When the 6th round of Spain's La Liga comes to an end, you leader will be: Valencia! You heard right, the leader of La Liga BBVA is not Barcelona or Real Madrid. Given Valencia's early success and the strong start of Atlético Madrid in all competitions; can someone other than FCB or Real win La Liga?
The anser is Yes. Other teams can and have won the Spanish Liga Profesional de Futbol in the last 15 years. Atlético Madrid, Deportivo de La Coruña, and Valencia CF have all lifted the cup that most commonly finds its way to Barcelona and Madrid's halls.
Atlético Madrid shocked the experts winning La Liga in the 1995-1996 season. Coached by Radomir Antić, Atlético had recently cleaned house after narrowly missing descent to the second division the previous season. Led by hard man Diego Simeone and tall striker Kiko, the colchoneros played impressive counter-attacking football to take the title with an impressive 87 points.
La Liga fell under the sway of Real Madrid and Barcelona for the next three years in a very parity-heavy environment marked by low point totals for the Van Gaal's winning teams.
Deportivo de La Coruña, broke the 2-team dominance in 2000. The men in the blue-and-white stripes were led by Roy Makaay, dropped a 5-2 on Real Madrid in El Riazor (Depor's home stadium) and won la liga with 69 points.
Valencia CF got in on the action two years later. With an extremely talented team set up by Héctor Cúper, Valencia had players like Gerrard, Mendieta and Claudio Lopez. These players had taken the squad to the final of the Champion's League in 2000 and 2001 (losing to Madrid and Bayern Munich respectively) and regularly destroyed the dream's of Barcelona under Louis Van Gaal.
Rafa Benítez made the most of his club's talent and took Valencia to the league title in 2001-02 and 2003-2004.
After Valencia's run dominance returned to Barcelona thanks to the spectacular play of Ronaldinho.
So can Valencia, Atletico or another Spanish wild card in the league this year? No. Barcelona and Real Madrid are too talented and they have the two best soccer coaches in the world today. Valencia had to sell stars Villa and Silva before the season started, Atletico regularly falter under pressure, Sevilla has gotten off to a poor start under recently fired Antonio Alvarez and the rest of la Liga teams don't have the depth to handle the 38-game marathon.
Look for Barcelona or Real Madrid to earn the title in 2010-11.
Until then, here's a look at the last non-hegemon champion.
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