Spanish La Liga Facts
- FIFA World Player of the Year Awards have gone to a number of La Liga players including Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Romario, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Fabio Cannavaro
- The La Liga, also known as the The Primera Division of the Liga de Futbol Profesional in Spain, is rated one of the strongest domestic leagues in the world, together with England’s Premier League and Italy’s Serie A
- Real Madrid holds a number of league records including the most consecutive wins in a season, with 15 (1960-61); the most goals in a season with 107 from 38 matches in 1989-90; the most league titles and the most consecutive title wins, five, on two occasions – 1960-61 to 1964-65 and 1985-86 to 1989-90.
- The same team, Real Madrid, won the most points ever in a season – 52, translating to 86.67% of points – in 1960-61
- Former Manchester United player and England captain, David Beckham, won the La Liga title with Real Madrid before his transfer to the American-based club, Los Angeles Galaxy.
- Athletic Bilbao holds the record for the fewest defeats in a season – 0 in 30 matches (1929-30)
- Real Madrid and FC Barcelona share the honours for the most wins in a season, with 28. Real Madrid clocked up the wins in only 38 matches in 1987-88, whilst it took FC Barcelona 42 matches to equal the record in the 1996-97 season
- Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, banned the use of non-Spanish names in 1941 and the consequences for football was the dropping of FC, ‘Football Club’ after Barcelona and Sevilla, replacing the letters with CF instead; the revision of Athletic Bilbao and Athletic Aviacion to ‘Atletico’ and ‘Sporting’ de Gijon and ‘Racing’ de Santander became Real Gijon and Real Santander instead!
- Only four players, not of Spanish decent, have made it onto the list of top goal scorers in the league - Ferenc Puskas of Hungary( 155), Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon (162), Alfredo di Stefano of Argentina (227) and Hugo Sanchez of Mexico (234)