Sometimes being the best isn’t good enough and this time being second best might not be either. Being third definitely isn’t. A week ago, no one knew if La Liga would start on Friday and a few days ago no one was sure it would start at all, but then it wouldn’t be the start of the season if there wasn’t a risk that it wouldn’t be the start of the season. On Friday, it begins in Bilbao with Barcelona at Athletic. The war of attrition between the Federation and the league drags on – the latest has the RFEF accused of stealing a couple of tables and some wires – but at least the football’s back, and better than before.

That’s their hope, anyway – and over a billion euros have been spent trying to make it so. The transfer window doesn’t close until 2 September, and there could be more – there’s this Brazilian bloke in Paris, for a start – but that’s already a record. In June, Julen Lopetegui, the man who’s now held three of the country’s five biggest jobs in a year, suggested this might be the busiest summer ever, and he was right. Sevilla, his new club, have signed 15 players. The returning sporting director, Monchi, admitted he hasn’t slept much; “risky”, he called it, but it is necessary too.

It is also just the start. 4km away, Betis have finally broken the record set 21 years ago when they made Denílson the world’s most expensive footballer. A year back, Borja ‘The Panda’ Iglesias had never played in primera. Now, with Betis having finally reached a deal with Espanyol, he’s merely the latest player to move, for €28m, although Rodrigo should follow when he joins Atlético from Valencia for €60m – potentially provoking another storm brewing at Mestalla where the manager and the CEO were already on the verge of walking. The Valencia-Valencia, Singapore-Valencia divide grows at a club that has been relatively quiet in the market, but did sign Maxi Gómez from Celta for €14.5m, €1.5m in bonuses, Santi Mina, and two years of Jorge Gómez. When, that is, they finally managed to find the incommunicado Uruguayan: he’d truly gone fishing.

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La Liga have left it very late to do a live rights deal with ITV, but La Liga’s teams have done hundreds this summer. Some players have gone: Wissam Ben Yedder, like Pablo Sarabia, has just left Sevilla for France; Rodri is at Manchester City. But Iñaki Williams just signed a new, nine-year deal at Athletic, suitors seen off. And a busy summer has brought more signings than ever, including Kieran Trippier, who came face to face with a sadist and momentarily gave the primera a British trio, with Wales’s Gareth Bale and Scotland’s Jack Harper – until Getafe’s new signing was loaned to Alcorcón.

The immense majority of the outlay, up beyond €1.3bn now, was of course at the top of a league where, despite improvements, the imbalance remains huge. But if Barcelona, Atlético and Real Madrid have spent more than anyone else in Spain, accounting for three-quarters of the money in this market, what makes it different this time is that they’ve also spent more than anyone else, anywhere else. Juventus, City, United, Arsenal ... all of them trail behind.

There’s a pretty simple reason they spent so much: they had to. Or thought they did. What happened last year will not be good enough this time. Even for Barcelona in first, so imagine what it’s like for Madrid.

Real Madrid were 19 points off the top last year; they’d been 17 off the year before. They’ve finished third two years in a row: they hadn’t been outside the top two in consecutive seasons for 45 years. The European Cup helps, of course, but they can’t allow that again. “There will be changes,” Zinedine Zidane said. He’d returned early; in part the price to pay for authority, a club commitment to sign the players he wanted. It was a political masterstroke, the fire put out, but then came the football, which has a habit of getting in the way. Reality. And not all of those promises were easy to fulfil.

Eden Hazard was in quickly, but that feels like a long time ago now. Which is partly because it was – two months have passed – and partly because not enough players have followed him. Instead, pessimism has. Zidane is increasingly uncomfortable, glimpses of tension, a power struggle occasionally emerging. He has stopped doing press conferences. Madrid have spent almost €300m. Ferland Mendy, Éder Militão and Luka Jovic have all arrived but money isn’t limitless, despite appearances on both sides of Spain’s divide, and Paul Pogba hasn’t.

Meanwhile, Gareth Bale – ¡hola, míster! – is still there, Madrid backing out of their agreement to let him go to China. So is James Rodríguez, back from Munich. And Sergio Ramos, whose move to China was blocked at the start of the summer, providing a little pantomime and a comic litany of lies, exposed with almost every utterance. Zidane didn’t want Ramos to go, but he didn’t want James or Bale to stay.

Quick guide Last-minute deal puts La Liga on terrestrial TV Show Hide La Liga has agreed a broadcasting deal with ITV for games to be shown live this season. The campaign begins tonight and the curtain raiser between Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona will be shown on terrestrial television on ITV4 and the ITV Hub from 8pm. Barcelona’s home match against Real Betis on 25 August has been chosen as the game for the second week while on 1 September 1, Real Madrid’s trip to Villarreal is featured.



“It’s clear what I have done,” he said about the Welshman having left him out repeatedly late last season, and it got even clearer: he wanted Bale out, “the sooner the better”. The hostility became genuinely startling, but there was no solution. Now they must live together. James too, by the looks of it – his preference was Atlético and Madrid wouldn’t countenance that. Although Zidane does rightly remind everyone that anything can happen between now and the end of the month.

He needs something to happen. If pre-season is a time for building a team, an identity – and for messing about playing lucrative friendlies in pseudo-competitions a very long way away – Madrid still don’t know who they are. One paper here did a summer league table and Madrid were bottom. Newly promoted Granada, by the way, were top. Madrid have let in 18 goals, tried three at the back and looked ... well, not very good. Their flaws look familiar. It’s only preseason – “we treated it as a friendly, they didn’t,” Ramos insisted after one game – but Zidane didn’t sign up for this and nor did they; this wasn’t the plan, if there is one.

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In one game, they were 5-0 down at half time. By full time, they had been beaten 7-3. By Atlético Madrid. And that’s the thing: for now, the most exciting thing this summer. Not least because no one really expected this. Antoine Griezmann left for Barcelona, a deal a year in the making. Juanfran, Diego Godín, Lucas Hernández, Felipe Luis and Rodri departed too. Six of the typical starting XI had gone, so Atlético signed. João Félix arrived for €126m, more than double their all-time record signing, and they didn’t stop there.

They’ve signed seven players: Joao Felix, Mario Hermoso, Lodi, Marcos Llorente, Felipe, Héctor Herrera, Trippier. Valencia’s Rodrigo is likely to join them. It has cost €256m – and they’re still in credit by €31m. When people ask who won the transfer window – apart from Jorge Mendes, of course – the answer is almost unanimous: Atlético did.

The pessimism of those departures, the soul of the team ripped out, has gone. In its place is euphoria; they try to fight it but they can’t help being excited. Six left, mostly celebrated amid sadness, the inevitable passage of time. The year before, Torres and Gabi had gone, and it wasn’t just the names or the numbers; it was identity, everything they are. They were Atlético, and Atlético was over. Only maybe it wasn’t. Saúl stayed, Koke stayed, Costa stayed, Oblak stayed. And then something happened.

João Félix came. He is 19, he is not like the others and if he was to fit, if they all were, something would have to change. This would have to be a new Atlético, a team with a new identity, a different approach. That was a concern, of course, but the surprise is that it might be just that. And get this – it might even work.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Luis Suárez celebrates with Antoine Griezmann after scoring a goal in the La Liga-Serie A Cup match between Barcelona and Napoli. Photograph: Allan Dranberg/CSM/Rex Shutterstock

“The manager wants us to be more attacking, have a little more of the ball, look towards the opposition’s goal a little more,” Koke said. There have been suggestions before that they would evolve, but they have tended to get back to what they know, their essence eternal, Diego Simeone wedded to an idea, and so it was natural to be sceptical this time. But the early signs are they really could change: now they might actually be different, and good at it. It turns out that Joao Félix really is good.

It’s only pre-season, remember. It’s early. Everyone thinks this is their year until it’s not. Atletico are still only 12-1 to win the league. And they are, or were, the club that has had more false dawns than Truman Burbank. And yet they can’t help it, and who would begrudge them that? Perhaps it even makes sense to demand more now? There was satisfaction in Simeone’s voice last season when he noted the “respect” implicit in Barcelona recognising them as their “nearest competitors”. But that might change now: settling for second, seeing it as an achievement – which it is, especially two years in a row – might not wash with this team. They finished 11 points behind last year, 14 the year before. This year, in the very summer you wondered if it might be over, second alone could be insufficient. Time to really compete.

Thing is, it’s still Barcelona above them. Still Leo Messi, so far above everyone else it’s silly at times. The team for whom the double was insufficient in 2017-18, and just the league in 2018-19 was even worse, defeats against Liverpool in the Champions League semi-final and Valencia in the Copa del Rey final, like Roma the year before, doing serious damage. Ernesto Valverde, their manager, survived. Just. And few were happy about it. Which might sound odd for a coach whose team over the last two seasons have finished a combined 25 points above Atlético, 36 over Madrid. But, then, so what?

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Being the best – by a long, long, long way – is not enough. Which is not why they’re still pursuing Neymar: that’s a story for another day. But it is why they just signed Atletico’s best player, why they signed Frenkie de Jong, and why the best era in their history risks being overlooked, victims of their own success. Here, at least. In Europe, it’s four years now since they won. That trophy, the one Messi described as “lovely and desired” at the beginning of last season, his words taken as a promise, will define them. Whether that’s fair is another question.

A few days ago, Messi took the mic at the centre of the Camp Nou pitch again, a year on. It could have been a political rally; no one had ever heard him like this. “It’s hard to say anything after last season, but I don’t regret anything” he said, “it ended being a bit bitter but we have to appreciate the league we won.” He paused and then said, almost shouting, verbally jabbing his finger, a point to make: “the eighth in 11 years. For any club that would be huge, for us it is very important too. Maybe one day in a few years we’ll look back and realise how difficult it was.”

Maybe one day, they will. For now though, starting on Friday at San Mamés, they must do it again – and more.