Why is La Liga so far ahead in Europe?

[Sarni]

For all the talk of Madrid being this big bad side, their trophy cabinet and actual accomplishments doesn't quite match the reputation.
It's not as if Barca are putting them out of Europe every season bar one for the last 11/12 years.

In the last 5 seasons they've gone out to Barcelona (2011), Bayern (2012), Dortmund (2013) and Juventus (2015). All very good sides in top form.

 

[cyberman]

In the last 5 seasons they've gone out to Barcelona (2011), Bayern (2012), Dortmund (2013) and Juventus (2015). All very good sides in top form.

Yes but unless Madrid go out to Malmo in the second round then they will go out to a very good team. The Champions league is full of them!
Barca and Bayern are up there because they reach final after final. In the future Madrid will be mentioned along those two as the most dominant sides in the last 10 years when in reality they weren't. United would have more of a claim with all the records we set for example.

 

[Balu]

Yes but unless Madrid go out to Malmo in the second round then they will go out to a very good team. The Champions league is full of them!
Barca and Bayern are up there because they reach final after final. In the future Madrid will be mentioned along those two as the most dominant sides in the last 10 years when in reality they weren't. United would have more of a claim with all the records we set for example.

I'm sure United will be remembered as one of the dominant sides of the noughties while Bayern and Madrid as one of the dominant sides of the 2010's (does that have a name?). Barca will be remembered as more than that of course.

Right now, the fantastic United side from 06-09 (you could extend it to 2011 if you really want to, but it was already a clearly weaker team at that point) is simply a side from a different era with very few players from that era still at the club. It's closer to Ancelotti's Milan side in the timeline. The Bayern and Madrid sides that reached/won finals are still alive and ticking and still writing their story. I wouldn't worry that United's great team is forgotten, that won't happen. It's just time for United to come up with a new one.

 

[do.ob]

Yes but unless Madrid go out to Malmo in the second round then they will go out to a very good team. The Champions league is full of them!
Barca and Bayern are up there because they reach final after final. In the future Madrid will be mentioned along those two as the most dominant sides in the last 10 years when in reality they weren't. United would have more of a claim with all the records we set for example.

Didn't all those sides (which Real went out to) at least make it to the final?

 

[cyberman]

I did say during the last 10 years!
Edit response to @Balu

 

[Keeps It tidy]

Didn't all those sides (which Real went out to) at least make it to the final?

Off course since all of those losses were in the semis.

 

[Wednesday at Stoke]

I think this is as simple as them having a disproportionately high number of the top players in the world. Messi, Suarez and Neymar, Ronaldo, Bale, Modric and Rodriguez could probably all be considered in the top 10. English teams were doing quite well when we had Ronaldo and Rooney, Chelsea had the likes of Drogba, Lampard and Terry in the peak of their careers.

From the English league alone, Real have taken away Ronaldo, Bale and Modric and Barca have taken Suarez. Until someone else comes into fill that void, that kind of talent migration is sure to shift the balance of power from continent to another in Europe.

 

[Raul Madrid]

For all the talk of Madrid being this big bad side, their trophy cabinet and actual accomplishments doesn't quite match the reputation.
It's not as if Barca are putting them out of Europe every season bar one for the last 11/12 years.

People only started talking about Madrid as "this big bad side" since the 10/11 season when Mourinho took over. From 04/05 to 09/10 they were poor in Europe which was down to a number of reasons like poor management, poor decisions from the higher-ups, bad signings and continuing to stick by once great players that were past their best and not replacing them properly (this was after some very good years for the club in the CL which included three CL wins and two semi final appearances). If you talk about the last 10 years then there would be several clubs ahead of Madrid including United but over the last 5 seasons (Madrid have at least reached the semi finals of the CL every season during this period) then I would only put Barcelona and Bayern ahead of them (the like of Juventus, Atletico and Dortmund have only had one or two strong CL campaigns during this period).

 

[Theonas]

Yes but unless Madrid go out to Malmo in the second round then they will go out to a very good team. The Champions league is full of them!
Barca and Bayern are up there because they reach final after final. In the future Madrid will be mentioned along those two as the most dominant sides in the last 10 years when in reality they weren't. United would have more of a claim with all the records we set for example.

Exactly this. It's an insult to Barcelona and to a lesser extent ourselves and Bayern that Real Madrid will be mentioned in the same breath if they do of course. For all the talk about their quality, their record in the main competitions plus in the big games against the best teams is extremely mediocre relatively of course. Their big wins against La Liga mid table teams and the image they successfully built for themselves as this giant juggernaut with the best players around have masked how significantly behind the true elite of the past decade. They argue that it's because they had to come up against Barcelona but they've gone out to Juventus, Bayern, Dortmund as well. Not easy teams of course but if you are going to be mentioned in the same category as the best, you've got to be beating those.

 

[Cassidy]

Some good observations but who wants to mirror the old Serie A sort of play any longer? Is that really going to thrill the fanbase? Technical football, it's the era we live in and England has some catching up to do, still

The funny thing is, this is exactly what LVG is trying to bring to United, and most of the fans hate it.

 

[FCBarca]

The funny thing is, this is exactly what LVG is trying to bring to United, and most of the fans hate it.

Patience, the club didn't adapt quickly enough but it will surely evolve

 

[Cassidy]

Patience, the club didn't adapt quickly enough but it will surely evolve

I quite like it myself, I'm just highlighting that the mentality over here is going to take a very long time to change. Subsequently England will always be behind the other elite teams in Europe, until the mentality changes.

 

[Invictus]

It's part of a cycle, to an extent. Spain has produced a lot of quality players for the past decade or so, starting from their dominant youth sides towards the late 1990s and 2000s that produced a lot of Madrid and Barcelona's mainstays. And to go down a notch, and address La Liga clubs' dominance in the Europa League, a lot of those players have also trickled down through the system, and give La Liga teams a natural advantage. But even aside from their clear superiority in terms of personnel, one has to account for the effort La Liga teams put in European competitions, especially when it comes to the Europa League, in no small part because they have to prioritize Europe to maximize the revenues.

It's kind of mind boggling that Sevilla has won the Europa league for the past couple of seasons, and routinely finish in the La Liga Top 5 or 6, despite a revenue of just €99.93 million a year. Just to put that into context, the last placed Premier League team in 2013/ 2014, Cardiff City had revenues of €114 million, and Sevilla's positional equivalent in the Premier League had revenues of €250 million+. Will those kind of clubs put more emphasis on Europe when compared with the La Liga Top 6?

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...billion-eclipses-rest-of-europe-10295701.html

All this begets the question, what exactly are they doing right, and where is all the Premier League money going? And just by looking at some of the transactions, you get the impression that the football side of things are more well run in certain clubs in the La Liga, when compared to the Premier League in particular. Clubs like Atletico, Club Athletic, Sevilla routinely turn massive profits on players, and reinvest on cheaper equivalents from smaller leagues. eg. Sevilla bought Geoffrey Kondogbia from Lens in 2012/ 2013 for €4 million, and punted him to Monaco in 2013/ 2014 for a profit of €16 million, later replacing him with Grzegorz Krychowiak for €6 million, who is now arguably one of the best defensive midfielders in Europe.

And it's not just one isolated example, they have turned a profit of almost €100 million in the past 5 seasons on a paltry sub €100 million budget, and still managed to win 2 European trophies, to go with the Copa del Rey. Meanwhile the likes of Tottenham wasted almost all of the money they received from the transfer of Bale (which was higher than Sevilla's total budget for the year), and regressed by a couple of notches. And it's not just La Liga teams, Jurgen Klopp built Borussia Dortmund's twice Bundesliga winner, 2013 Champions League final team on a net spend that was almost zero, whereas Liverpool spent €50 million in the 2014/ 2015 season alone, and that after the club record transfer of Suarez.

One has to wonder about the scouting and management structure at some of these clubs, given the relative lack of tangible results when compared with the money invested. A lot of the La Liga are much more intelligent when it comes to that. They sign players on the cheap, develop them, and later sell them for a profit only to acquire more talent and build a conveyor belt of sorts.Part of that is why the likes of Southampton and Swansea finishing in the Top 6 on a consistent basis instead of bloated clubs like Tottenham would be a welcome change. Both clubs are financially responsible, have a good scouting department and develop players from within, routinely replenish players that are lost to bigger clubs, and play good football. Maybe they will take European competitions more seriously, and progress to the latter stages.

 

[K2K]

Its getting ridiculous now.

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And United were a toe poke away from losing to Celta Vigo in the semifinals.

 

[2Decades]

I think Spain's top 3 are better than others. Not La Liga as a whole.