All you need to know for LaLiga 2024-25: Madrid, Mbappe, more

It’s back! The Premier League isn’t the only major European league kicking off its 2024-25 campaign this weekend, as Spain‘s LaLiga also joins the fray.

It has been a huge summer for the Spanish top flight, too, with Kylian Mbappé finally making his move to Real Madrid, Barcelona undergoing profound changes in a bid to keep up, and plenty of splashy signings at Atletico Madrid as they also look to close the gap and contend again.

With storylines galore up and down the table, ESPN’s LaLiga reporters break down the big talking points heading into the new campaign.

Real Madrid won the league by 10 points last season. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, they did it without their first-choice goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, without the player then viewed as their best defender, Éder Militão — both absent for most of the campaign with ACL tears — and without the elite No. 9 that most observers felt their squad was lacking.

Since that coronation, they’ve added the world’s deadliest forward, Kylian Mbappé, who signed on as a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain. A core group of maturing players — Eduardo Camavinga, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Federico Valverde and Vinícius Júnior — are improving year by year. Madrid have the most-hyped young player in European football, Arda Güler, who starred for Turkey at Euro 2024. And they now have Brazil 18-year-old wonderkid Endrick, a tantalizing, unknown quantity.

That’s without even mentioning midfielder Jude Bellingham, Madrid’s star player last season, rested and ready to go again after an above-all-expectations debut campaign, or Antonio Rüdiger, who stepped up in Militao’s absence to become the best defender in LaLiga.

Put all that together, and Madrid shouldn’t just win the league in 2024-25; they should walk it. Anything else would be a failure.

However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges. Replacing Toni Kroos‘ metronomic passing and calming midfield presence is near-impossible. Departing club captain Nacho Fernandez‘s quiet leadership will be missed, as will Joselu‘s goals off the bench. Luka Modric is a year older, and his influence will diminish. But it’s hard to look at Mbappé’s arrival, above all, and not think that this Madrid team will be even better than the one that beat all comers in Spain and Europe last season. — Alex Kirkland

2. Can Barça, Flick rise to the challenge?

There is a change in the dugout for last season’s runners-up, with former Bayern Munich and Germany coach Hansi Flick replacing Xavi Hernández at Barcelona. Flick pledged his allegiance to the style deployed by past Barça managers Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola at his presentation in July, but we can expect changes to the way the Catalan side play.

A 4-2-3-1 formation has been favoured in preseason — a slight variation on the club’s “classic” 4-3-3 — and Flick has spoken about the need to improve the team’s intensity without the ball. There have been the usual platitudes about making this Barça side fitter — president Joan Laporta insisted on shaking up the fitness, strength and conditioning coaches this summer — but the job Flick has inherited is far from easy. Monday’s 3-0 Joan Gamper Trophy defeat to AS Monaco showed the scale of his task ahead.

Barça have won just one LaLiga title in the past five years, and there are already issues before the season begins. Ronald Araújo, Pedri, Gavi and Frenkie de Jong all begin the campaign injured as a tough run of fixtures awaits. A trip to Valencia is an awkward first fixture, with Athletic Club the visitors to the Olympic Stadium a week later. Away games at Villarreal and Girona follow inside the first six games.

All in all, it will be a baptism by fire for Flick. — Sam Marsden

3. Olmo added to Lamine, Nico to follow or to stay?

Despite the warning signs, it’s not all bad news for Flick. In addition to boasting perhaps the best young talent in the game in 17-year-old Lamine Yamal, RB Leipzig forward Dani Olmo has also been added to the attack, following a sterling showing in Spain’s European Championship victory this summer.

However, Barcelona have not landed their top target yet. Winger Nico Williams remains an Athletic player, and all eyes will be on the Basque side’s visit to Barça on Aug. 24. Who will Williams be playing for?

Elsewhere, Barça sporting director Deco remains active in the transfer market, but any more incomings are still conditioned by the club’s ability to first raise money. It’s simple: Players must leave for others to come in. A full-back, a winger (if Williams doesn’t arrive) and possibly another midfielder would all be welcome.

Beyond late-summer signings, the focus will once again be on the kids. Yamal and defender Pau Cubarsí are already bedded into the team, Fermín López starred at the Olympics and Alejandro Balde, Gavi and Pedri will all be added to the mix as they return from injury. Midfielders Marc Casadó and Marc Bernal and striker Pau Victor all staked their case for minutes in preseason, too. — Marsden

4. Rebuilt Atléti looking to topple the Real-Barça duopoly once again

This has been an exciting summer for Atletico Madrid fans. After years of cautious investment, the club have finally spent big on the elite players they needed to reinvigorate their squad and give coach Diego Simeone the tools to mount a proper title challenge. It’s a major shift from recent seasons, in which they’ve flattered to deceive before trailing off into a fight for a top-four finish given the lack of quality depth.

The headline arrival is the signing of forward Julián Álvarez from Manchester City. Alvarez, a boyhood fan of both Atletico and his idol Simeone, is a major step up in quality from the player he is nominally replacing in the squad, Memphis Depay. The same goes for Robin Le Normand, the Spain centre-back signed from Real Sociedad who will strengthen a tired defence that has looked uncharacteristically shaky in recent seasons.

Alexander Sorloth doesn’t feel like an improvement on Álvaro Morata, but he did score 23 LaLiga goals for Villarreal last season. And Conor Gallagher, if he eventually arrives from Chelsea, would add legs to the midfield, a characteristic missing since Saúl Ñíguez‘s baffling loss of form began.

Underneath all that, there’s Simeone, starting his 13th full season in charge of Atletico Madrid, with the same hunger and win-at-all-costs mentality he has had since the day he arrived. For the past year or two, Atletico have felt some way off the “peak” side that won LaLiga in 2014 and 2021. This season, they’ll have the squad to give it a real go. — Kirkland

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5. Girona lose stars, and manager Míchel admits concerns

After the elation of qualifying for the UEFA Champions League for the first time, Girona have been hit by the reality of the transfer market. Finishing third in LaLiga propelled them into the spotlight to the point that they’ve already lost their best players from last season. Midfielder Aleix García joined Bayer Leverkusen, LaLiga top scorer Artem Dovbyk moved to AS Roma and loanees Sávio and Yan Couto will not return, instead moving to Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund, respectively.

There have been replacements — Donny van de Beek, Oriol Romeu, Bryan Gil and Abel Ruiz among them — but it has caused havoc for coach Míchel, who worked wonders last term.

“It’s been a bad preseason,” Míchel lamented this week. “We haven’t had everyone available and right now I am not sure what the team will be or how we will play — and we’re five days out from the competition starting. It’s been difficult because I don’t like having the feeling that I am not in control of what’s happening with the team.”

With the added load of European football, it already feels like the tide is turning against Girona when they should be looking forward to the biggest season in their history. Míchel will have to produce more miracles. — Marsden

6. Which Basque team is more likely to break into the top four?

Eight points separated Athletic Club and Real Sociedad in the LaLiga table last season as they finished fifth and sixth, respectively. Throughout the campaign it was Ernesto Valverde’s Athletic, not Imanol Alguacil’s La Real, who looked best prepared to challenge for Champions League qualification.

The best news for both clubs this summer has been key players who now look like they won’t be leaving. Barcelona keep insisting that Spain winger Williams is desperate to join them, but he has just taken the iconic Athletic No. 10 shirt, left vacant after the departure of Iker Muniain. Reports this week also suggested that La Real midfielder Martín Zubimendi wouldn’t be departing San Sebastian for Liverpool, after all. Keeping either player would be bigger than any potential summer signing.

There have been some painful losses, though. La Real will miss Le Normand at the back and they might yet lose another midfielder, Mikel Merino, to Arsenal. But they’ve still got Japan winger Take Kubo, a candidate — with Williams — for the most fun player to watch in LaLiga last season.

Expect both Basque teams to push for European football again, but Athletic — coached by the unflappable, underrated Valverde — look more likely to break into the top four if Girona indeed drop down. — Kirkland

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7. Can Valencia and Sevilla put their woes behind them?

Valencia and Sevilla are heavyweights of Spanish football who should be challenging for Champions League football. However, they have been closer to relegation scraps than European battles in each of the past two seasons. Valencia’s approach to climbing the table this year is one of stability, a word rarely associated with the club over the past decade as they’ve burned through 11 coaches and countless players.

Club legend Rubén Baraja has been in charge since February 2023, though, and last season’s ninth-placed finish was encouraging given the youthfulness of the squad. Youngsters like Cristhian Mosquera and Javi Guerra may well move on eventually, but it looks like they will stay for now, giving a talented crop of players the chance to further evolve.

Garcia Pimienta, meanwhile, becomes Sevilla’s sixth manager since 2022 and promises a vastly different playing style to his predecessor, Quique Sánchez Flores. Ñíguez, Albert Sambi Lokonga and Kelechi Iheanacho are among seven new arrivals this summer, making it hard to know what to expect from Sevilla as striker Youssef En-Nesyri and captain Sergio Ramos depart. Former Barça B coach Pimienta did well at Las Palmas, bringing them up and keeping them in LaLiga with a possession-heavy system, but the pressure at Sevilla is on another level. — Marsden

9. Intriguing new signings signings to watch

Bryan Zaragoza is back in LaLiga, on loan at Osasuna after his premature move to Bayern Munich from Granada. Zaragoza was one of the league’s most entertaining wingers prior to that move, making a name himself as an unpredictable, unconventional “street” footballer. Osasuna will offer him a platform to showcase his talent once again.

Borja Iglesias is another player looking for a new beginning, on loan at Celta Vigo. Iglesias spent the second half of last season at Bayer Leverkusen, winning the Bundesliga — although barely featuring — after failing to score in the first half of the campaign with Real Betis. That followed a 15-goal league season in 2022-23 that catapulted him into the conversation around who should be Spain’s first-choice centre-forward. Iglesias, who’s smart and sensitive, will score goals if he starts every week in a team that plays to his strengths.

And if there’s one thing we learned from Nicolas Pépé‘s three seasons at Arsenal, it’s that he does one thing very well: cut inside from the right, before curling a left-footed shot into the far corner. Fortunately, he has joined Villarreal, who’ve been missing exactly that kind of player since Samu Chukwueze left for AC Milan. — Kirkland

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The Canary Islands is a popular holiday venue for the British, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that Las Palmas, based in Gran Canaria, have signed a couple of Scotland internationals. That said, it did feel a little left-field when striker Oli McBurnie and defender Scott McKenna both joined the club this summer. It brings back memories of Vinny Samways’ successful spell in the Canaries over 20 years ago.

Other interesting deals this season include Ayoze Pérez‘s pending switch from Real Betis to Villarreal, who have also signed Willy Kambwala from Manchester United. Can ex-Barça midfielder Ilaix Moriba revive his flagging career at Celta? And how will Girona’s business shape up as they attempt a mini-rebuild. Gil as Savio? Van de Beek as Garcia? Bojan Miovski as Dovbyk?

Atlético appear to have done the biggest upgrades, though, with Le Normand, Álvarez and Sorloth checking in. — Marsden

10. Which promoted side could surprise everybody?

Last year’s Second Division champions, Leganés, almost blew their shot at promotion, drawing five consecutive games — four of them 0-0 — right when their return to the top flight looked all but assured. Fortunately, they got their act together just in time, clinching promotion with a last-day win over Elche to return to LaLiga for the first time since 2020.

When I sat down with coach Borja Jimenez in April, I was impressed by the 39-year-old’s ambition and clarity of thinking. The club are smartly run, part of Jeff Luhnow’s Blue Crow Group since 2022. Their summer spending has been modest and pragmatic — sporting director Txema Indias told me they favour known quantities rather than risky imports — and survival will be the limit of their ambition, but they might just pull it off.

And that’s before we even mention Super Pepino, their iconic, giant cucumber mascot, who was busy touring London in preseason. What’s not to like? — Kirkland