Biggest debacle in Spanish football history: only one team in Champions League round of 16

All others were eliminated. And they all still have a league day to play. This is mathematically because both Sevilla and Barcelona stopped on this fifth date, assuming the classification had already become a delusion. The thing about Atlético is that in VAR it’s already overtaken by the penalty drama where the game is already over and failing again and again (yes, a penalty can be missed over and over again, something we discovered this Wednesday) is outpacing football. drama so far.

In short, three Spanish teams were eliminated in the first round of the Champions League. It’s as historic as it sounds, and even more so. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the competition.. It can be said that nothing like this happened in almost seventy years of the European Cup, but only one team per country, at most two teams, participated in the first cup.

There are four Spanish teams that have participated in the Champions League since the 1999-00 season, and one or two of them had to pass the previous round. Well, it has never happened that there was only one Spanish team in the last 16 rounds (or the second-equivalent league that has been played for several years). Never.

The most similar example is from the previous season, 1998-99, when Barcelona and Athletic were eliminated in the group stage and only Real Madrid advanced despite reaching the quarterfinals as only Eight teams qualified. And by the way, he was eliminated in the round.

This will cause a real overpopulation of Spanish teams in the second continental competition, the Europa League. Betis and Real Sociedad have done their homework, still achieve classification with two days to play and Barcelona will join with Seville and it is not yet clear whether Atletico will be too.next Tuesday he will play for the third place in the group on the last day.

Is it punctual or conditional?

Is this the beginning of a dark new era for Spanish football or is it a specific situation? It’s hard to say right now. If you want to look at the glass half full, Three teams of five came forward last season, one to the quarter-finals (Atletico), the other to the semi-finals (Villarreal) and Madrid won the title..

The previous race, 2020-21, had a full 16-man lap (four of them competing this year), but Real Madrid were the only ones to make it to the semi-finals. And in 2019-20, in quarantine, they all advanced to the second round (with Valencia instead of Seville), with Barcelona and Atletico reaching the quarterfinals as the biggest national success.

A poorer league

But there’s also the unintentional temptation to cross this historical data of the three qualifiers with investment in LaLiga transfers in recent markets. Despite the famous ‘leverages’ enabled by Barcelona this summer, Spaniards were Europe’s fourth league in recruiting spendingjust ahead of the Bundesliga.

A situation that has been common since the beginning of the epidemic. Since that time, Least invested LaLiga one of the five largest on the continent. Its investment since the summer 2020 market has been around €1,200 million, which is a paltry amount compared to the championships in Italy (2,400) and especially in England (5,300), but also slightly behind the French (1,400) and German (1300).

Gone are the days when Spanish clubs ruled the world market. With large annual investments reaching a cap of 1,380 million Euros in the summer of 2019. Maybe next season, the four (or five) Spanish teams that play him will advance to the Champions League, and it’s even possible (not quite, really) to reach the semi-finals. But today the truth is very clear: for the first time, there will be only one Spanish team in the second round of the Champions League. And there will be 15 from other countries. Who has seen Spanish football, who has watched it?