Primera Division. In one sentence: yet another season Barcelona lost the title. But Athletic Bilbao was coming back. At the bottom – the expected.
Castellon was the pathetic outsider – 12 points. They won only 3 matches.
Hercules was 17th with 47 points. If anything, that was the year the great Polish goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski not only went down to second division, but dropped out of public mind. Not his fault really – he was aging and no longer leading player. Inevitable.
Three teams fought desperately to avoid the last relegation spot – all ended with 29 points and goal-difference was the decisive factor.
Cadiz was the unfortunate one – 16th.
Las Palmas, very weak by now, was lucky this season, taking the 15th place.
Sporting Gijon, obviously at the end of their strong spell, plunged dangerously down – they escaped relegation and finished 14th, thanks to better goal-difference.
Espanol, not a leading club for a long time, was 13th with 32 points. Just for a future observation: the Belgian international goalkeeper Custers was between the goalposts – soon he will be replaced by another foreigner. Espanol did not have a Spanish keeper to the end of the 1980s.
Racing Santander was 12th, besting Espanol only on goal-difference. Nice reserve kit and nothing else.
Real Zaragoza lost its shine long time ago – 11th with 34 points was their ‘normal’ for many years. The up and coming Dutch coach Leo Benhakker was unable to push them up. Nor the future world champion, the Argentine striker Jorge Valdano.
Osasuna – 10th. Goal-difference placed them above Zaragoza, but bellow Valladolid.
Real Valladolid – 9th. Not a bad season for them. Standing from left: Santos, Gail, Moré, Richard, Gilberto, Fenoy.
First row: Pepin, Sánchez Valles, Jorge, Joaquín, Rusky.
Atletico Madrid – 8th with 34 points. If their goal-difference was worse, they could have been 11th. A mid-table team at the moment and their record shows it: they won 15 games and lost also 15. Perhaps the foreign players explain the situation: Dirceu was already aging and beyond his peak; Hugo Sanchez was ascending, but not at his peak yet – one going up, the other going down. No balance.
Sevilla – 7th with 35 points. Nothing new… mid-table team they were for a long time already.
Real Betis – 6th with 36 points. The most unpredictable Spanish team – could be high one year and down to relegation in the next. This season they were strong.
Valencia was also strange – although winning the Cup Winners Cup not long ago, they were unable to build a great team and the efforts continued without finding the right mix. Mario Kempes was already out, replaced by the Austrian Welzl and Danish Arnesen, but they were not quite the players to lead Valencia to new success – and soon Kempes was called back.
Athletic Bilbao was 4th with 40 points – nothing special, for they were usually among the top teams, but not strong enough to compete for the title. Perhaps only in Spain was noticed that they were polishing a new strong team. Not ready yet for anything serious, but with big potential.
Standing from left: Sabido, Agustin, Garcia Navajas, San Jose, Garcia Cortes, Jose Antonio Camacho.
Bottom, left to right: Juanito, Carlos Santillana, Garcia Hernandez, Angel , Ito.
In the title race, but 3rd at the end with 44 points. A shaky season and the this squad shows it: of course, some starters are not present – Stielike, obviously. Time for generational change – those, who defined the 1970s, aged and going out one by one. But the new stars were not present yet and the team needed adjustments and finding the right chemistry. Real Madrid cannot go really down the table – their worst usually is a finish bellow silver medals. Shaky, unbalanced, that was all – not really in trouble.
Seemingly, Udo Lattek brought some success at last – but not domestically. Barcelona, like Real Madrid, considers everything bellow 1st place a disaster. They fininshed 2 points short of title. Some solutions were already found – especially a solid goalkeeper – but the team was somewhat unfinished. Unfortunately, the ghost of 1975 was rising as well: back then Cruijff and Weissweiler clashed and the coach lost. Now it was Schuster vs Lattek. No matter who was right and who was wrong – such conflicts and battles of wills usually are at the expense of the team’s performance. A title was lost… and fans were counting years: soon will be 10 years since Barca won the championship for the last time.
A year ago, Real Sociedad surprised everybody by winning the Spanish championship for the first time. Exciting, but they looked like one-time wonder – especially after the club did not buy new strong players and not even a single foreigner. True, the team was good, but it had not enough dept. Take away one regular… and the collapse was more than possible. But nobody left the team and got heavily injured – and Real Sociedad run strong again. They were not overwhelming, but persistent. Small deficiencies of Real Madrid and Barcelona surely helped, but whatever weaknesses others had was not a fault of Real Sociedad – at the end they won 20 matches and Barcelona – 19. Two points were the difference between champions and second-best. Small difference, but in Real’s favour.
Second title. Two titles in two years – just great! Few teams, even big ones, could do that – certainly not one-time wonders. And it was also against the grain: Real Sociedad proved that it was possible to win without foreign stars.
One more look at the champions – this time dressed in their reserve kit. If there was something to worry about, it was the policy: Real Sociedad surely was going to lose some of their stars. Not buying classy players was very dangerous for them – and they were still not buying. Jose Mari Bakero was eventually lost – without proper replacement. Case in point. But let not worry about the future – two consecutive titles! This is the best team in the history of Real Sociedad. Legends.