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[Please note: to see my newest post on football in Spain, click the 'Spain' category.]
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Spain’s Liga de Futbol Professional, almost universally known as La Liga, begins its 78th season on the weekend of 30th and 31st August.  

The reigning champions are Real Madrid.  The giant club from the capital city has won the title 31 times.  Barcelona (second on the list, with 18 titles) had a disorganized season in 07/08, and hope to regroup.  In fact they finished in 3rd place;  2nd place went to plucky Villarreal, who continue to punch above their weight.  This is a club from a small town of 48,000, 35 miles north of Valencia.  That they could actually be in Spain’s top flight is remarkable enough.  But to make it to the Champions League Semi-Finals (in 2005-’06), and now place second in La Liga, is amazing.  In 1999-2000, the season that they were first promoted to La Liga, Villarreal were drawing only around 8,ooo per game (they draw around 19,000 these days).

In the Group Stage of the 2008-’09 Champions League,  Real Madrid are in Group H,  with Juventus,  Zenit St. Petersburg,  and BATE Borisov (of Belarus).    Villarreal are in Group E,  with Manchester United,  Celtic, and  AaB Aalborg (of Denmark).   Barcelona are in Group C,  with Sporting [Lisbon],  Shakhtar Donetsk (of Ukraine),  and FC Basel (of Switzerland).   Atletico Madrid are in Group D (see below).  

Fourth place went to perennial underachievers Atletico Madrid, who seem poised to begin a new, more successful chapter in their club’s history, with their qualification for the Group Stage of the Champions League.  Wednesday, Atletico won 4-0 over the German club FC Schalke 04 (who also are a big club that has underachieved in the recent past).  This clinched advancement to the holy grail of the Champions League.  Atletico Madrid have been drawn into a very competive group, with Liverpool, PSV Eindhoven, and Marseille.  All four of these clubs have a viable shot at advancement {See this (from the UEFA site)}.

Fifth place went to Sevilla, who failed to equal their impressive 3rd place finish of 06/07, and will have to content themselves with a 1st Round UEFA Cup appearance (a competition which they won, twice straight, in 2005 and 2006). 

Sixth place went to Racing Santander.  This is a  medium sized club (with an average gate of around 17,000) whose defining characteristic has been the ability to survive the drop, year after year, without any sort of distinction.  So their first-ever qualification for the UEFA Cup is definitely cause for celebration up north in Cantabria.

Spain’s final UEFA Cup spot went to Valencia, who had a disasterous La Liga season in 07/08 (with a 10th place finish).  But Valencia salvaged the season with a win over Getafe in the Copa del Rey, thus qualifiying them for European competition.

There is one more Spanish club to qualify for the UEFA Cup, via the Intertoto Cup:  Deportivo La Coruna.    {Click here to see  all the clubs in the 08/09 UEFA Cup.}

Here are the final standings from La Liga 07/08 {Click here (ESPN Soccer Net)}.

Here are the leading scorers from 07/08 {Click here}.

Thanks to Demis, of the Netherlands, for the base map  {Click here}.     Thanks to European Football Statistics  {Click here}, for the attendance figures.    Thanks to Ahmed, at Soccer Lens, for linking up with, and featuring, some of my recent maps.

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Note: to see my latest post on Spanish football, click on the following, category: Spain.
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The 30th of August will see the opening of the 78th season of Spain’s Liga de Futbol Professional,  popularly known as La Liga.   The map shows the 20 clubs in the 2008-’09 season.  Club crests are sized to reflect each club’s average attendance from 07/08. 

Last season, La Liga averaged 29,124 per game {see this}.  That figure will probably go down this season, though.  This is primarily because Real Zaragoza, who drew 30,000 per game last season, were relegated,  and one of the three promoted clubs is Numancia (who drew only around 5,000 a game last season).

Since 2002-’03,  La Liga has been averaging between 28,500 and 29,200 per game.   The way it stands now,  La Liga has two clubs that draw over 60,000 (reigning champions Real Madrid, and Barcelona);  five clubs that draw between 35,000 and 45,000 (Atletico Madrid, Valencia,  Sevilla,  Real Betis, and Athletic Bilbao);  9 clubs that draw between 17,000 and 24,000 (Murcia,  Espanyol,  Villarreal,  Mallorca,  Deportivo La Coruna,  Valladolid,  Racing Santander,  Recreativo Huelva,  and Osasuna);  and some medium-small sized clubs that usually survive a year or to, or go straight back down to the Segunda Division.  The exception to this last category has come to be Getafe, the rather tiny club from a heavily industrialized region just south of Madrid’s city center, who were formed in 1983.  This club is hard pressed to draw more than 10,000 a game, yet has thrived in their first 4 seasons in La Liga, and made it to the Quarter-Finals of the UEFA Cup last season.  Another example of this may be under way on the southeast coast, in eastern Andalusia, where top flight novices Almeria (established in 1989), finished in 8th place last season, and drew around 15,000 per game.  {See this profile, from the Albion Road site}.  Five years ago, new to the second tier, Almeria averaged  only 5,800.

Thanks to Demis, of the Netherlands, for the base map {Click here}. 

Thanks to European Football Statistics, for the attentance figures {Click here}.

Thanks to the Spanish Football & Sports site, for linking to this post   {Click here}.

                                                
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Note: to see my latest post on Spanish football, click on the following, category: Spain.
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In the Spainish Liga Futbol Professional (or “La Liga”), there are usually a couple of smaller clubs that sneak into the top flight for a year or two before being sent back down.  Last season, it was Gimnastic Tarragona.   For the 2007-2008 season,  all three newly promoted clubs fit this category:  Real Valladolid, Real Murcia, and UD Almeria.  Real Murcia averaged a bit over 12,000 per game, while the other two were around 8,000. 

That makes for some pretty meager gate receipts, especially when compared to the 70,000 per game that FC Barcelona and Real Madrid draw.  One would think that these smaller sides have no hope of any kind of success in La Liga.   But look at how well Getafe CF has done.  Located in the unfashionable outskirts south of Madrid, in a small stadium ringed by expressways, this upstart club had never been in the top flight before promotion in 2004.  It was only formed in 1983,  out of the remnants of two small clubs.  But once they got to La Liga, they’ve thrived, with finishes of 13th, 9th and 9th.  In fact, they’ve earned a berth in the 2007-2008 UEFA Cup (the second-tier European competition) by being the runners-up in the Copa del Rey in 2007, losing to Sevilla 1-0.  This was accomplished while in the shadow of Real and Atletico Madrid, who between them drew 113,000 per game.  Getafe drew 11,000 per game.  Talk about plucky minnows.

Most every country in Europe has from two to four clubs that dominate the football league.  Spain is no different.  At this point it’s the big two of Barcelona and Real Madrid, with Valencia and Sevilla closing in.  But in Spain, the ”lesser” clubs can really do some damage—just look at who has won the Copa del Rey recently:  Espanyol (the poorly supported neighbor of Barcelona) in 2006, and 2000;  Real Betis (a perennial underachiever with good attendance and few trophies) in 2005; “cup specialists” Real Zaragoza in 2004, 2001,and 1994;  and complete nobodies Real Mallorca in 2003.

Villareal CF is another example of a Spanish club punching above their weight.   The town has just over 40,000 inhabitants, yet the “Yellow Submarines” ably handled the likes of Benfica, Manchester United and Inter Milan during the 2005-2006  European Champions League, making it to the semi-finals.  This from a club that had never been in the top flight before 1999.  CD Tenerife, from the remote Canary Islands, had a similar run, albeit in the UEFA Cup, in the mid-1990′s.  But Tenerife’s run ended in a crash and burn as they sank in the late 1990′s, through overspending and mass defections.

That is the great threat posed to medium size clubs: stretching ones’ self too thin by going for glory in Europe, while sliding down the table in the domestic competition.  It happens again and again, all over Europe.  Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen to Getafe this season, though a defection has already occurred: manager Bernd Schuster bought out his contract with Getafe, to become manager of Real Madrid.  One can’t criticize him for his ambition, but it remains to be seen if Getafe can succeed without him.