Real Madrid Lift La Liga Trophy & Bid Beckham Adios

Real Madrid’s 3–1 win tonight against Real Mal­lorca was a fairy tale end­ing to David Beckham’s career for the Span­ish giants tonight. In what must be described as a sim­ply spec­tac­u­lar match, Real yet again came back from one goal behind to sneak the win. They’ve been doing it all sea­son, but this night meant more than any other.

While Beck­ham played his part in the match for the first 60 min­utes, it was the player who was sub­sti­tuted for him that took the glory and head­lines: Jose Anto­nio Reyes, the Arse­nal player, scored two bril­liant goals to ignite the San­ti­ago Bern­abeu Sta­dium and to bring the La Liga tro­phy back home to the team in white.

At times, the pas­sion seemed a bit too much for GolTV co-commentator Ray Hud­son who was run­ning out of his gems. Hud­son poured just as much energy into this match as I’ve ever heard a com­men­ta­tor do (well, espe­cially an Eng­lish one). His pas­sion was exces­sive a cou­ple of times tonight (that was the first time I’ve heard a com­men­ta­tor talk­ing about knick­ers in a foot­ball match), but it was excel­lent enter­tain­ment and Hud­son was the per­fect man for the per­fect occa­sion along­side the on-form Phil Schoen who was the rock that stead­ied the boat.

It was yet another bril­liant adver­tise­ment for Spain’s Primera Liga. A bat­tle that went lit­er­ally down to the wire with Barcelona knock­ing on the door after their 5–1 win against Gim­nas­tic. It wasn’t to be Frank Rijkaard’s night, or sea­son, and undoubt­edly the exit door beck­ons for the Dutch­man as Barcelona plans on over­haul­ing its squad this summer.

Spare a thought, too, for the three clubs rel­e­gated from La Liga: Celta, Real Sociedad and Nas­tic. Real Sociedad, only a few sea­sons ago, fin­ished in sec­ond place in La Liga and made the last 16 of the Cham­pi­ons League.

What the sea­son proves, espe­cially the finale, is that it is undoubt­edly far supe­rior than the Pre­mier League in terms of com­pet­i­tive­ness and more impor­tantly tal­ent on the pitch. Whether that remains the same next sea­son will depend greatly on the trans­fer mar­ket this sum­mer and whether the stars move to Spain or Eng­land. Until then, con­grat­u­la­tions Real Madrid.

For pho­tographs and mul­ti­me­dia of Real Madrid’s suc­cess­ful sea­son, be sure to check out the fol­low­ing page from Marca: http://www.marca.com/futbol/2007/campeon/resumen.html