The story in 2017-18 Spanish Football may well begin and end with Neymar. The Brazilian ace’s move from Barcelona to PSG has changed the Iberian domestic season dynamic and sent shudders throughout European clubs bound for Champions League play. In a World Cup year, it was essential for the 25-year-old to take the big step up to the next level and take over as a top team’s top dog. Doing so in a less challenging league, but on a team that will see European exposure, seems just the ticket for the Russia bound star bent on meeting his La Liga mates at eye level, as his national team’s leader, on the biggest of stages. And the Ballon d’ Or 2018 goes to…
The 2017-18 La Liga season promises to be a different animal from last season, not only because of Neymar’s move but because of the tenor and rhythm of last year. It was a season in which many games, particularly big ones, seemed to be decided in the last quarter hour of the match. But it was also one where the Merengues wrestled the title away from the defending champion Cules early on and rarely relinquished their grip.
Last year, Real Madrid, who define themselves more by European club supremacy than by winning their national title, won the domestic league by only three points and on the last match of the season. But they had dominated throughout, being in first place for 28 of the 38 weeks of the La Liga competition and in second nine of the remaining ten weeks. It was a campaign in which Coach Zinadine Zidane found both a working line-up rotation and the rejuvenating formula that propelled a rested Cristiano Ronaldo to a stellar end of the year close that included multiple-goal performances on consecutive games at home and in European play. The leading contender for the 2017 Ballon d’Or and FIFA Player of the Year awards took the Champions League, La Liga and FIFA Club World Cup, and helped put his team in contention for the Spanish Super Cup against Barcelona, and the UEFA Super Cup against Manchester United, to start this season.
So as the new season approaches Real Madrid are most odds-makers’ favorites to retain the domestic title. All potential disasters notwithstanding, Papa believes the coming season will again be special for the Merengues in La Liga.
Second best, the unsettled post-Neymar Barcelona, with a new coach and with a Lionel Messi now more cognizant of his few remaining years at the very top, will undergo a transformation this year, but mostly spurred by Messi’s need to focus on the 2018 World Cup than anything else. Despite all other issues, or perhaps underlining all the current and forthcoming issues, Barca is Messi’s team and club. What he thinks, feels and does matters most, and Leo has just signed what may be his last contract. And now it’s posterity he’s focused on. The diminutive Argentine’s emphasis will be on getting his national side to Russia in order to, finally, put a World Cup trophy in his personal case. Once his ticket to Russia has been bought, he will move on to what matters most to Barcelona which is seeing how the club can break Real’s stranglehold on the Champions League. Barca simply can’t stand Madrid’s prominence there.
Lastly, Messi will turn his sights on the domestic scene but instead of focusing on a Copa del Rey or La Liga title he will play with a special eye on his goal scoring legacy as he pursues Ronaldo’s scoring records. Messi is at 592 all-time senior career goals while Ronaldo is at 604—albeit the Portuguese is 2 years, four months, and 18 days older. Barcelona will still be in contention for all the club marbles this year, but they will be hard put to have their usual edge while missing Neymar, with Messi preoccupied with his legacy, and while the team also suffers at the hands of referees who have finally caught on to the secret behind the Catalans’ devastating double whammy of extended possessions and curtailed recoveries from their opponents. The recipe is consistently fouling the lead or second-recipient opponent immediately upon change of possession. See the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy under Sergio Busquets or Javier Mascherano. Barca might have to earn their way from here on in.
Diego Simeone is baaaack and ready to baptize the new Wanda Metropolitano stadium and its additional 5,000 spectators. With a team eager to show that their double-digit gap with the two top teams in last year’s table was a fluke, the Colchoneros will be looking to reassert themselves at home and abroad and they have the guns to do so. They will aim to ride their end of the 2016-17 season streak, which saw them lose but twice in their last twenty-two La Liga games. With Barca wounded and Real his major obstacle Simeone may fancy his chances to make mischief this year.
Last year Sevilla needed a third of the season to find their rhythm, surged in the second third to almost looking like they could content, but dropped to and remained in fourth place for the last 10 games of the year. With Nolito back in-country and at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan the team looks poised to hit second gear earlier this year.
Villarreal, Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao ended last season at fifth, sixth and seventh respectively, and were the most consistent sides outside the top two. For the last thirty weeks of last season Villarreal and Real Sociedad did not drop below seventh place and Bilbao did not drop below ninth. Expect Villarreal to keep up the good work at home but to focus on their Champions League entry to make historic European inroads. Sociedad and Bilbao should continue to make good use of middling squads and retain a mid-table slot by year’s end, if not quite as high as last year.
The following ten teams, Spain’s current lower wattage sides (with their year-end table positions running eighth through seventeenth respectively), will be the ones to watch outside the top three, as these will be the giant killers, taking turns providing the upsets few will foresee—they are Espanyol, Alaves, Eibar, Malaga, Valencia, Celta Vigo, Las Palmas, Real Betis, Deportivo, and Leganes. Expect a couple to make a splash early as the giants wrestle with their changed landscape, but as the dust settles most of these will sink into their expected La Liga slots and the few who rise will be the ones who capitalized on that early chance.
The promoted sides will show more grit than the three they will be replacing who seemed literally out of their league for most of the season. The returning Levante and Getafe, having been to the show before, will be fighting not to return to Segunda anytime soon. They will put some of the ten teams mentioned above to the test, but it will be the not too surprising first-timers who will make the biggest splash this year.
Girona was but a win away from Primera the past two seasons in a row and earned their way in with some good play last year. They may flame out, as many first-time visitors do, but Papa believes they have a chance to remain this year. So do the Manchester City owners, City Football Group, who have acquired a 50% stake in Girona and loaned the promoted side three signings to bolster their chances. Pere Guardiola, City manager Pep’s brother, owns Media Base, the other concern that owns most of the remaining 50% of the club. Those lucky team supporters who own the few remaining shares must be smiling lately.
You must be logged in to post a comment.