League Preview: La Liga
By Get ready for a quick but monstrous review of one of the best and most famous football leagues out there. I bet that there’s no football fan who hasn’t heard of Real Madrid or Barcelona. In fact, if we were to decide on the greatest team of all time based on the most Champions League trophies, we’d all have to agree upon the fact Los Blancos are the goats.
And yes, it’s La Liga that I’ll try to bring light on. The most well-known and well-liked Spanish domestic league, where every season features amazing games and tough matches, determination, suspense and unexpected outcomes.
Format and New Teams
The La Liga format has remained the same in the previous years. This further means that 20 clubs will compete for the prestigious La Liga trophy. The teams that occupied the first 17 spots in the last season automatically qualified for the 2023/24 season.
Unfortunately, three clubs (Espanyol, Valladolid and Elche) had to leave this competition as they were the three teams that ranked at the very bottom. To maintain the 20-team format, another three clubs (Las Palmas, Granada and Alaves) joined La Liga.
La Liga features a round-robin format. This means that each club plays two matches against all the other teams in the competition. This totals to 38 rounds. The club that wins the most points is the one that gets the title.
However, if two teams have the same number of points after the last round, the one with the better h2h score takes the trophy. Only if their h2h scores are identical will the winner be decided by the overall goal difference.
In the event that more than two teams have the same number of points, the club that was most successful in the games played against one another will be the trophy winner. If all teams have the same score, it’s once again the total goal difference that counts as the parameter to determine the champions.
The best four-ranking teams qualify for the Champions League. The club that ends in the fifth spot goes to the Europa League. The Copa del Rey winners also reserve a place in the Europa League.
On the occasion that any Spanish team wins the Europa League, they will get a spot in the Champions League, regardless of the first four ranking clubs. Finally, the holders of the sixth place on the table go to the Conference League.
Favourites & Potential Top Goalscorers
I know that we shouldn’t rush, but bookies’ La Liga favourites are already there. Taking a look at the odds, it’s obvious that Real Madrid is the number one contender for the trophy.
Barcelona’s winning odds have a few more decimals to their value. Behind both of these clubs is Altetico Mardid. Interestingly, bookies put all the other teams far away from the aforementioned ones when it comes to lifting the trophy.
The goalscoring odds lie in favour of Lewandowski. They also put forward Bellingham, after whom we found Griezmann. Besides, Vinicius Junior and Morata have slight but fair chances of being the best-scoring players in the 2023/24 La Liga season.