{"id":16246,"date":"2026-05-03T16:32:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T16:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/16246\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T16:32:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T16:32:48","slug":"league-champions-without-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/16246\/","title":{"rendered":"League champions without playing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blaugrana fans across the world have their eyes firmly on the penultimate game of week 34 in La Liga between Espanyol and Real Madrid. Following on from<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fcbarcelona.com\/en\/videos\/4497364\/highlights-osasuna-v-fc-barcelona\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Bar\u00e7a&#8217;s win at Osasuna on Saturday,<\/a> anything other than a victory in the RCDE Stadium for \u00c1lvaro Arbeloa&#8217;s team will mean a 29th league title for FC Barcelona.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Should that happen, it would not be the first time that the Club have claimed the La Liga crown without playing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The &#8216;Dream Team&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fcbarcelona.com\/en\/card\/643913\/1988-1996-the-era-of-the-dream-team\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">1990\/91 season with Johan Cruyff as coach,<\/a> FC Barcelona looked on as Atl\u00e9tico Madrid&#8217;s 2-1 defeat at Real Sociedad handed them the league championship despite having lost 4-0 at C\u00e1diz the previous day.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Guardiola and a season to remember\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The second time Bar\u00e7a claimed the league without actually playing came in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fcbarcelona.com\/en\/card\/643923\/2008-20-the-best-years-in-our-history\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2008\/09 season under coach Pep Guardiola.<\/a> A defeat for Real Madrid meant Bar\u00e7a were league champions in a treble winning campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>100 point league<\/p>\n<p>The third and up to now final time the blaugranes won La Liga without playing was in 2012\/13 under coach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fcbarcelona.com\/en\/card\/648486\/francesc-tito-vilanova-2012-2013\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tito Vilanova<\/a>. A draw for Real Madrid against Espanyol crowned Bar\u00e7a champions and a win the following day against Atl\u00e9tico Madrid saw the team reach the 100 point mark for the season, a record.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another opportunity\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The league could be claimed for a fourth time without playing if Real Madrid fail to match Bar\u00e7a&#8217;s victory against Osasuna in their game at Espanyol on Sunday, kick off 9pm CEST.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blaugrana fans across the world have their eyes firmly on the penultimate game of week 34 in La&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[92,483],"class_list":{"0":"post-16246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-barcelona","8":"tag-barcelona","9":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}