[Podolski]

Originally Posted by lionel

I'm quite sure real madrid spent more than the other teams...
but it was the case last season, the one before, the one before, and probably always...

why they won the league?
very hard question.

- very good defence except of the first quarter-season, but casillas was there to cover anyways. by far the best defence&goalie in la liga. italian defence.

- attacking players that could convert from every piece of chance. it would be interesting to check how many chances real madrid missed this season! my guess would be that they missed fewer than any other above mid-table team... this is very very important in spain as most other teams in la liga are used to scorin one out of 5 good chances...

- schuster... most of his line-ups were accurate, plus the substitutions that many of them were match winners.

- the winning spirit from last season. the players always believed they are going to win even in the difficult situations.

* but the direct reason, that is obvious to everyone (bar the real madrid fans I guess)... "no one wanted the title". there is no accurate way to explain or prove this, its just the intuition.
the other contenders for the title (barcelona, valencia, sevilla and atletico madrid) had so many problems throughout the season that it was impossible to think of the title race. barcelona faced a big crisis with the big stars behaving un-professionally, thus causing the squad not to be united. valencia made wrong decisions when sacking flores and hiring koeman. sevilla were affected by the death of puerta in the beginning of the season and then ramos leaving them left them unsettled. and atletico madrid suffered from unbeleivably weak performances of their defence in 90% of the matches.
Villareal were not planning to be in the title race at all and it was appearant.

There was no competition this season in spain so looking at the league results can't indicate how good a team real madrid are. (hint: Champions League)

no one else wanted the title.. bullshit. the aim of most football clubs is to win titles, not our problem if barcelona doesn't want to..
did you know real madrid also set the points record this season? we had a great season and lost the least number of games out of anyone, the fact we won the title about 3 matchdays ahead shows our superiority. beating barcelona 6-1 on aggregate, beating athletico 4-1 on aggregate (i think), and villarreal 7-2 on aggregate (i think) shows we were just simply better than all the rest by a fair amount.

barcelona faced a big crisis because of star players behaving unproffessionally..
get better management to deal with them. atletico madrid suffered from unbeleivably weak performances of their defence in 90% of the matches.. haha.. you are considering this a reason for real madrids title win?

and i'm 100% sure we could have gotten as far as you in the CL if we were drawn against schalke and celtic.