On September 12, 2020, the Santander League 2020-21. With the echoes of the strangest end of the season in history, that of the 2019-20 campaign, which arrived in the middle of summer and at forced marches after the three-month hiatus by covid-19, the ball rolled again in the stadiums of the Spanish football with hardly any preseason and with a calendar compressed to the maximum possible to reach the Eurocup on time, postponed to 2021.
With the stands empty, five substitutions, one weekdays marathon and just preseason, the championship was already venturing strange, treading on unknown terrain. More than eight months have passed and the balance of the League is very difficult to analyze. The Athletic champion started as a shot, made a first round of honors, with 48 out of 57 possible points; And when the title seemed a matter of time, since it surpassed Real Madrid and Barça by eleven points already after the half of the championship, it fell with everything, victim of a wave of covid cases in the squad and injuries.
Nor can it be said that the rest of the teams that have ended up fighting for the championship, the expected ones, have exhibited a certain regularity. If anything, Sevilla, a diesel engine from that fourth position that seems its natural place in the league but has been able to reach the final stage in the leading group, although without the explosiveness necessary to deliver the final blow.
And it is that under these special conditions it is more than difficult to maintain a stable line. If Simeone’s team complicated a League on track in the second round, the Barça the opposite dynamic followed. It did not start badly at all for the situation in which he presented himself to battle, with Messi asking for the exit by burofax, heavyweights like Luis Suárez leaving the club through the back door and a handful of young people without doing to try to fight for everything .
It was a remarkable start, but with a very short wick. Yielded the set of Koeman the leadership in the seventh day and sank on all fronts until reaching a practically extreme situation at the beginning of 2021. Farewell to the Champions League against Paris Saint-Germain with a win included in the Camp Nou (1-4), defeat in the final of the Super Cup against Athletic, against the ropes in the Copa del Rey, the shortest route to a title, after 2-0 against Sevilla at the Sánchez Pizjuán and eleven points from Atlético, the leader of the League, one practically insurmountable distance. Everything pointed to the KO, but the Barcelona team was rebuilt to win the Cup title in Seville and even go as far as attacking the leadership in the absence of six days, although it was virtually, since the dance of postponed days made the real classification differ from the final table a posteriori, with all the games played and following the normal order of days.
However, and like the one who swims and nothing but runs out of strength just when he already glimpses the shore, Barça’s virtual leadership lasted a sigh, until the surprise defeat against Granada at the Camp Nou, a duel that seemed like a formality and that ended up being decisive, since since then Koeman’s men they deflated and they finished on the third step of the podium.
If Atlético and Barça went from more to less and from less to more but with a disappointing end, the Real Madrid It is even more complex, as Zidane’s team condenses his career this season ups and downs, moments with the French on the tightrope and others as the ideal coach for the club. Weeks in which he painted a campaign without titles and others in which even the Champions-League double seemed within reach. Things of an institution accustomed to success and therefore so unable to bear the absence of triumphs as willing to believe in them when they seem almost impossible.
The cyclothymic Real Madrid
The white start in this League was better in terms of results than in terms of sensations. After an unexpected defeat to the battleship Cádiz de Cervera at the Di Stéfano, Madrid were even leaders of the championship after their victory in the first classic of the season (1-3), played at the Camp Nou on matchday seven. The head of the table did not last long for the Chamartín team, as capable of imposing itself on the eternal rival in Barcelona as giving Di Stéfano again against a team from the bottom of the table like Alavés (1-2 ) or leaving Mestalla thrashed (4-1) in Valencia’s worst campaign in many years.
Everything that Madrid was leaving in affordable games a priori was recovering in those marked in red on the calendar. First Madrid derby of the course and Zidane’s pupils cutting Atlético’s unbeaten streak (2-0). Despite everything, at distances generally of more than six points with respect to the colchoneros, the defending champion reached a limit situation at the beginning of the year, when the first place was seen at a distance of more than ten points, a psychological barrier .
The white set brushed the technical KO in the Metropolitano, but Benzema rescued his own with a bit ‘in extremis’. In fits and starts and bordering on physical exhaustion due to the flood of casualties, Madrid stood in the semifinals of the Champions League and with all the possibilities of retaining the League after taking another decisive duel, the Di Stéfano classic (2-1) . No longer strength, missed the shot when he had the lead at hand, on matchday 36 against Sevilla, after the goalless equalizer between Barça and Atlético.
Precisely the Seville of Lopetegui He ended up repeating fourth place, a priori his natural place due to economic potential and squad, but he did so by being almost to the end in the fight for the league title. The defeat against Athletic in Pizjuán on matchday 35 prevented him from arriving in full condition to fight for everything until the last day, but his performance has been the most regular among the championship giants.
A course with more muscle injuries than ever
An obstacle course. It is the most appropriate concept for what this League has meant. More than a display of power, the key to the championship has been in the background, in the resistance to adversity. And it is that in this atypical league campaign, marked by a very late start, almost in mid-September, it has been relatively common to see teams with up to almost a dozen casualties. In fact, many of the moments of form of the different candidates for the title have been marked by a barrage of casualties, in many cases caused by the covid-19.
Atlético walked at a record pace until cases of coronavirus began to appear in its squad, whose consequences once the disease it causes was overcome could be verified in the case of Moussa Dembélé, a winter signing who could not show his full potential afterwards of fainting in a training session as a result of the aftermath of the virus. Also Madrid were weighed down by casualties, related in many cases to the covid, and Barça accused the lack of gasoline in a final gray.
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