Simulating the remaining La Liga season
As La Liga emerges from the winter break this weekend, first-place Barcelona has a nine-point lead over Atletico Madrid, and last year's champion, Real Madrid, trails by 16 points. So is the title race already over? Let's take a look using ESPN’s Soccer Power Index (SPI), which simulated the remainder of the La Liga season 10,000 times.
SPI currently projects that Barcelona will win the league in 99 percent of the simulations. Even if Real Madrid wins out for the rest of the season, Barcelona would have to drop 16 points. How unlikely is that? The only two points Barca has dropped thus far were in its draw against Real Madrid.
Barcelona has 11 matches remaining at home, where SPI rates Barca at least a 78 percent in each match. On average, SPI projects Barcelona to take 2.7 points per remaining home match, which comes out to 29.8 of a possible 33 points. For its 10 remaining away matches, Barcelona is more than a 50 percent favorite to win in all but one, which is the visit to Real Madrid. To put that into perspective, no team other than Real Madrid is currently a 50 percent favorite to win any road game for the rest of the season. On average, SPI projects Barcelona to take 2.1 points per remaining away match, which comes out to 20.8 of a possible 30 points.
Overall, SPI projects Barcelona to drop 12 points for the remainder of the season, meaning Atletico and Real Madrid will need some help. Even after winning out, Atletico finishes behind Barcelona in 21.3 percent of the SPI simulations, and Real Madrid trails Barca 76.3 percent of the time after running the table.
SPI forecasts all three sides as locks for a Champions League place next season, as Barcelona and Real Madrid finish in the top four in every simulation, and Atletico in more than 99 percent of them. Malaga’s ineligibility puts the fourth spot up in the air, with Levante, Real Betis and Valencia as the favorites, each finishing in the top four more than 20 percent of the time.
At the bottom of the table, Deportivo is the most likely to be relegated, according to SPI, finishing in the bottom three in more than 70 percent of the simulations. SPI currently sees the other two relegation spots between Granada, Osasuna and Espanyol, with each going down in 45 to 50 percent of the simulations.
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