There is a good argument to be made for club soccer being better than national team matches. But then the World Cup comes around again and we get swept up anew. For now we are enjoying every minute of the end of La Liga’s season.
We follow three teams in Spain’s top division, and they all finished in the top four. As I have mentioned before, we have taken to perversely rooting against one of them, Real Madrid. With the world’s top talent they were unable to play as a team. They fired their relatively new coach and will likely dump the next one when the season is over. And when you root against them you inevitably grow to like their scrappier opponents. Celta Vigo is one of our favorites now.
Barcelona had already won the title, but they weren’t holding back against Alavés, from the Basque city of Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Rioja region. Alavés needed points because in Spain the bottom three clubs get relegated. They are kicked out of the league, and the top three teams from the Segunda División move up to the Primera División. Alavés outplayed Barça, and we loved watching them defeat the champs 1–0 and move out of the relegation zone.
None of our teams played yesterday, so we tuned into Girona vs. Real Sociedad in the beautiful Catalan city just an hour north of Barcelona. We were already fond of Real Sociedad, from one of our favorite Spanish cities, San Sebastián, but Girona was in the bottom three with only three matches left. We went with Girona, and they outplayed La Real, tied them 1–1, and with that one point moved out of the relegation zone. It was one of the best matches we’ve watched in weeks.
When the division title has already been decided, La Liga still provides an exciting race at the bottom—no position more important than seventeenth.
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