge about many of the soccer leagues as I'm a fairly new fan of the sport (Starting with our run prior to the South African world cup in the Gold Cup). I'm starting to get far more invested in the sport as a fan and finding my admiration for the sport growing a great deal. As a result, I'm starting to try and learn far more about all of the major foreign leagues since its the only way to follow a large number of the best players in the world. So far the only two leagues I have much knowledge about are the MLS and the EPL.

I've started trying to learn far more about some of the other major leagues such as the Budasliga and La Liga. These two leagues seem strange to me, but La Liga stands out far more than any other major league I've ever known. It has by far two of the most talented leagues worldwide in Barcelona and Real Madrid, but outside of those two teams the rest of the league seems to be a dumpster fire with many teams facing not only relegation but bankruptcy? From what I can gather, La Liga simply exists for Real Madrid and Barcelona to treat as pre-season and reap television contract money from so that they can put together a team to compete in the Champions League which is the only place they're actually tested.

Am I completely misreading this league? How can anyone enjoy watching these two teams beat every other team in the league by 5 - 8 goals routinely? That simply doesn't seem to be a competitive or watchable league in the least?

I haven't read as much about Bundesliga and only really know anything about Bayern Munich but it seems to have similar issues. Can anyone who actually knows anything about these leagues give me any better insight into how they're considered decent leagues at all? I understand that La Liga has two of the best teams on the planet, but there's absolutely zero competition or watchable soccer in that league as far as I can tell. How can you enjoy watching those two teams fight for the championship year after year while everyone else simply exists as cannon fodder?

 

[GbrNole]

You're almost there. La liga is the big two, an annual contender (athletico the last 2 seasons) and a spoiler. The rest are fodder.

The German league is pretty much Bayern and Dortmund when BD hasn't been raped and pillaged.

Serie A can be fun to watch although I'm not a huge fan of Italian football
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[kooterridesagain]

I grew up on serie A, then Epl. But with Italy a joke now sadly , I just watch epl and last liga.

La liga is ranked by far, under Uefa coefficient, the #1 league because barca and madrid have gotten help in Europe by their rotation of champions league teams mentioned, and especially in the Europa league with the 5th-7th place teams each season doing well.
I admit the bottom of la liga is poor, especially on defense, worse than epl organizationally, but better players technically. But top 1-7, Spain is the best in the world right now.
For fun I broke down the last 5 years champions league and Europa of
La liga teams vs EPl teams.

Chamions league
La liga
15 in knockout stage
9 in semis
2 winners including all spanish final last year
Epl
15 in knockout
3 in semis
1 winner
So Spain dominates in knockout.
Then we have the financial minnows of Spain 5-7 who are embarrassing better funded epl teams 5-7.
Europa
La liga
14 knockout
7 semi
3 winners
Epl
12 knockout
3 semi
1 winner

So overall it's la liga;
29-27 in knockout teams
16-6 in semi teams
5-2 cup winners

In other words it's not really close between first and second ranked leagues right now. Atletico madrid was probably the best team in Europe last year and I'm a Real fan.

It was a but unusual but I thought the top 3 teams in Europe last year besides Munich were all in la liga. That's pretty remarkable.

Bottom line, I agree it's unfair how much tv la liga money madrid and Barcelona get. Theoretically england should be doing better than Spain, it should be the top 2 in Spain and everyone else irrelevant. However, Spain has better homegrown players than England, period.
I think both leagues are fun in their own way.
Until England improves head to head it won't change anytime soon.



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[NoleInBama]

Right now, EPL is the best league top to bottom. The parity is amazing this season.

The next league top to bottom, Serie A The Italian league plays good football. And who does'nt love GiGi Buffon?

 

[FSUdawg]

Originally posted by NoleInBama:
Right now, EPL is the best league top to bottom. The parity is amazing this season.

The next league top to bottom, Serie A The Italian league plays good football. And who does'nt love GiGi Buffon?

It is interesting to hear you say EPL is the best top to bottom and cite parity. I hear a lot of "experts" stating they EPL has parity because there are mostly average teams in the league.

I listen to a lot of SiriusXM FC in my car, and most people on there seem to think La Liga is the best league in the world. They also say Serie A (Italy) is still in decline and at best the third best in the world, and probably 4th best behind EPL & Bundesliga.

Personally I have no idea how goo the leagues are beyond EPL because that is what I pay the most attention to. I see La Liga with 3-4 top teams and then everyone else. In Bundesliga I see Bayern and then everyone else (How is Borussia Dortmund playing so well in CL and they are in 14th in their league this year?). Serie A is just a couple teams and then everyone else. EPL is pretty much Chelsea, Man City, potentially Man United, and everyone else. However their everyone else seem to be fairly close this year.

 

[LikeaG5]

It's really hard to compare one league to another. La Liga sides usually do pretty well for themselves in the CL and Europa Leagues. That's for teams outside of Madrid and Barca. I think people say it's a two team league just because of how good those two teams are. 2 of the best of all time. Those Barca sides that were constructed in the early Pep years may very well be GOAT. What hurts La Liga is that the money largely from tv markets are heavily in favor of Madrid and Barca. In the prem it is as close to what you see in the NFL as possible. What helps La Liga is the youth teams are able to play in the division lower where prem teams have no real youth set up. That is huge. Siere A is horrible though must. Would almost rather watch the MLS to be honest. It's so boring and the stadiums are half empty for a lot of the games that aren't the big big ones. Huge problem going on there.

 

[NoleInBama]

Originally posted by FSUdawg:

Originally posted by NoleInBama:
Right now, EPL is the best league top to bottom. The parity is amazing this season.

The next league top to bottom, Serie A The Italian league plays good football. And who does'nt love GiGi Buffon?

It is interesting to hear you say EPL is the best top to bottom and cite parity. I hear a lot of "experts" stating they EPL has parity because there are mostly average teams in the league.

I listen to a lot of SiriusXM FC in my car, and most people on there seem to think La Liga is the best league in the world. They also say Serie A (Italy) is still in decline and at best the third best in the world, and probably 4th best behind EPL & Bundesliga.

Personally I have no idea how goo the leagues are beyond EPL because that is what I pay the most attention to. I see La Liga with 3-4 top teams and then everyone else. In Bundesliga I see Bayern and then everyone else (How is Borussia Dortmund playing so well in CL and they are in 14th in their league this year?). Serie A is just a couple teams and then everyone else. EPL is pretty much Chelsea, Man City, potentially Man United, and everyone else. However their everyone else seem to be fairly close this year.

I kind of based my opinion on my feeling that the pace, length and style of the EPL is extremely tough. And when you look at the table, West Ham and Southhampton are 4&5 in the table. While Liverpool is buried and look awful. Also there is only about 10 points different from #5 to about 14 or so in the table.

LaLiga, again, in my opinion is Real Madrid and Barcelona. Even when Barca are not good(rarely) they are still in the top two.

Seria A, look in the table, and the points between 4 and 17 are close. A lowly 14th team now, could go on a run and make the top 4.

Bundseliga is fascinating to me AND bothers me a bit. Bayern is clearly the best. And while Dortmund is in the relegation zone right now, They lost Robert Lewandowski to Bayern and he has 13 goals so far this season at Bayern. Thats a lot of production that Dortmund lost. Its very similar to Liverpool losing the cannibal Luis Suarez. Liverpool were great last year and are in the bottom half of the table in the EPL this year. But what really bothers me about the Bundesliga, they take a month off during the season. To my knowledge, no other league does this. This allows a lot of rest and healing . . . conversely, the EPL grinds players into the ground.

 

[LikeaG5]

The EPL is the only major league that doesn't take a break actually...