You can search and search in the history of football, which is wide and diverse, and there will be no way to find a drama of such dimensions in Spanish football. When the World Cup in Qatar, Christmas and that first month and a half of the year devoted to the Copa del Rey pass, only one LaLiga team will hear the Champions League anthem again. It will be Real Madrid, an iron foot in the competition, despite their slip on Tuesday against Leipzig.
All the others have been eliminated. And all of them with still a league day to play. That, mathematically, because both Seville and Barcelona stood on this fifth date assuming that the classification had already become a chimera. The thing about Atlético, with the drama of the penalty called in the VAR with the match already over, and failed over and over again (yes, a penalty can be missed over and over again, it’s something we discovered this Wednesday) surpasses the football drama by far .
Three Spanish teams, in short, eliminated in the first round of the Champions League. As historic as it seems or even more so. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the competition.. One could exaggerate and say that it had not happened in almost seven decades of the European Cup, although in the first one only one team per country participated, two at most.
Madrid will be the only Spanish team present in the round of 16 of the European Cup.
First time that Spain has only one representative among the 16 best since the league is disputed by 32 teams.
– Pedro Martin (@pedritonumeros) October 26, 2022
Since the 1999-00 season there have been four Spanish teams participating in the Champions League, at first with one or two of them having to overcome a previous round. Well, it had never happened that in the round of 16 (or in the second equivalent league that was played for some years) there was only one Spanish team present. Never.
The most similar precedent is from the previous campaign, 1998-99, in which Barcelona and Athletic were eliminated in the group stage and only Real Madrid advanced, although they did make it to the quarterfinals, given that only Eight teams qualified. And he was eliminated in that round, by the way.
This will cause a real overpopulation of Spanish teams in the Europa League, the second continental competition. Betis and Real Sociedad have done their homework in it, achieving classification with still two days to play, and they will be joined by Barcelona, Seville and it remains to be seen if Atlético will alsowhich will play for third place in the group on the last day, next Tuesday.
Punctual or conjunctural?
Is this the beginning of a new and dark era for Spanish football or a specific circumstance? It’s hard to say right now. If you want to look at the glass half full, last season three teams of five advanced, one reached the quarterfinals (Atlético), another to the semifinals (Villarreal) and Madrid were crowned champions.
In the previous one, 2020-21, there was a full round of 16 (the four that are contesting it this year), but the only one that continued its path was Real Madrid, falling in the semifinals. And in 2019-20, that of confinement, they also all advanced to the second round (with Valencia instead of Seville), with Barcelona and Atlético reaching the quarterfinals as the greatest national success.
A poorer league
But there is also the temptation, not at all tendentious, to cross this historical data of three eliminations with that of investment in LaLiga transfers in the last markets. This summer, despite the famous ‘levers’ activated by Barcelona, the Spanish was the fourth league in Europe in spending on hiringonly ahead of the Bundesliga.
The drama at minute 98 ????#UCL pic.twitter.com/dKlTvyauT6
– Champions League (@LigadeCampeones) October 26, 2022
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A condition that has been common since the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, LaLiga is the one that invests the least of the five largest in the continent. His investment has been, since the summer market of 2020, about 1,200 million euros, an amount that pales compared to the championships in Italy (2,400) and especially in England (5,300), but which is also slightly behind the French ( 1,400) and from the German (1,300).
Gone are those times when Spanish clubs led the world market, with large annual investments that reached a cap of 1,380 million euros in the summer of 2019. Perhaps next season the four (or five) Spanish teams that play it will advance in the Champions League and it is even possible (not much, really), that they will make it to the semifinals. But, today, the reality is so stark: for the first time, there will only be one Spanish team in the second round of the Champions League. And there will be 15 from other countries. Who has seen Spanish football and who watches it.