La Liga Superthread 2016/17

It's almost back! The league who's two governing bodies disagree on just about everything. The league where both these bodies , the player bodies, the referees bodies all threatened strike action at some point last season. The league where tossing your shoe at the linesmans is deemed worthy of a yellow card and relegation standings vary between governing bodies. La liga is back! Well, almost.

Before the inevitable quibbles begin though there's the Supercopa. Which actually just means quibbles that technically aren't of a la liga nature. (Though that really depends on which governing body you listen to.) Two clubs with identities tied heavily to their respective localities will duke it out. Neither is really a fan of any governing authority in Spain. This is sport some might say, it should be independent of politics. Others might say that the only people who say that are people who already have their cultural identity and independence.

When Bilbao and Barca meet it's impossible to predict the fireworks that erupt. How much television audio is going to be censored in Spain is anyone's guess. (Keep in mind blatantly racist chanting and profanities are rarely censored!)Thankfully it's also difficult to predict a winner in the San Mames. Perhaps the only predictable thing tonight was that Jeremy Mathieu was dropped from the Barca squad. Barca undoubtedly suffered quite the exertion because of him. But that won't play too much into Athletic's hands. They also have had quite the exertions. Neither team is fully sharp, they're also heading into the competition fatigued from pre season exploits (wtf is the point of pre-season?).

Win this competition and Barcelona will have won more than 50% of all competitions they entered these past ten years. Bilbao on the other hand have only won this thing once. Nothing better illustrates the stature of both clubs, but in the Mames anything is possible. It's not by any distance a favorite visiting ground for Barcelona. Still you have to fancy 'em

Now you might be wondering why this isn't a match thread separate from the La liga one. Well there's the political stuff, the differing bodies interpretations of what the league is and isn't and the fact that the first fixture for these teams in la liga is yet another meeting. The powers that be in Spain have decided that athletic will play Barca, then Barca will play athletic and then for good measure athletic will play Barca again. That's a lot of censoring and aggravated press!

Welcome to la liga!
(Where, really, anything can happen.Really!)