As the curtain falls on another campaign, there’s a familiar look at the top of the table, with the El Clasico duo finishing first and second.
Real Madrid won the La Liga title by a ten-point margin, with Barcelona rarely threatening, while Atletico Madrid put in a good second half of the season to finish fourth. The surprise package was Michel’s Girona, who gate-crashed the Primera Division elite and ended up in third.
Carlo Ancelotti’s champions are a collection of talents, but when you look at the player stats, there are very few at the top of the charts. In fact, in terms of goals scored, assisted or clean sheets, only one player, Jude Bellingham, has made the SBOTOP list of the 11 best performers.
Dovbyk snatches the Pichichi
Girona confounded the La Liga 2024 betting odds and surprised pretty much everybody with their superb campaign, and for much of the season, they were sitting in the top two.
They also had the league’s top scorer. Ukranian striker Artem Dovbyk won the Pichichi in dramatic fashion after scoring a hat-trick in Girona’s 7-0 destruction of relegated Granada. That took him to 24 goals, one ahead of Villarreal’s Alexander Sorloth, who started and ended the weekend on 23.
Dovbyk won the award thanks to an 89th-minute penalty, and that rounded off a spectacular campaign for the 26-year-old. His signing from Dnipro for a modest fee of 7.7 million euros has turned out to be one of the deals of the campaign, and if anyone wants to buy him now, they’ll have to multiply the fee by at least four!
In any case, with Champions League football to look forward to, Dovbyk may prefer to stay where he is already loved.
Sorloth looked like he had stolen the Pichichi last week when he scored all four goals within 20 minutes as the Yellow Submarine drew 4-4 at home to Real Madrid. He had his chance to overtake Dovbyk when Villarreal visited Osasuna on Saturday, but Sorloth felt a muscle strain early in the game and was substituted on 14 minutes.
Real Madrid were far and away the best team in La Liga, and certainly in the first half of the season, they were galvanised by the incredible form of England star Jude Bellingham, who raced to double figures in record time and ended up on 19 goals.
Meanwhile, over in Catalonia, Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowksi maybe didn’t have the season or outcome he’d hoped for, but he still made plenty of La Liga 2024 highlights for the Blaugrana, scoring 19 goals, including a final-day strike in a 2-1 win over Sevilla, and making eight assists.
Brilliant Baena makes the most goals
King of the assists was Villarreal’s Alex Baena, who teed up 14 goals for the Yellow Submarine, and he had a big hand in Sorloth’s superb campaign. At 22 years of age, the left winger looks like a real talent, and he has already made two appearances for Spain. and he looks like a shoe-in for La Roja’s squad for Germany.
The next in line for assists is another young Spain star, as Athletic Bilbao’s highly rated 21-year-old Nico Williams racked up an impressive 11.
And then there’s another youngster in joint third place, as Girona’s 20-year-old Brazilian Savio played a big part in Dovbyk’s success by providing ten assists. But he was matched by Celta Vigo talisman Iago Aspas, who proved he can still do it at the grand old age of 36.
Spain’s stopper is simply the best
La Roja number one, Unai Simon, picked up the Golden Glove with 17 shutouts for fifth-placed Athletic Bilbao, and he put himself in a great position to continue as the last line of defence for Spain at Euro 2024.
Still only 26, Simon is young for a goalkeeper and surely has a glittering career ahead of him, though whether that is in Bilbao remains to be seen. His lightning reflexes enable him to pull off show-stopping saves, but it is his all-round game and maturity that make Simon the gold standard of keepers.
Simon’s Basque rival Alex Remiro picked up 15 clean sheets for Real Sociedad, and he may well make the Spain squad too, while Marc Andre Ter Stegen also had 15 clean sheets for Barcelona. The 32-year-old has made 40 appearances for Germany, but his caps have been limited by the presence of Germany legend Manuel Neuer, who is now 38.
Barcelona have had to settle for second place in La Liga, and Ter Stegen may need to be patient at Euro 2024, but whenever he gets his chance, the Barca stopper will take it with both hands.
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