La Liga awards as season reaches halfway point, including title favorites

This is the official ‘midway point’ of the 2024/25 season in La Liga (19 matchdays left, 19 matchdays to go) and as such I felt it appropriate to hand out some Football España mid-season awards. These honors are expected to highlight the league’s strength in its star power, as well as its diversity in team-to-team, club-to-club approach.

Let’s start with…

The biggest surprise

My biggest surprise of the season so far is RCD Mallorca, but it remains to be seen how long the islanders will be able to compete for a European position against some of Spain’s biggest clubs.

At mid-season, Mallorca is sixth in LaLiga, tied on 30 points with Villarreal and six points behind Athletic Club in the last place in the Champions League. In his first season in charge, Jagoba Arrasate has Los Bermellones on track to return to European competition for the first time since 2004 (despite being beaten by almost 60 attempts) thanks to a strong defensive identity, forged through experienced players like Antonio Raillo, Martín Valjent, Dani Rodríguez and the trash-talking king Pablo Maffeo.

Mallorca’s problem is scoring goals, and in the light of a new FIFA sanctionthat issue could be difficult to resolve in the January transfer window. Mallorca’s top scorer is Cyle Larin, with five goals; Arrasate’s men have been below their target goals by around five, according to Understat’s expected goals methodology. Mallorca arriving in Europe would be one of the best stories of this European football season; I’m skeptical that Arrasate has the firepower to pull it off, though an early exit from the Copa del Rey may end up helping.

The biggest disappointment

Valencia CF is the easiest winner (or is it the loser?) of this award, given that the club’s owner, Peter Lim, parted with €4.74 million to acquire new coach Carlos Corberán after refusing to approve a transfer worth more than 1.5 million euros during the summer transfer. window (thanks to the pillar of the relegation candidate, Luis Rioja). Do you want to know the last time Valencia spent more than 10 million euros on a signing? Go back to the summer of 2019, when Lim approved the signing of Maxi Gómez for €14.5 million! (Valencia’s exchange of Neto for Jasper Cillessen that summer was a €9 million loss for the club.)

After flirting intermittently with relegation in recent years, it really looks like this will be the season in which Valencia suffer a historic relegation, the club’s first since 1986. It is the byproduct of a decade of mismanagement by Lim. , and – if it happens in May – it will occur in the context of the devastating October floods in the region.

Valencia has scored 10 goals from open play all season; Only Valladolid and Leganés average fewer shots per game. Los Che are in last place in La Liga, with only two wins and four points behind salvation. And with upcoming matches against Real Sociedad and Barcelona, ​​plus a Copa del Rey match against Ourense… It’s not looking very good for one of Spain’s biggest clubs.

There has been a slight improvement in Valencia’s play since the departure of Rubén Baraja last month; Javi Guerra has returned to the deeper midfield role in which he excels. And a positive side (I suppose) in Mestalla is that Valencia’s -9.9 expected The goal difference is only the fifth worst in the First Division, so it is very possible that they will end up being three worse teams when the season ends.

Best performer

While Jude Bellingham has a good argument to make here (especially in recent weeks, when Real Madrid haven’t achieved much without him involved), Raphinha has a better one.

I have opined that over the last two seasons, Raphinha has not always played at the level necessary to succeed in Barcelona; I have found him inconsistent and indecisive. That’s not the case this season. Raphinha has been reborn under Hansi Flick, who delivered a trophy on Sunday as Barca defeated Madrid for the second time this season to win the Spanish Super Cup. The Brazilian scored the third and fifth goals in that joyous 5-2 victory; In LaLiga he is second in the Pichichi race with 11 goals and second in assists with six.

🗣️Ancelotti on Bellingham:

“What has changed a little lately is his position without the ball, which is a little more central. In the last few games we have had him behind the forwards in defense. The team has handled the change well, with the ball it has not changed at all nothing. ” pic.twitter.com/slDNRmQMLf

— Soccer Spain (@footballespana_) January 5, 2025

Flick’s arrival has emboldened Raphinha, perhaps too much for the club’s liking; The winger’s recent comments regarding the Dani Olmo registration fiasco (see below) cannot have sat well with president Joan Laporta or the friends around him on the Barcelona board. But whatever magic Raphinha, Lamine Yamal and Robert Lewandowski can conjure in the second half of the season will determine whether Barça can overtake Madrid and Atlético at the top of the table.

Chances are you’ll break the rules and get away with it.

FC Barcelona again! Congratulations to all the culers! His club found a way to bypass the rules and register Dani Olmo for the second half of this season.

There can’t have been much surprise when, on January 9, Barcelona announced that it had “re-registered” Olmo and Pau Víctor following a “provisional” (laughs) decision by Spain’s national sports council on the attackers’ playing future. It doesn’t matter that Barcelona only got the “1:1” standing after the new year, several days after the deadline to register Olmo; he CDS bought the hook, line and sinker of Barça’s 50-page, 60-document appeal, apparently “for the good of Spanish football.”

Friends, there is nothing good about 18 other clubs having to comply with some of the strictest financial controls in European football, while Barça and Madrid are mandated to do whatever they want. It is the result of years and years of marketing that prevented the cultural and stylistic vitality of La Liga at the expense of propping up two giants who often cannot get out of their own way and want to completely change the continental landscape by breaking up. to the Super Le-sorry, the Unify League. Give me a break.

Laporta came out on the right foot, as expected. And he’s very good at it, of course. In terms of actual details, there wasn’t much new. The timeline and basic facts as already understood.

-Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) January 14, 2025

In all seriousness, I can only hope that the Olmo Case It serves as a flashpoint for how we view, discuss and analyze Spanish football: this preferential treatment (and it is not mere perception) must end.

“It’s very sad that a club as beautiful as Barça is still allowed to cheat,” former Barcelona midfielder Ronald de Boer said in a recent interview. “Other clubs follow the rules, they try to survive, but Barcelona are allowed to get away with it, which is crazy. “If it were a company, it would have gone bankrupt.”

Kings of the state of the game.

If you have read Vishal Varier’s excellent work on soccer spainthen you will be somewhat familiar with the concept of “game state” and how different teams attack (or defend) whether they are ahead, behind or tied on the score.

When a given match has a goal difference of 0, Villarreal provides the most fireworks, with a combined total of 30 goals (17 for/13 against) in this context. In some ways it explains why Marcelino’s team is so… Unlike Marcelino, given Villarreal’s defensive fragility despite their offensive power led by Alex Baena. Barcelona (18 scored/8 conceded) is the best team in the league with 0-0, 1-1, etc., with a striking differential of plus-10.

Real Madrid (plus 7) is the most dangerous team in La Liga when they have a one-goal advantage; and Valencia, in 239 minutes with a one-goal advantage, has been surpassed by seven. Athletic has scored six and conceded zero in 137 minutes, losing by one goal, an encouraging sign for that team’s Champions League hopes.

The most likely thing is that La Liga will win

To conclude our midseason awards, I want to frame this award as a prediction of sorts.

The title race in Spain has already taken several twists and turns, and it seems that three team battle this time, meaning the eventual winner is unlikely to accumulate 90 points. Therefore, these conditions favor one team: Atlético de Madrid.

Call me biased as an Atlético fan and writer, but we are halfway through the season and I believe that neither Barcelona nor Real Madrid have a stronger squad, from top to bottom, than Atleti. Los Colchoneros won their 14th consecutive game (and eighth consecutive league game) on Sunday, defeating Osasuna in a game that gave off 2014 vibes: a 1-0 score, a solid defensive performance and a goal on a clever play on the ball. stationary. Top scorer Alexander Sorloth didn’t even have to play in the first game since his 96th-minute heroics led Atleti past Barca four days before Christmas.

😳 And Simeone ended his press conference like this:

😅 “I better shut up… bye.” pic.twitter.com/O2DDIi10HT

— El Chiringuito TV (@elchiringuitotv) January 11, 2025

Atlético is on track to finish the season with 88 points, right in the middle of its point totals from 2014 (90) and 2021 (86). Los Rojiblancos have the best defense in the league and can solidify their position at the top of La Liga with one or two smart additions in January as they fight for a third league title under Diego Simeone.

Jeremy Beren can be found on social media hereand if you’re hungry for more, find his excellent work here.