Valencia Property Blog

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Today is the day when Spain becomes one nation at least for 90 or 120 minutes of the World Cup Final In South Africa. The Spanish football team is half Catalan and thanks to Xabi Alonso a little bit Basque (and a little bit scouse). This is the day when all but the most hardened nationalists in the Basque Country and Catalonia will actually be following "La Roja" and willing them to win. The country is in some cases begrudgingly coming out of the closet in support of "La Roja" although some right wing rags are even using a different nickname for "The Red" as they think it too communist and allied to latent Republicanism. The Spanish national team play a great, eye pleasing, short passing and possession game that embodies everything that is right about the beautiful game, if you forget about the ridiculous histrionics of Busquets whenever anyone gets within his personal space. In the first phase of the tournament they didn't have a yellow card issued (It is quite difficult to get yellow cards when you have the ball all the time) Some facts about Spanish football for you:

In the semi final there was only one player who didn't play for Real Madrid or Barcelona, now that Villa has signed for Barcelona even though he has been a Valencia boy for the last few years and originally hails from Asturias. That player, Capdevilla, plays for Villareal just north of Valencia here. Liverpool wants Torres back in the team though to score a hat trick tonight!
Could England put together a team made up of Chelsea and Mancheter United players? 77% of the players in La Liga are Spanish. Compare that with les than 40% in the Premier League and under 25% in the big four in England. Valencia played last season with one foreign player, Ever Banega from Argentina, as a regular starter.
The Spanish League from the 1980's to around 2005 became extremely competitive with Valencia, Athletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Deportivo la Coruña and even Real Sociedad winning the league. Villareal almost won it one year too. (You can find a listing of league winners here on Wikipedia)
Tickets for Spanish league games are still set at reasonable prices for most clubs. Season tickets for Levante just promoted to La Liga, the second club in Valencia, will be available for less than 200 Euros this season with the maximum price in the best seats being 480 Euros. The unemployed got a 50% discount last season on season tickets, I wonder whether this will continue this season.
Marchena, who has appeared as a sub a couple of times in the tournament, was Spain's regular centre back before the emergence of Pique. He has played 53 times for the national team and never lost. Therefore if Spain are losing by a goal with a minute left expect him to be brought on as the lucky charm.
If you are looking for tickets to see half of the Spanish team that got to the World Cup final playing next season then get your FC Barcelona tickets here. There is availability for every match and VIP packages too.

Nevertheless all is not rosy in the Spanish football garden.

The president of Sevilla has threatened that the other 18 clubs will leave Real Madrid and Barcelona to have their own little league if TV money and income is not distributed more fairly and he is totally right. Last year the third team Valencia were as close to relegation as they were to Real Madrid in second place. If you take away the competition in the league it becomes unexciting and the crowds will walk.
Crowds are low at certain clubs such as Valladolid in their cavernous stadium built for the 82 World Cup and crowds are dropping at places like Malaga despite the fact that almost half of their crowd are made up of English fans.
Barcelona have just failed to make the June payment to their players because of a "cashflow problem".
Spanish clubs in the first division have a combined debt of over 3 billion Euros, not a small amount, and the TV deals La Liga has are precarious in the extreme as one of the two bidders has gone into administration meaning the next deal will not be as succulent for the clubs of course.
The crisis in Spain would get a huge boost if Spain win. GDP gets a boost of on average 0.7% in the year a country wins the World Cup. The ensuing depression of losing the final reduces GDP by 0.3%. Spain needs a boost to its GDP.

What will the season bring for Spain? Dominance of Real Madrid and Barcelona of course, lots of arguments over money, awful referees making unintelligible decisions and hopefully a tour of all the stadia of the World Cup Trophy won this evening against Holland. (Disclaimer: For me I want Spain to win because I live here and it will be great for the country and football in general that a team playing pure football wins. However the real reason I want them to win is that they have more Liverpool and ex Liverpool players in the team. So sorry Dirk and Ryan but "A por ellos".)