La Liga & Valencia C.F. »

5:59…6:00 AM…”I got you babe” tataatataatataaa…like on the film directed by Harold Ramis and Bill Murray as main character, this is the third time (important number at the films) that all the football fans had the same feeling of being the new “Scottish League”.

It could be understandable that Madrid scores six goals at La Romareda, home of, recently promoted and builded with new players, Real Zaragoza. But to watch Villareal, a Champions League team, being literally smashed by Barcelona´s players says too much about the huge difference between those two teams and the rest.

This problem is the consequence of the obligatory conversion of S.A.D (Anonymous Sportive Society) all the clubs except Ath.Bilbao, Madrid and Barcelona made by the federation in order to face the actual debts of the clubs. The slight difference between be a S.A.D or a club is the weight of the shareholders, where at the S.A.D goes depending on the number of stocks they own and at the clubs there is no difference, all the members have the same weight at the club.

Some questions could be made of why Barcelona, Madrid and Ath.Bilbao weren´t obligated to swap into S.A.D like the rest, but this is another history. I´ll focus on the ‘hole’ in the law regarding them. First of all, and really logical, is to question why the federation looked into another way when they saw that the clubs were getting into debts and debts, thanks to the banks who gave them big money credits recouped in a large period of time without knowing if the clubs could have enough incoming money to pay.

Instead of look into that problem, they kept the clubs buying great players and giving the Spanish League their best years talking about star players playing in a league. Of course, that only gave money to the federation signing great sponsor and image contracts. Meanwhile, the clubs had the fans happy and most of them started to play a good paper at the european competitions such as Alavés who played the an historic UEFA Cup final against Liverpool; some years after, Alavés is at the Second B Division.

But there is a subject that people didn´t took care, outshined by the European opportunity: Since S.A.D were imposed at La Liga, 20 years ago, only three teams won it. They are At.Madrid (1995/1996 with Hasselbaink) and Deportivo de la Coruña (1999/2000 with Makaay) once, and Valencia C.F (2001/2002 & 2003/2004 with Benitez) twice.

With that i´ve would like touch the opinion of some people that refuges in the sentence that this problem is only originated by the TV rights, which have an important paper too but we can clearly see that before the rights were that huge, we already had the problem. So, adding the TV rights, the difference just went maybe two or three steps ahead, steps that made the difference of 5 points between the first and second team ranked become 25 between Barcelona/Madrid and the third qualified. We should remember that Madrid and Barcelona alone have the 40% of the TV rights for themselves, talking in millions it is around 120/130M € each, being Valencia the third with 45M €.

To end this humble opinion, i´ve would love to read your thoughts about that situation and which ideas come to your mind to make La Liga more equal between all the teams.