The League of Spain is going through an unprecedented level of competitiveness: 10 years ago it was not seen such an even tournament

[Inkriql]

The 2019-20 season of La Liga, with almost a third of the season disputed, aims to be the tightest in decades, reaffirming its status as the most competitive championship in the major leagues in Europe.

After thirteen days of the championship, five teams (Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Sevilla and Real Sociedad) are separated by just five points. Three different teams have come to lead the classification at different times of the last day. And the seven points that separate teams in European positions - from the leader Barcelona to the seventh Granada - after thirteen days is the narrowest margin in a quarter of a century.

Since three points are computed for victory. Nothing similar was seen since the 1998-99 season, when a Blaugrana captained by Pep Guardiola would end up being champion, with six points of difference between European teams at the same heights of the championship. That was the narrowest margin known until the present campaign.

The idea that any team can beat anyone is reaffirmed on the field week after week. For example, the newly promoted Granada and Levante have already defeated the current champion, the Culé, who was also the leader of the classification at the time. Another newly promoted team, Osasuna, is knocking on the doors of European squares cementing their contest in an incredible record as undefeated for which they have been 18 months and 31 games without falling at home. The Royal Society has set up a young squad where the Spanish youth Mikel Oyarzabal, the Norwegian child-wonder Martin Ødegaard and the promising Alexander Isak stand out, allowing him to fight for the top positions.

Meanwhile, Mallorca, third club of the newly promoted this season, have already beat teams like Real Madrid and Villarreal.

The leader Barcelona has garnered 66% of the possible points in this course, making it clear how difficult it is to take off in the La Liga classification. Statistics that do not say the same about the rest of the European tournaments, where the Liverpool (94% of possible points), Juventus (88%), PSG (77%) and Borussia Monchengladbach (75%) brands draw a different picture in England, Italy, France and Germany, respectively.

The factors behind this historic boom in competitiveness in Spain are several. But there are two that, in the medium and long term, are essential. The first is the economic control of the new organization, underway since 2013, and which has placed the clubs in a situation of solid and sustainable growth. In the past there are already those cycles where there were clubs that fluctuated dramatically between seasons being the revelation with others where they crumbled, in line with the financial situation. What now allows La Liga teams, from the first to the last, to attract international stars like never before.

On the other hand, the centralized sale of audiovisual rights was established in 2015 and has transformed the financial reality of almost all clubs in Spain, ensuring that the increasing injection of revenues - ranging from 600 million euros in 2015 to 1865 millions to the present - it is better distributed among all clubs. Teams like Athletic Bilbao, for example, have seen how their audiovisual income soared from 17 million euros a few years ago to 71 million today. Meanwhile, others like Real Betis have seen how their market power increased to the point of imposing themselves on several leading teams in Europe for the acquisition of the French international world champion Nabil Fekir, who arrived last summer from Lyon.

As Sergio Ramos, captain of Real Madrid, analyzed at the beginning of the month, after a series of stumbling blocks in the championship, “no one can afford to be self-complacent in a single game, regardless of who is in front… and that is what makes this league the best in the world". In addition to the brightness of figures such as Messi, Suárez, Bale, Benzema, Joao Félix and Griezmann, the competition also stands out for constant vertigo and unprecedented parity.