State of La Liga

[La Furia]

That del Nido guy, is he a gangster Italian mafiaso type or what!? Every time there's noise it's him who's heading the mob. And it's already established he's a bloody money whore and does nothing much for the club in the first place. Bloody hypocrite

Del Nido isn't Italian, but he is a very sketchy man who should probably be in prison.

 

[TEKNYK]

Premier League is financially balanced and fairly stable footballwise with some sings of sheikh money causing little upsets.
La Liga is both football and financial shithole with two clubs taking advantage of the league's level to get even more prestige.

You do realize that 3 English leagues are in top15 attendance over the season statistics? That is three, not just EPL, Championship is 7th and League-1 13th. Now look at Spanish Segunda and their non-quality.

And I'm not a Premier League fan, that's the way things are.

Liga fans like to deny the obvious. We get defensive about almost everything.

Barca and Real Madrid will accumulate an insane amount of points again and be out of reach of the others possibly by late January.

 

[TEKNYK]

You've contradicted yourself. Sometimes La Liga clubs use their money well, sometimes they don't. This applies to the top two as well(Ibra, Kaka vs Pique, Ozil).

If you want the gap to close then the standard of other teams has to improve. Either they improve their youth systems or they buy better players. Buying better players has winners and losers. So either they buy from abroad and raise the standard of the league, or they buy from each other in which case there is a redistribution of talent within La Liga and some teams become better and others worse.

They can buy better players, and if the players flop they're likely screwed. We can pay tonnes for a player, ship him off, and replace him with another big player.

 

[JamDav1982]

Its a tough one because Barcelona and Real have turned themselves into two of the best marketed clubs in the world and have attracted huge TV deals as a result. While the rest of the league seem to have done very little to try and gain popularity abroad etc.

So obviously from the point of view of Barca and Madrid they have put in the ground work, spent the money and travelled the world in order to increase their popularity and now that the rest of the league want a piece of the pie that this has generated. When by and large these other clubs have been poorly managed and now see the quickest fix being to get in on the money generated by the big two rather than doing anything about it themselves.

But having said all that La Liga is heading to being a bit of a farce due to the difference in the teams and there will need to be changes. I was across at the Villarreal game a couple of weeks ago, yet despite the performance and result I actually prefered the Bilbao game in March, when they won 2-1 with a late goal.

Perhaps what they could do is Barca and Madrid reduce their TV income in line with what the top EPL team earns. From there the rest of the league need to get together and decide what they can do to increase the popularity of their clubs and the league as a whole in order to generate more income.

 

[Aryagorn]

"First let them get their own shirt deals... then we can start thinking about whether we need to sacrifice our money" This should be the decision of the Big 2.

I mean there's no use for the big 2 to sacrifice on their hard earned money if the other clubs still find a way to fuck it all up!!

 

[House of Flies]

No it is a contradiction. You can't on the one hand say teams will definitely overpay and on the other hand say clubs are getting smart. If Valencia are getting smart, then they would spend that 20M a year really well and become more competitive. They wouldn't even need to spend it necessarily. If they had that they could have kept Mata in addition to the other new arrivals. Villarreal could have kept Cazorla in addition to the squad they have now. They may not be in the title race come April but both would be more competitive.

Valencia and Getafe having smart management does not equate to everyone else getting smart. Rest of the La Liga is piss poor in management... Zaragoza which intends to do shady deals when they have no money. Deportivo that sells its players to teams that dont have money. Its stupid management like this that gets teams in trouble. You give 20m more to these clubs and they will find a way to fuck it all up.

Do it occur to you that Cazorla and Mata were overpriced by their buyers and hence the management of such teams decided to sell them? I mean Cazorla being sold at 21m is ridic, Mata being sold at 27m is even worse. These players are really not worth that much. Valencia had Mata replacement ready in Piatti whilst Villarreal bought de Guzman.

 

[House of Flies]

I will bring an example of a club that is heralded across the world for its management- Porto. Porto had a domestic TV revenue of 8m Euros and further received 12m euros from Europe. That is lower than what Villarreal and Sevilla get but Porto has a squad that is capable of beating these teams easily. They continue to sell their best players to other clubs at outrageous prices because their finances are so good which allows them for hard bargaining and they always have a replacement on hand. They utilize their resources so well that they continued to be a very strong team. This is all on a domestic budget that is 2-3 times lower than what Sevilla and Villarreal get.

They have controlled their wages to match their (70% of) revenue and continually use the strategy of 'Buy Low, Sell High' to improve their facilities and get better youth players.

Sevilla and Villarreal should learn something from that club.

 

[FCBarca]

Del Nido isn't Italian, but he is a very sketchy man who should probably be in prison.

With that hat alone he looks like a gangster from the 50s

 

[Aryagorn]

I will bring an example of a club that is heralded across the world for its management- Porto. Porto had a domestic TV revenue of 8m Euros and further received 12m euros from Europe. That is lower than what Villarreal and Sevilla get but Porto has a squad that is capable of beating these teams easily. They continue to sell their best players to other clubs at outrageous prices because their finances are so good which allows them for hard bargaining and they always have a replacement on hand. They utilize their resources so well that they continued to be a very strong team. This is all on a domestic budget that is 2-3 times lower than what Sevilla and Villarreal get.

They have controlled their wages to match their (70% of) revenue and continually use the strategy of 'Buy Low, Sell High' to improve their facilities and get better youth players.

Sevilla and Villarreal should learn something from that club.

I'm impressed with your arguments till now... But this example has a flaw man.

With Porto, there's guarantee for silverware for the players. At the least there's guarantee of the football of highest level, Champions League. Can't say the same with Villarreals and Sevillas of Spain. That explains me why Porto can manage the lower wage bill. The mid table clubs are forced to pay high to the players to turn their heads

But I'm taking nothing away from Porto's scouting system. They sell their best player every season and manage to find a cheap replacement again and again. That is an example to be followed by our mid table clubs

 

[Phatroonaldo]

The issue here isn't so much about tv money as it is about financial debt, lack of control of the clubs and players not paid.

Twenty one clubs in the first and second divisions of Spain are at some stage of legal bankruptcy or already in administration and trying to find a way round their years of vast overspending. TWENTY ONE.

The biggest problem here is the concursal law. Debts of bankrupt clubs are paid by all the clubs in the league.Clubs which are operated carefully and are without any debts like Villarreal have to pay for these bankrupt teams. There is no no footballing consequences for a Spanish football club that goes bankrupt.No points are deducted and no relegations occur. This is a disgraceful law because declaring a Spanish football club bankrupt is therefore by far the easiest way of getting out of debt.

And then we have crooks like Ali Syed at Racing Santander which Spanish football is full of. Another big problem.

It creates a self fulfilling prophecy. There are not a lot of millionaires out there willing to invest in La Liga because lots of the cities are small, nor have the population of say Germany or England. Lots of clubs do not own their stadium. The TV revenues deal is shambolic. The global and local TV, marketing, and merchandising football pales other leagues in comparison. So what incentive is there for the foreign owners to invest in the league ? A vicious cycle, that's all.

I do agree that the money should be shared. Because like every football fan I want to watch a more competitive game. Give me the 2-1 against Bilbao, 1-1 against Sevilla everyday above the 5-0 against Villareal or 8-0 against Almeria.

Directly trying to implement the EPL system will be madness because it's like 60 million loss for Barca and Madrid. However if the TV deal is going to be worth around 800 million euros starting from 2014, then the revenue sharing can be done by implementing the Ligue 1 system.

Barcelona and Madrid will get about 90 million each, Valencia about 50 million. It won't be easy coping with losing 50 million from revenue every year but we have time until 2014 to prepare. And instead of spending big money on unnecessary signings, we should provide our youth with chances. Not signing Neymar when we have deulofeu would be a start.

 

[House of Flies]

I'm impressed with your arguments till now... But this example has a flaw man.

With Porto, there's guarantee for silverware for the players. At the least there's guarantee of the football of highest level, Champions League. Can't say the same with Villarreals and Sevillas of Spain. That explains me why Porto can manage the lower wage bill. The mid table clubs are forced to pay high to the players to turn their heads

But I'm taking nothing away from Porto's scouting system. They sell their best player every season and manage to find a cheap replacement again and again. That is an example to be followed by our mid table clubs

Guarantee of silverware does not really help the case because its difficult to put Portugese League on the same level as La Liga. Some could even argue that finishing 4th in La Liga is a better feat than winning the Portugese League but that depends on differing opinions. The core issue is- to not sign top talent when your budget does not allow for their wages or to sign them when they have peaked. Issue with both of these outcomes is that your cost in these players will often be higher than what your returns. If you buy players at their peak, you run into a risk of player being a flop, in which case you are stuck with a player that no one wants to buy the player (without incurring major losses at your part) and the player still commanding top wages. This often happens with top clubs where fans demand instant results and financially disastrous transfers like Kaka, Overmars, Ibrahimovic, Veron happen.

Porto does not allow itself to run into such a risk as it buys players who have potential and havent peaked yet. The incentive that is given to these players is to play in Champions League so they can be wooed by bigger clubs. Villarreal and Sevilla can also do this because 3rd and 4th places are not locked in Spain as much as they are in England.

 

[JamDav1982]

Not sure the argument about investors not being interested as in Spanish teams as the cities are small is quite correct.

Just a quick look shows that Valencia and Sevilla are a good bit larger than Manchester and Liverpool and so to are the likes of Malaga and Zaragoza.

Glasgow is the third largest city in the UK with tow teams that have almost 40/50k turning up for each home game, but the fact that Scottish football is a farce means that investors will stay well clear. It is the same for La Liga. There are pretty much no incentive to invest as there is little that can be achieved due to how poorly the majority of league has been run to this point.

 

[Aryagorn]

Sociedad stay away from that meeting and then make the champions shit their pants!! What a slap in the face to del Nido really

 

[Jenks]

One of the problems for La Liga is also the time of day the matches are played. Premiership game will mostly be played in the middle of the day, which leaves they open to the Asian market, while La Liga game are just played too late to be able to sell well over there, and it's a huge market to be losing out on.

 

[dalitis8]

The issue here isn't so much about tv money as it is about financial debt, lack of control of the clubs and players not paid.

Twenty one clubs in the first and second divisions of Spain are at some stage of legal bankruptcy or already in administration and trying to find a way round their years of vast overspending. TWENTY ONE.

The biggest problem here is the concursal law. Debts of bankrupt clubs are paid by all the clubs in the league.Clubs which are operated carefully and are without any debts like Villarreal have to pay for these bankrupt teams. There is no no footballing consequences for a Spanish football club that goes bankrupt.No points are deducted and no relegations occur. This is a disgraceful law because declaring a Spanish football club bankrupt is therefore by far the easiest way of getting out of debt.

And then we have crooks like Ali Syed at Racing Santander which Spanish football is full of. Another big problem.

It creates a self fulfilling prophecy. There are not a lot of millionaires out there willing to invest in La Liga because lots of the cities are small, nor have the population of say Germany or England. Lots of clubs do not own their stadium. The TV revenues deal is shambolic. The global and local TV, marketing, and merchandising football pales other leagues in comparison. So what incentive is there for the foreign owners to invest in the league ? A vicious cycle, that's all.

I do agree that the money should be shared. Because like every football fan I want to watch a more competitive game. Give me the 2-1 against Bilbao, 1-1 against Sevilla everyday above the 5-0 against Villareal or 8-0 against Almeria.

Directly trying to implement the EPL system will be madness because it's like 60 million loss for Barca and Madrid. However if the TV deal is going to be worth around 800 million euros starting from 2014, then the revenue sharing can be done by implementing the Ligue 1 system.

Barcelona and Madrid will get about 90 million each, Valencia about 50 million. It won't be easy coping with losing 50 million from revenue every year but we have time until 2014 to prepare. And instead of spending big money on unnecessary signings, we should provide our youth with chances. Not signing Neymar when we have deulofeu would be a start.

On a technical level, you may be right about the bankruptcy law in Spanish football being naive. But that is not the fundamental issue here. I am guessing that this law has existed since time immemorial, without any general collapse of Spanish football. In fact the Spanish league has been top, or very near the top for many a decade. The reason why teams in Spain are now more or less bust, is the precise same reason that basically the whole globe is bust, namely, capitalist crisis

Football clubs running out of cash is not a Spanish phenomenon, it is global. Soon you will hear about team going bust all over Europe, it is inevitable, and just a matter of synchronization and timing, maybe Spain is just leading the process. But the process will unfold.

In fact the Spanish league has attracted at least one rich foreign investor (Malaga) how many did Germany or Italy attract? England has 2 major investors in their football, but remember that they enjoy the advantage of the English language, and the traditional cultural influence they enjoy over parts of Asia and Africa. London is a global financial centre, Madrid is not. Also keep in mind the concentration of population argument. Spanish population is relatively widely dispersed across the country. In England and Germany you have much higher levels of concentration, which allows for higher attendances.

You say that you want a more competitive game, but how far are you willing to go to achieve that? Do you prefer the Bundesliga maybe? Extremely competitive, but without a CL champion for a decade now? Would you prefer Real Madrid to have been at the level of Inter or AC Milan? And if you even take the financially mighty EPL, look at what United and Citeh are doing to the opposition this season, ther are stampeding through the league. Or look at the success of middling Spanish clubs in the UEFA Cup in recent years and the respective failure of the English. And if La Liga was as crap as you say it is, then how is it that it was ranked number one from the late 90s to basically the mid to late noughties, and still is 2nd (by a relatively small margin) only to the fantastically sugar-dadied EPL. Oh, and as for the Spanish clubs being shambolicly managed, how do you account for the fact that they seem to be the only clubs on European soil to be able to churn out local, native talent? Let's make a comparison between what Spanish clubs have produced working with their own population and resources and what mightier nations like France, England, Italy and even Germany have managed to achieve over recent years. And let's not include immigrants and "imports" from their former colonies and semi-colonies.*

As for TV rights being distributed more equally in Spain, if that were to happen without a new and improved TV deal (potentially taking total revenue from 600m to 900m euros) it will have an absolutely devastating effect on Barcelona and Real Madrid, opening the way for City and United to contest most CL finals for the foreseeable future. That is the last thing that a Barca fan would wish for.


*I have nothing against those people, on the contrary, I admire their will to succeed and be top atheltes. My argument here is only that most European nations (bar Spain and a few others maybe) seem unable to produce local talent in anything resembling a decent rate.