The blue and claret shirts of the current leaders have a familiar look about them but, rather than belonging to Spanish giants - champions for the last three seasons - the apparel is that of modest .
With seven wins and two draws, the Valencia-based side are one point ahead of Real Madrid - having at home last month - and another point clear of third-placed Barca.
Shock and surprise are just two of the words that have been regularly used in the last week at this unprecedented state of affairs, with Levante topping La Liga for the first time in their 102-year history.
How did they get there? Where have they come from? And can they stay there?
Read the rest of this entry
Madrid
Finally, there will be football in this weekend after the players’ union and the top two division’s clubs worked out some of their differences and the strike was called off.
Now, we can concentrate on what’s happening on the pitch rather than behind-the-scenes but once again it looks like being a two-horse race in Spain between and their eternal rivals .
Long gone are the days when the likes of Valencia, Atletico Madrid and Deportivo La Coruna, the only other teams apart from the two Spanish giants to triumph in the last 20 years, could contemplate upsetting the status quo.
The only time in the last seven years when anybody has eased themselves between Barca and Real was when .
Read the rest of this entry
The of Cesc Fabregas returning to his boyhood club Barcelona
It now seems pertinent to ask: what happens once he's signed on the dotted line for last season's winners of and ?
Going from being Arsenal captain to sitting on the Barca bench seems the most likely answer.
Despite his eagerness to secure his exit from the Emirates Stadium ever since Spain lifted the World Cup last summer, with the image of him donning a Barca shirt in the victory parade having haunted him for the last 12 months, most pundits in Spain believe that his price tag of around 40 million euros (£35m) will still not make him an automatic first choice at the Nou Camp.
Read the rest of this entry
Hi, I'm Phil Minshull. I've lived in Spain since 1997 and covered Spanish football since the first day I got here. My blog aims to provide some insight into what's happening in La Liga, and there is much more to it than only Real and Barcelona, as well as elsewhere around Europe.
