Spain La Liga predictions and odds

It’s not too much of a stretch to call La Liga the best national football league on the planet. Unsurprisingly, this means that La Liga betting is quite a big deal as well. With that in mind, Betting Fellow made this comprehensive look at the ins and outs of betting on the very peak of football.

Below, you’ll find regular updates for La Liga betting predictions, as provided by our team of experts. However, the main goal of this page is to be a comprehensive guide to betting on La Liga matches. Each bit of information can make the difference between winning and losing a wager – so let’s get all the information we can.

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La Liga History and General Information

To call La Liga a powerhouse in the world of football would be an understatement. Based on their system of coefficients, UEFA has ranked La Liga as the world’s number one league seven years in a row. In the grander scheme of things, Spain’s league has been top of those rankings 22 times out of the total 60 – far more than the other “Big 5” leagues of European football.

Moreover, the clubs that play in La Liga have seen more success than any other league’s clubs. Its clubs have been named the continent’s top clubs 22 times in total, won the Champions League 18 times, the Europa League 11 times, and so on. In truth, the list of La Liga’s achievements would be too long to go through in one simple text.

So, how did all this come to be? The story of La Liga being in 1928. Football was already in Spain before that on a professional level, but it lacked a unified national league and relied on elimination tournaments and similar competitions. 10 clubs initially founded the Primera División, 3 of which have never been relegated from it - Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao.

On a side note, La Liga’s full name is actually Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División. What we usually call La Liga is just the first division of the Spanish national league and its highest.

Over the following 50 years, the clubs that we today immediately associate with La Liga emerged into prominence. At first, those were Athletic Bilbao, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia. Real Madrid would come to dominate the league in the 50s, firmly establishing themselves as one of the world’s greatest football clubs. A few decades down the line, Barcelona’s acclaimed Dream Team would change the game forever.

Under legendary coach Johan Cruyff, Barcelona would go on to win 11 titles in 8 years. His approach to high-pressure, high-possession football tactics can be seen to this day. As most experts will tell you, professional football nowadays is all about Cruyff’s ‘Total Football’. This is just one example of how La Liga changed how football is played across the globe.

Following the turn of the century, these two clubs were essentially synonymous with both La Liga and world-class football. You’ll typically find them in one of the top 3 spots of pretty much any season since 2000, with one of them as the winner. Notably, Atletico Madrid also emerged as a dominant force after 2010, and you’ll usually find them in one of the leading positions as well.

Format

As per the typical UEFA template, La Liga takes the form of a double round-robin. It consists of 20 of Spains top football teams which play against one another twice – once home and once away. A typical season lasts from August to May the following year, during which each team plays a total of 38 matches.

As usual, teams receive 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss. They are thank ranked based on the total number of points won. The team with the most points is crowned champion, while the bottom 3 teams are relegated to the Segunda Division – the second tier of Spanish football. The two top-ranked teams from the Segunda Division are promoted to La Liga, while the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth team play a series of playoffs for the third open spot.

In the case of a tie in points, teams are ranked based o their head-to-head statistics – which is an interesting divergence from the typical league format.

Being the highest ranked league in Europe, the top 4 teams from La Liga qualify for the subsequent Champions League group stage. The 5th team goes to the Europa League, along with the Copa del Rey winners.

La Liga Derby Matches

El Clásico

The Classic is not just a blueprint for the meaning of football derby – it’s what all other derbies wish they were. The clash between La Liga’s top clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid is one of the most viewed sporting events every year. To make things even more interesting, the rivalry’s background is a centuries-old political and social opposition between Madrid and Barcelona – Spain and Catalonia. A staple of world sports, it doesn’t get much more exciting than El Clásico.

Atlético-Barçelona

Sometimes referred to as El OtroClásico, or the ‘other classic’, this showdown can be just as exciting as its namesake. Although this derby is forever doomed to play second fiddle to its bigger brother, the underlying rivalry hits all the same notes and produces some exhilarating games.

The Madrid Derby

This just leaves the clash between the remaining two Top 3 clubs – Real and Atlético. Despite Atleti’s rise to prominence, the showdown remains quite lopsided. Nevertheless, it’s a fairly heated local rivalry between the Spanish capital’s best teams. It is also overshadowed by the Classic, which doesn’t mean it’s not one of the world’s premier city derbies.

La Liga Best Stadiums

Camp Nou

Being the world’s fourth-largest sports stadium, Barcelona’s home field is quite a sight to behold. Its capacity is a whopping 99,354, with an even more impressive record attendance of 120,000. It’s the biggest stadium in the country and is world-famous for hosting multiple Europa League and Champions League finals.

Santiago Bernabéu Stadium

As you may have guessed, the title of the second-biggest stadium is Real Madrid’s home turf. It can house just over 80,000 spectators, marking it as one of the top spots in Europe. It’s also a popular tourist attraction because of its long and storied history which includes four Champions League finals. It was the first stadium in Europe to host both a UEFA Euro final and a FIFA World Cup final.