The Spanish League's opening games have unleashed a wave of criticism from a number of club owners, journalists, and football fans alike. At Camp Nou, Villareal, with a solid line-up, were demolished 5-0 by Barcelona while Madrid crushed Real Zaragoza 6-0, with Zaragoza hardly even able to try their luck with a shot at Madrid's goal.
The criticism is being led by Seville's president Jose Maria del Nido who has invited representatives from 17 Spanish clubs (obviously excluding Barca and Real) to his club's stadium to discuss how to remedy what he's referred to as a league that currently resembles “a piece of crap”.
The focus is being put on the huge amounts of money that the two superteams are taking from the television revenues that the league generates. Real Madrid and Barcelona currently enjoy about half of the total amount which hovers around the £520 million mark per year.
Critics are mostly blaming this huge difference in income as the reason for this extreme imbalance in La Liga, but is that entirely accurate? Of course it's a huge part of it, but credit has to be given to good management. Money isn't enough to build up a great club. This has been proven countless times before in leagues all over the world. If the television revenues are indeed being divided unfairly then this should be analysed and changes should be made accordingly, but we must remember that it's also a natural occurrence for some teams to be more successful than others.
Comparing the Spanish League to the English Premier League also puts things into perspective. Let's go back to 1991. Since then, La Liga has had 5 different teams as champions, but if we look at the English Premier League, we only get 4 teams. Should we be discussing the imbalance in the EPL?
The criticism is being led by Seville's president Jose Maria del Nido who has invited representatives from 17 Spanish clubs (obviously excluding Barca and Real) to his club's stadium to discuss how to remedy what he's referred to as a league that currently resembles “a piece of crap”.
The focus is being put on the huge amounts of money that the two superteams are taking from the television revenues that the league generates. Real Madrid and Barcelona currently enjoy about half of the total amount which hovers around the £520 million mark per year.
Critics are mostly blaming this huge difference in income as the reason for this extreme imbalance in La Liga, but is that entirely accurate? Of course it's a huge part of it, but credit has to be given to good management. Money isn't enough to build up a great club. This has been proven countless times before in leagues all over the world. If the television revenues are indeed being divided unfairly then this should be analysed and changes should be made accordingly, but we must remember that it's also a natural occurrence for some teams to be more successful than others.
Comparing the Spanish League to the English Premier League also puts things into perspective. Let's go back to 1991. Since then, La Liga has had 5 different teams as champions, but if we look at the English Premier League, we only get 4 teams. Should we be discussing the imbalance in the EPL?
No comments:
Post a Comment