Is La Liga the best?

As we're closing in to the start of the season, I think one big question in every football fans head is, will the Spanish La Liga be the best league in the coming season? Now when players like Benzema, Kaká, Ronaldo and Ibrahimovic have moved in, the Spanish league has seven of the ten best players in the world if you follow the 2008 FIFA player of the year award.

The interesting part of the story is that, Premier League probably last winter was seen as the best league, and I think that was the case even after Barça outnumbered Manchester United in the Champions League final.

But last winter the number from the top ten best players in La Liga was six. So does the transfer of Ronaldo mean so much? No, I don't think so. Kaká and Ronaldo are the only two of the incoming players that fits the top ten. Benzema not even in the top 20, and Ibrahimovic on a 16th place. Eto'o was in the top ten, but shipped out to Inter.

But still the main problem in the last years have been, for the Spanish teams, to succeed in Europe. It's not enough to have the best players and win league titles, you have to win the Champions League too, or at least the UEFA cup, or next season the UEFA Europe League. But Barcelona won the Champions League, isn't the La Liga the best now? The answer is simple: No. Why?

Premier League still had three teams in the top four, which has been the case since the season 2006-07. On that season Milan was the only non-English team, and the two following years it was Barça. How could a change be made in this? Well, it's hard, since English teams play a very defensive and boring game as we know. Yes, it can be entertaining sometimes, but basically we all know is that English teams just park the bus away against technical, possessive and offensive teams like Barcelona. That's not fun, but it's working indeed.

I think what Spanish teams need to learn is the same as the English ones are able to do. Park the bus, or, find an effective way to break through it. The latter is probably the more suitable idea since we like offensive football, don't we?

I'm not that much of an coach or tactical expert, but what we need is probably shots, something at least Barça is lacking in my opinion. Or we did until a young guy named Rueda showed us how to do it. We have to shoot from long ranges too! Not try to pass the ball into the box, so we could pass a few times more, and a few seconds later pick the ball from our own goal after a succesful English counter attack.

Physically thougher play is something we also need. English teams play more rugby than football to me sometimes, but that's succesful against ball playing teams. This perhaps sounds odd, but as an ice hockey player, and footballer too, I know that you need to be physical to get your space and time.

The third thing that needs to be used more in my eyes is through passes. Just kick the ball towards the corner and run for it. Those passes (if they succeed) rambles the defense a bit, and a dangerous attack could be launched. With players in the Spanish teams like Ronaldo, Messi, Agüero, David Villa, Ibrahimovic and so on, we should be albe to do this. It would be nice to give it a try every now and then, when the tici-taca doesn't give results. Off course through passes are harder to work out on an English pitch than on a Spanish, but give it a shot.

Enough said, I hope that Spanish clubs could succeed better this year in European competitions, and I think they could since the potential is there, just waiting to be used. Unfortunately, Valencia isn't playing the Champions League next year, and I think they belong there, but at least I hope they're compete for the Europe League title. If they only could get the economic side working, they'll be back on track again with the sports side too.

Are we too optimistic if we expect a clasico in the Bernabeu on May 22nd?


Sbah