According to Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Spain’s national team winning the 2026 FIFA World Cup has not only earned the team its second star on the jersey but also pushed Spanish football’s international prestige to new heights. However, this glorious victory has triggered a major "schedule tsunami" for the upcoming 2026-27 La Liga season.
The Price of Glory: Key Players Arrive Late Collectively
Spain’s World Cup triumph has solidified the status of head coach Luis de la Fuente and given La Liga more sporting credibility in its competition with the Premier League. Yet the ensuing problem is very practical: the star players who featured in the World Cup final are only now starting their vacations. By the time their holidays end and they return to their clubs, the pre-season training camps will have long concluded.
To accommodate these players’ rest time, La Liga has been forced to drastically adjust its opening schedule, creating an extremely rare "schedule Sudoku" dilemma.
Chaotic Schedule: The First Round Is Split Apart
The new La Liga season will kick off on August 15, but the 10 matches of the first round have been split across three different weeks and seven separate matchdays.
Most incredibly, due to some top-flight clubs applying to postpone their season openers, the second round of La Liga will be forcibly "inserted" between the first-round fixtures. This means teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona will face the bizarre scenario of
"playing the second round first, then making up the first-round match".
Tebas Blasts FIFA: You Are Destroying the Football Industry
Faced with this chaos, La Liga president Javier Tebas publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with FIFA president Gianni Infantino in an interview.
Tebas bluntly criticized: “FIFA only cares about its own interests and completely ignores the rules of professional football. Their so-called 'cooling breaks' are actually just for inserting advertisements. Now they even want to expand the World Cup to 64 teams, which is simply unreasonable.”
Tebas believes that the foundation of the football industry lies in domestic leagues around the world, and FIFA is draining players’ energy and destroying tens of thousands of jobs that rely on league football for a 40-day tournament.
La Liga First Round Detailed Schedule
| Date | Matches |
|---|---|
| August 15 (Saturday) | Deportivo Alavés vs Getafe CF; Sevilla FC vs Rayo Vallecano |
| August 16 (Sunday) | Racing Santander vs Villarreal CF; RCD Espanyol vs Levante UD; RC Celta de Vigo vs CA Osasuna |
| August 17 (Monday) | Deportivo de La Coruña vs Elche CF |
| August 19 (Wednesday) | Atlético Madrid vs Málaga CF |
| August 25 (Tuesday) | Valencia CF vs Real Betis |
| August 26 (Wednesday) | Real Madrid vs Real Sociedad |
| August 27 (Thursday) | Barcelona vs Athletic Club |
Note: Between August 20 and 24, La Liga will kick off some matches of the second round first. This "reversed order" arrangement has left many fans and media outlets exclaiming "a sight never seen before".
