I have said
this before and I will repeat it again; The Spanish football (Soccer) league is
a depiction of the Scottish premier league where Barcelona and Real Madrid
(Like Celtic and Rangers in Scotland) put teams together to humiliate minnows.
Now before
you start calling me out, I must reiterate that the Spanish league is a great
league and of course I know there are structurally 20 teams in it like in most
top leagues in Europe, but instead it’s the disparity in the Spanish league
between Barcelona and Real Madrid and the rest that led me to the title of this
article.
If you are a
follower of the game of football you probably already know that 10 of the
players in ‘2012 FIFA/FIFApro World XI’ are from Barcelona and Real Madrid. Technically
what this means is that the best player of each position in 2012 is selected to
form a team, call it the World’s best team if you like.
Since all of
the 11 players are from Spain, it is tempting to conclude that the Spanish
league is the best league in the World, but if you are reader of my blog you
are probably aware of my own thoughts on that, as a matter of fact it is not,
unless if your own definition of best is to almost always predict the
outcome of a game even before the ball is kicked, but if that’s you, you are
probably already used to ingenuity.
But my
discussion today is not centred around the question of the best league, instead
I’m interested in whether 10 players will be from any two teams in any other
league if the best eleven are selected from teams in that league. The answer is
no, well not in Europe’s top leagues, You see if you are to select a supposedly
dream team in Either the English Premier league or the Italian Sere A, you can guarantee
that you will have players from at least five different teams.
I guess the
question is why do we have pretty much all the players of FIFA World XI from
two Spanish teams? The answer is because there is no parity in the Spanish
league, Barcelona and Real Madrid put together ridiculously amazing players to
demolish the rest. Personally I’m not surprised these players are from these
two teams even though I have my own doubts about who is and who is not on that
so called FIFA team, because of the disparity between them and the rest and the
numbers of quality players they are surrounded by, these players have a better
chance of a better performance than their counter-parts in other leagues even
if they are levelled in terms of skills. To understand this think of a player
like Robin Van Persie, you can be almost certain that he will be in the FIFA
World XI if he plays for a team like Real Madrid or Barcelona in the Spanish
League.
It is
important for people to understand that the quality of players you are
surrounded by and the team power of your opponents plays a great role in a
players performance, been surrounded by top quality players coupled with a
relatively less powerful team makes playing the game itself easy.
Again it is obvious
that gap between Barcelona & Real Madrid and the rest of the other Spanish
teams is absolutely absurd and exclusive to the Spanish league. In fact no
other team has won the La Liga since 2004 and given the current nature of
things it doesn’t look like any team is going to break into that top two spot
anytime soon.
By the way
before you start calling my name, I’m conscious of the inclusion of Radamel
Falcoa in the so called dream team, who doesn’t play for either Barcelona or
Madrid, Falcoa is an amazing player, and he is a standout, however with no
disrespect to him I think his inclusion in the team is highly debatable.
Overall though I think he deserves some credit for his exceptional performance
in 2012, hence fair play to him.
If you're the
one who is obsessed with who is on the FIFA/FIFAPro World XI, it is worth
noting that these players are voted by their fellow professional players and as
such opinion plays a great role.
Below is that
name of the players for the 2012 FIFA World XI.
IKER
CASILLAS, DANI ALVES, MARCELO, GERARD PIQUÉ, SERGIO RAMOS, ANDRÉS INIESTA, XABI
ALONSO, XAVI HERNANDEZ, CRISTIANO RONALDO, RADAMEL FALCAO, LIONEL MESSI.
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