Barcelona: La Liga's quality questioned by fans after Ousmane Dembele goal | OneFootball

Is La Liga declining?

That’s the question that a lot of football fans are asking right now with Spain’s top-flight not necessarily attracting the same level of interest that it did when Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo called it home.

The heady days of Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho at each other’s throat as El Clasico seemed to play out every other week feel like a distant memory now as people start to wonder whether or not La Liga is on the slide.

Is La Liga on the decline?

It’s a particularly pertinent topic when you consider that just a single Spanish club remains in the Champions League this season in the form of holders Real Madrid.

Barcelona and Sevilla both dropped down to the Europa League, while Atletico Madrid were flat-out eliminated in what the cynics would say is a sign of the times in Spain.

Are Carlo Ancelotti’s men, therefore, the only hope of La Liga clubs improving their record of having won six of the last nine Champions League finals over the coming years?

Because although there’s no denying that a Real side boasting the likes of Karim Benzema and Vinicius Junior remains thoroughly world-class, is the source of the supposed rot in La Liga the fact that nobody else can hold a candle to them?

What about Barcelona?

Well, Barcelona might have something to say about that considering they have, to their credit, gone toe-to-toe with Real in the title race so far this season despite their rather embarrassing exit from the Champions League.

And they actually leap-frogged their rivals from the capital in La Liga on Saturday, albeit with a game in hand, courtesy of their 2-0 win over Almeria at Camp Nou.

However, in a match that will best be remembered for marking Gerard Pique’s emotional retirement, the nature of Ousmane Dembele’s opening goal seemed to bring the question of La Liga’s quality to the forefront of fans’ minds once again.

Viral tweet makes point about Dembele’s goal

That’s because a viral post by Twitter user @idoxzi, which has hitherto amassed more than 2,300 retweets and 10,200 ‘likes’, dramatically proclaimed: “THIS LEAGUE IS SO HORRIBLY WASHED.”

In other words, La Liga isn’t what it used to be.

The post shared footage of Dembele opening the scoring for Barca with the point being that the frailties of Almeria’s defence were symptomatic of the theory that La Liga is moving backwards.

Hundreds of supporters piled in on the argument by concurring that what looked like fairly stand-offish defending from Srđan Babić, Samuel Costa and Rodrigo Ely summed up the overall standard of the competition.

Not everybody agrees with the sentiment and your humble GIVEMESPORT has their own reservations, too, but the noise being whipped up around the video and argument was just too loud to ignore – check it out below:

Video: Does Dembele’s goal show La Liga is declining?

What do you make of it all?

A harsh video, but a legitimate point

The elephant in the room is, after all, that the Twitter account in question is that of a Real Madrid fan, so there is inevitably going to be some bias against what could well be received as a superb solo goal from Dembele.

However, while it goes without saying that one clip of admittedly imperfect Almeria defending cannot serve as an indictment of La Liga unto himself, the broader point here is that the general argument isn’t entirely illegitimate.

La Liga is a top, top league full of incredible players and with a rich history to boot, let’s get that straight out of the way, but is there a very real conversation to be had about its trajectory? Yes, yes there is.

Is it, for example, time that the general narrative stopped pitching the case that La Liga and the Premier League are the top two men’s divisions in Europe beyond reproach?

Besides, it’s no coincidence that a lot of the replies to the tweet are bemoaning the fact that ‘farmer’s league’ accusations would have been raining in had Dembele scored that goal in Ligue 1 or the Bundesliga.

Make of that what you will, but although the Real fan’s point about Dembele’s goal might be a little heavy-handed in its specificity, it certainly hit a nerve in what is a very real footballing conversation right now.