Opinion: La Liga, come back soon!

This weekend we should all have been excitedly sitting down to watch the beginning of another Spanish league football season. But weren’t. Even the histrionics of the Supercopa – which have been discussed more than enough – managed not to overshadow what were two fantastic ties between two great sides; it actually felt like a glorious reintroduction to the joy of Spanish football and a new beginning. Thing is, those games should have just been the appetisers but the main course hasn’t been served. It appears, finally, a breaking point has been reached and the long-threatened players strike has actually, unthinkably, gone ahead.

Many are finding it hard to sympathise with what in essence is a bunch of millionaires going on strike and mostly they’d be correct. Whilst it’s unfortunate that there are 11 clubs in La Liga currently in administration, the wage demands of the players are a massive contributing factor to their perilous situation. The clubs should quite simply have never got themselves into this situation of bowing to the player’s wants and now, they’re going to have to do it all over again.

Regardless of this, once again the inconvenience involved has landed at the door of the least important person in football (if you run the damn thing); the fan. With neither side appearing willing to yield, the potential length of the whole affair is uncertain meaning there may be more cancelled games and, well, where are they going to go? A Christmas round of fixtures has been proposed but this would rob La Liga’s players of the winter break they usually enjoy. The travel aspect of the winter break could be a serious issue to some fans but, as stated before, they’re just not important to the people who run the show. Perhaps the only benefit of this is that it would dispel the myth that the only reason England don’t succeed in international competition is because of their lack of a similar break.

Yet, despite all the worry about the logistical aspects of the strike and the concern over whether an agreement can be reached, it’s all in truth irrelevant. There is a bigger issue at hand; that being that we just didn’t get to watch great matches this weekend.

If there was one problem with the Supercopa this year, it was that it renewed a theme of last year; ‘it’s all about Real Madrid and Barcelona’. It clouded the fact that there was a renewed hope for this season, based on the evidence of the summer, that things will be vastly different. Better.

For a start, there is an unknown quantity in the shape of Malaga whose opening fixture was the mouth-watering prospect of a home tie against champions Barcelona. Viewed as the first chance for the pretenders to assert their claim to the crown of the big two and to show if they might be placed to break the dominance for the first time since Rafael Benitez’s Valencia, unfortunately we now won’t know till much later.

Real Madrid were also set to meet Athletic Bilbao who are now under the stewardship of Argentinian coach Marco Bielsa. Bielsa is already set to be one of the most interesting stories of this year and his relentlessly attacking style of play should be a joy to watch at one of Spain’s most history-laden clubs. Again, we’ll have to show a little bit of patience.

I haven’t even mentioned the small issue of Getafe and their Zombies Caliente but you get the picture; the wait is killing me.

So please LFP and the players: resolve this issue. For the sake Betis, Granada and Rayo Vallecano, who can’t wait to get going. For the sake of Malaga, who want to shake up the establish order. For the sake of Real Madrid, who looked better placed than ever to knock down Guardiola’s Barcelona. And, most of all, for the sake of my sanity.

Tags: La Liga strike