The story of recent weeks in Spain has been the success of Levante, a team with no big earners and no money spent on them, who rose above the might of Barcelona and Real Madrid to crest the table. Gary Linton returns to LLF to take a look at the situation now that their fairytale has ended. Gary writes for various sites including The Football Project, The Away End and French Football Weekly, and can be found on twitter @Linton1388.
You loved them didn’t you? Who didn’t, they have been a breath of fresh air to La Liga, a team who were going from strength to strength each week and sat proudly at the top of the league after winning seven and drawing two of their first nine matches. Unfortunately they have now been brought right back down to reality. I’m of course talking about Levante. The enjoyable bunch of ‘OAP’s’ from Valencia had taken La Liga by surprise in the opening part of the season. Heavily backed to go down from the start, they’ve managed to ignore all negativity from the outside and already gained pretty much half the amount of points they will need to stay up this season. As disappointing as it is that they couldn’t continue their fine run of form, I’m sure José Ignacio Martínez will be inspired as well as extremely happy with the start his players have made.
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So how did it happen? Who ended this amazing run? Who should we now dislike?
At the weekend Levante travelled to the Reyno de Navarra stadium and got knocked off top spot after losing 2-0 at Osasuna. So yes, we all should now hate them. Barcelona and Real Madrid won both their games, one more convincingly than the other. Barcelona with an excellent display at home to Mallorca and Real Madrid fighting out a hard earned three points away to Sociedad.
Barcelona got very lucky in the fact that Lionel ’misfiring, out of form, can’t find the back of the net in three games’ Messi managed to ‘eventually’ find his scoring boots and well, score a hat-trick and set up the fourth goal in a 5-0 thrashing of Mallorca, not bad for a player who has been ‘criticised’ of late. Real Madrid showed at the weekend that they not only can win with style, class and loads of goals. They can also win with grit, fight and the odd 1-0; a goal from Higuaín, which in the long run will maybe prove the difference between winning and losing the league.
In recent weeks its been a fairytale league, Real Betis starting in fine form and topping the table and Levante sitting pretty for a while. It’s all different now, however, as the top two teams in Spain are now sitting in their ‘rightful’ place at the top of the league. Barcelona and Real Madrid are not only atop the table, but they also sit top of the goal scoring charts with Messi on 13 and Ronaldo, alongside Higuain, both have 10 to their names. Both teams are also on top with the assists this season, Angel Di Maria leads the way with 7, Messi with 6 and you guessed it ‘unselfish’ as always Ronaldo with 5 so far this season.
So where do the teams go from here? Will the top two lose at the weekend and Valencia and Levante win and restore themselves above Real and Barca? Unfortunately, probably not. The way it most looks likely of going is it will be Barcelona and Real Madrid beating everyone they come up against, with a little slip up here and there with the most important games, as always being the El Classicos!
So should we all just stop watching La Liga? Well, of course not. All that has been proven is that there is now more strength throughout the league which will overall make it more enjoyable to watch! Not only will Valencia, Sevilla and Villarreal be fighting it out for third place in the league, you will also have the likes of Leavante, Malaga, Atletico Madrid as well as many more competing for the available Champions League spots.
With a look at the other side of the table, the clubs who have just come up, alongside a couple of the early front runners for relegation, are doing well so far this season. There will also be an eye kept on the bottom of the table, currently occupied by Racing Santander, Granada and Getafe with teams such as Mallorca, Gijon, Sociedad and Zaragoza only points within the drop zone there form better improve. Okay some will say it’s far too early in the season to worry but there has already been ten games played only, twenty-eight matches left and each team will already be thinking we need to be picking up points and soon.
There has been loads of different things we’ve found out so far about La Liga already this season, such as Ronaldo isn’t quite as quick as Ballesteros, Jose Mourinho likes to go about gouging peoples eyes, Xavi with every passing game keeps trying to edge closer to having a 100% pass completion rate by the end of the match, Messi has now scored over 200 goals in his little career, and of course you will win nothing with kids ‘OAP’s’.
