Players to Watch in LaLiga This Season
Not a transfer wishlist. The players whose season will tell you something about where Spanish football is going, and the three promoted clubs arriving with something to prove.
Every league produces a watchlist in August and most of them are really transfer speculation with a different headline. This is not that. These are players whose season will actually tell you something, about their club, about the Spain squad being assembled for a home World Cup, or about whether a particular idea in Spanish football still works.
The one everybody is already watching
Lamine YamalTR at BarcelonaTR needs no introduction. The real question this year is what he does once defences stop seeing a young player they can contain and start seeing the source of the problem. He came into the new season off a World Cup that was barren in front of goal, and with the talk being that he has grown and lost some of his old technical sharpness. So is it really the extra height, or is our expectation simply too high because this boy promised us too much too quickly? The other question is whether he can be the player who carries a Barcelona that now wants to win the Champions League. Yamal will answer a lot of questions this season.
The winger who stayed home
Nico WilliamsTR is one of the most interesting profiles in Spain. Two or three years ago it was Barcelona one week and England the next, and he chose to stay at AthleticTR again. A club with a recruitment radius of roughly 250 km holding on to a player of this level into his mid-twenties is close to impossible in the current football economy. That he spent most of last season injured is part of it, of course. Even so, he is a world and European champion. We are hoping to watch a completely different Nico this season.
The profile Spain has been missing
Javi GuerraTR at ValenciaTR is the closest thing Spain has produced in years to a genuine box-to-box eight, a midfielder who progresses the ball and also arrives late in the area. Spain's midfield production has been extraordinary at the positional-play end and thin at this one. He is worth watching for national-team reasons as much as club ones.
If every midfielder on earth disappeared, I would pull one off a five-a-side pitch in Spain and put him in my team.
The academy answer to a financial problem
Marc CasadóTR took Barcelona's single pivot at a moment when the club could not afford to buy one, and the progressive passing volume from deep has stayed high enough that the emergency solution became the plan. What makes him worth watching is Flick's football and how far Barcelona are willing to trust their young players. Let's see what else the two of them hand world football.
Three quieter names
Aimar OrozTR is single-handedly raising the technical ceiling at OsasunaTR, a club that has carried the reputation of not having one for as long as anyone can remember. His set-piece delivery is the other threat, because Osasuna already win the ball in the air. Expect set-piece goals from them this year.
Oihan SancetTR is a number eight on paper, but he gets into the box often enough that the goals he scored in previous seasons were plainly no accident. Let's see what he shows us this year.
And there is Takefusa KuboTR at Real SociedadTR, one of the most technically refined wingers in the league outside the top three clubs. He speaks Basque now, which means there is no adaptation left to make, so this is the year we expect the leap everyone has been waiting for.
The road back to Madrid
Enes Ünal. If he had not got injured about three years ago, he would have been playing for Real MadridTR. After a superb season at GetafeTR he was the strongest name on the list when Real Madrid needed a forward. He got unlucky, picked up the injury, and the club carried on with Joselu instead.
Then he wanted to try his luck in England. He did not do badly at Bournemouth, where he arrived as the alternative to Solanke. Just as he was settling in, another injury. It never quite happened. Now he is back at Getafe, and he has already scored three this season. Some flowers do not grow in some soils. This season we will be watching Enes try to find himself again in the place where he was found the first time.
An Andalusian story
There are two more names we will have our eyes on. The first is Betis' new Irishman, Troy Parrott. BetisTR paid AZ Alkmaar 16 million for him, so the question is whether he fixes their lack of a centre forward who scores. The other question is whether the goals travel: can he get them in LaLiga after the "easy" Dutch league? Coming out of the Netherlands usually agrees with a player here. We will be watching.
The other is from the red half of the city: Peque Fernández at SevillaTR. The La Masia number ten has not made much of an impression in a Sevilla side that has been poor for two years now. This is the season he stops being a prospect: either he shows us who he is, or he disappears among the other mid-table LaLiga players.
The three arrivals
The clubs coming up are on the list too. DeportivoTR are back after a collapse that took them all the way to the third tier, and the crowds never shrank on the way down. Racing SantanderTR arrive as the most open attacking side in the second tier, so expect goals in their games. If you have a dull Sunday, put a Racing match on and watch a few go in. And then MálagaTR. Of the promoted clubs the Andalusians look the thinnest on paper, with a squad made up mostly of players who came through the academy.
None of the three can buy their way to staying up by assembling a squad. How they manage it is the biggest question at the bottom of the table.
More profiles: Player Profiles.
