This is the official 'halfway' of the 2024/25 season in La Liga – 19 rounds down, 19 rounds to go – and so I thought it would be appropriate to hand out a few Football España Midseason Awards. These awards will hopefully highlight the strength of the competition in its star power, as well as the diversity in approach from team to team, club to club.
Let's start with…
My biggest surprise of the season so far has been RCD Mallorca, but it is an open question how long the islanders can challenge for a European position against some of Spain's biggest clubs.
Midway through the season, Mallorca are sixth in LaLiga, level on 30 points with Villarreal and six points behind Athletic Club in the final Champions League place. In his first season on the job, Jagoba Arrasate has Los Bermellones on course to return to European competition for the first time since 2004 (despite being beaten by almost 60 tries) thanks to a strong defensive identity forged by experienced players like Antonio Raillo, Martin Valjent, Dani Rodriguez and the nonsense-talking king Pablo Maffeo.
Mallorca's problem is scoring goals – and in light of a new FIFA sanction, that problem could be difficult to solve in the January transfer window. Mallorca's top scorer is Cyle Larin, with five goals; Arrasate's men have underperformed their targets by around five points, according to Understat's expected targets methodology. Mallorca making Europe would be one of the best stories of this European football season; I'm skeptical that Arrasate has the necessary firepower to achieve this goal, although an early exit from the Copa del Rey could help.
Valencia CF is the easiest winner (or is that loser?) of this prize, as club owner Peter Lim parted with €4.74 million to sign new coach Carlos Corberan after refusing a transfer worth more than €1 .5 million to be approved during the summer transfer window (shoutout to relegation candidate Luis Rioja). Want to know the last time Valencia spent more than €10 million on a purchase? Go back to the summer of 2019, when Lim approved the signing of Maxi Gomez for €14.5 million! (Valencia's exchange of Neto for Jasper Cillessen that summer led to a €9 million loss for the club.)
Having flirted with decline on and off in recent years, it really feels like this will be the season in which Valencia will suffer a historic relegation – the club's first since 1986. It's the byproduct of a decade of Lim's mismanagement . , and – if it happens in May – will take place against the backdrop of the region's devastating floods in October.
Valencia scored ten goals from open play all season; only Valladolid and Leganes average fewer shots per match. Los Che are at the bottom of La Liga, with just two wins and four points adrift of safety. And with upcoming games against Real Sociedad and Barcelona, alongside a Copa del Rey match against Ourense… Things aren't looking great for one of Spain's biggest clubs.
There has been a slight improvement in Valencia's play since Ruben Baraja's departure last month; Javi Guerra has returned to the deeper midfield role in which he excels. And one bright spot (I think) at Mestalla is that Valencia's expected goal difference of -9.9 is only the fifth worst in Primera, so there could well be three worse teams when the season comes to an end.
While Jude Bellingham has a good case to deal with here – especially in recent weeks when Real Madrid haven't gotten much done without him involved – Raphinha has a better one.
I believe that Raphinha has not always played at the level necessary to succeed in Barcelona in recent seasons; I experienced him as inconsistent and indecisive. This is not the case this season. Raphinha has been reborn under the management of Hansi Flick, who lifted a trophy on Sunday as Barça defeated Madrid for the second time this season to win the Supercopa de España. The Brazilian scored the third and fifth goals in that enthralling 5-2 victory; in LaLiga he is second in the Pichichi race with 11 goals and second on the assists list with six.
Flick's arrival has encouraged Raphinha, perhaps too much for the club's liking; The winger's recent comments about the Dani Olmo registration fiasco (see below) cannot have gone down well with president Joan Laporta or the friends surrounding him on the Barcelona board. But whatever magic Raphinha, Lamine Yamal and Robert Lewandowski can conjure up in the second half of the season will determine whether Barca can beat Madrid and Atletico at the top of the table.
FC Barcelona again! Congratulations to all the Culers out there! Your club has found a way to circumvent the rules and sign Dani Olmo for the second half of this season.
There couldn't have been much surprise when Barcelona announced on January 9 that it had re-registered Olmo and Pau Victor following a “provisional” (lol) ruling from Spain's National Sports Council on the forwards' future. It doesn't matter that Barcelona only reached the “1:1” position after the new year, a few days after the deadline for Olmo's registration had passed; the CSD bought Barca's 50-page, 60-document roll call hook, line and sinker – ostensibly “for the good of Spanish football.”
Folks, there is nothing good about eighteen other clubs having to comply with some of the strictest financial controls in European football, while Barca and Madrid have the mandate to do whatever they want. It is the result of years of marketing that has eschewed the cultural and stylistic vibrancy of La Liga at the expense of propping up two behemoths who often can't get out of the way and want to completely upend the continental landscape by breaking away. to the Super Le-sorry, the Unify League. Give me a break.
In all seriousness, I can only hope that the Caso Olmo will serve as a focal point for the way we view, discuss and analyze Spanish football – this preferential treatment (and it's not just perception) must end.
“It is very sad that a club as beautiful as Barcelona is still allowed to cheat,” said former Barcelona midfielder Ronald de Boer recently in an interview. “Other clubs stick to the rules, they try to survive, but Barcelona can get away with anything, that's crazy. If it had been a company, it would have filed for bankruptcy.”
If you've read Vishal Varier's excellent work on Football Espana, you'll be somewhat familiar with the concept of 'game state' and how different teams attack (or defend) whether they are ahead, behind or even on the scoreboard.
When a given match has a goal difference of 0, Villarreal provides the most fireworks, with a total of 30 goals (17 for/13 against) in this context. It goes some way to explaining why Marcelino's team is so… Unlike Marcelino, given Villarreal's defensive fragility despite the Alex Baena-led attacking force. Barcelona (18 scored/8 conceded) is the league's best team at 0-0, 1-1, etc., with a garish plus-10 differential.
To wrap up our mid-season pricing, I want to think of this price as a prediction of sorts.
The title race in Spain has already seen several twists and turns, and this time it looks like a three-team battle – meaning the eventual winner is unlikely to collect 90 points. As such, these circumstances favor one team: Atletico Madrid.
Call me biased as an Atletico fan and writer, but we are halfway through the season and I believe that neither Barcelona nor Real Madrid have a stronger side than Atleti from top to bottom. The Colchoneros won their fourteenth match in a row – and eighth consecutive league match – on Sunday, beating Osasuna in a match that exuded the atmosphere of 2014: a 1-0 scoreline, a solid defensive performance and a goal from a clever set-piece routine . Top scorer Alexander Sorloth didn't even have to play in the first match as his 96th-minute heroics guided Atleti past Barca four days before Christmas.
Atletico is on course to finish the season with 88 points – exactly halfway between the points totals of 2014 (90) and 2021 (86). The Rojiblancos have the best defense in the league and can consolidate their position at the top of La Liga with one or two bright players in January as they push for a third league title under Diego Simeone.
Jeremy Beren can be found on social media here, and if you're hungry for more, find their excellent work here.
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