The Demise of La Liga
Never before has there been a time where the powers that be in the Royal Spanish Football Federation have had to panic, but the tables have turned. The tide has changed dramatically. The future of Spanish football is looking incredibly very bleak.
It has been a calamitous summer for Spanish football.
Spain came within a whisker of reaching the Euro 2020 final but crashed out on penalties against Italy in the semis.
Real Madrid begrudgingly allowed both Sergio Ramos and Raphaël Varane to leave for as little as £34 million.
Lionel Messi divorced from the love of his life, Barcelona, after 21 years with the Catalonians. This came after it was announced by president, Joan Laporta, that the club cannot afford to accommodate the Argentine due to the financial abyss that they are currently in. Messi has now joined PSG remarkably on a free transfer. At the moment, Spanish football is on its knees.
The galácticos are either injury prone, regressing, or ageing. Ousmane Dembélé, since joining Barcelona in August 2017, has already missed 95 games and has spent 668 days on the sidelines.
Eden Hazard has missed 59 games for Real Madrid and has been injured for 405 days in total in just two years!
Samuel Umtiti has missed 83 games and has been absent for 496 days.
The combined transfer fee for these three players is a whopping £245 million (€288 million).
Philippe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann’s best days seem to be behind them. Neither of them have lived up to their hefty price tag. The jury is still out on João Felix.
The average age of Sergio Agüero, Luis Suárez, Toni Kroos, Karim Benzema, Gerard Piqué, Marcelo, Sergio Busquets, and Luka Modrić is 33.25 years. Their cell by date is coming thick and fast and Father Time will soon catch up with them.
It is very unlikely that they will be replaced. Why? Because clubs in Spain are being crippled with debt. According to ‘Football España’, the debt of the big three clubs: Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atlético Madrid, currently stands at roughly €3 billion. This is stupendous and to add insult to injury, that astronomical figure could skyrocket exponentially due to potential future covid lockdowns.
Gone are the days when those clubs could strut into a room with their noses high in the air, snap their fingers, and sign the best players in the world within a matter of minutes. It was like watching a millionaire go on a shopping spree. Before they were driving around in Ferraris, but now they are being forced to settle for a Fiat.
Their inability to acquire the best players in the world will hurt them in their quest to win the Champions League. How on earth will they be able to compete with PSG, Man City, Chelsea, and Bayern Munich? The reality is that they will not. This was already demonstrated last season when Barcelona were extirpated 4–1 at home by PSG and when both the Madrid clubs were kicked to the curb in the knockout stages by Chelsea.
Less people will watch Spanish football because of its lack of star power. The number of people who watched La Liga nosedived following Cristiano Ronaldo’s transfer to Juventus in July 2018. The question now is, how much more will it deteriorate now that Messi has left the building? It certainly does not paint a good picture.
The loss of viewers and followers will result in a loss of revenue which in turn will inflict more devastating financial blows on Spain’s top clubs and hamper them going forward.
According to ‘Brand Finance’, Ronaldo’s departure resulted in a 19% decrease in Real Madrid’s revenue in 2018. Now it is estimated that Messi’s departure will cause an 11% drop in Barcelona’s revenue, which is approximately €137 million ($160 million). Furthermore, according to the president of ‘Diario AS’, Javi Miguel, Barcelona club shops have already recorded an 80% drop in shirt sales since Messi’s departure. For a club in so much debt, this should set off alarm bells.
Two of the most popular footballers of all time, who currently have a combined total of nearly 930 million followers on social media, have left Spain. Replacing them will be an incredibly arduous task, maybe even an impossible one. The effects of their departures could end up being fatal not just for their former clubs, but maybe for the entire league and country.
And what about the El Clásico? What does the future hold for such a prestigious and historic fixture? Based on recent events, clearly not a very good one.
Rewind back to 2010/11 and the El Clásico was the biggest rivalry in sport. In one corner, you had Nike, Barcelona, Messi, and Pep Guardiola. However, in the other corner, you had Adidas, Real Madrid, Ronaldo, and José Mourinho.
The two biggest sporting brands, the two biggest clubs in football, the two best players on the planet, and the two best managers in the world were battling it out for domestic, continental, and global supremacy. There was absolutely no love lost between both sides, which gave this rivalry that extra spice.
The Sky Sports trailer for the El Clásico was similar to that of an upcoming Hollywood film. This rivalry was a box office attraction and was watched by hundreds of millions of football fans in every continent on the planet. This was the most talked about game in town. Passion, fights, drama, individual brilliance, a rapturous crowd, an electric atmosphere, blood, sweat, and tears, this fixture had all the key ingredients for a titanic rivalry. It was football’s equivalent to Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal in their prime.
But now, these clubs are a shell of their former selves. As a result, the El Clásico has lost its flavour and has gone stale. Neither of them are the best in Spain.
As for the Champions League, they can forget about it. Their chances of winning Europe’s elite competition any time soon are next to nothing. They are relying on their past glories as well as the fixture’s reputation to sell to the footballing world. The decline of what was once an epic rivalry speaks volumes about the current state of La Liga.
It is sad to see what Spanish football has become. The next few years will be critical. The powers that be in Spain’s football federation need to move swiftly to prevent the rot from accelerating at a warp speed. Failure will do so will be catastrophic not just for Spain, but maybe even football as a whole.
