In Spanish soccer, there’s a saying when a title race is neck and neck heading into the final months: Hay Liga. “There’s a league.” Or, in colloquial English, “It’s coming down to the wire, and Manchester City might not actually win this thing for once.”
We’ve had a handful of hay liga scenarios in the past. Think of Leicester City’s improbable run to the Premier League title in 2016, when Lille piped PSG to the 2021 Ligue 1 crown, and last year, when Napoli won the Scudetto for the first time since Diego Maradona donned azure. But this season has seen some of the best European title races for the good part of a decade. Bayer Leverkusen are on the cusp of preventing Bayern Munich from winning the German league for the first time in 12 years, while underdog Girona has put up a staunch fight against superpower Real Madrid in Spain. And, of course, there’s the three-way ongoing slugfest in the English Premier League.
Ahead of Man City and Liverpool’s consequential matchup on Sunday, the Reds are top of the table with 63 points, while City, the reigning champions, are on 62 points and third-place Arsenal have 61 points—each with 11 games left to determine who will lift the Premier League trophy in May.
Of course, we’ve been down this road before. Just last season, Arsenal were league leaders for 248 days, but Manchester City’s eventual triumph felt—and was—inevitable. No matter how assured any team in the Premier League may feel, the Jaws theme is always playing in the background. Manchester City are the most dangerous predator in world football.
But this season could be different. Jurgen Klopp’s announcement that he’ll be stepping down from Liverpool at the end of the season has seemed to inject a heavy dose of adrenaline into the Reds. And after falling short last season, Arsenal are piling up goals at a ridiculous rate—four consecutive league games scoring at least four times, including two 6-0 thrashings—and don’t seem ready to drop out of the conversation just yet. But City won’t go down quietly. In fact, they’re rising; after a slow start, they’re unbeaten in their last 18 games in all competitions.
To that point, City have looked a bit vulnerable this season—as is tradition; they always seem to take half a season to kick into gear—but after the return of Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland, the Death Star appears to be fully operational.
Even without those two, City are just so deep at nearly every position. No Haaland for a few games? No problem; the Citizens employ Julián Álvarez, a World Cup winner who would likely be a top-three striker in the league if he didn’t compete with the Norwegian. De Bruyne out for five months? It’s chill; the Manchurians have a phalanx of playmaking wingers and midfielders to drive the attack in his absence.
Trying to find a fault in Man City can feel like a Sisyphean task. Manager Pep Guardiola likes to mix up his lineups to keep his team fresh, but the City ethos is always the same: Dominate your opponents. Suffocate them, even. They will stick to the same formula for the remainder of the season. Someone will just have to execute it even better. Enter Liverpool?
The Reds lifting the Premier League trophy at the height of the pandemic feels like a collective fever dream. After years of pushing Guardiola’s team to its limit, Klopp finally triumphed over his northern neighbors by an 18-point margin. Pep seemed to take that personally, winning the league by double-digit points the following season and, cruelly, by a single point in 2022.
But going back to his Dortmund days, Klopp has never been afraid to take on a giant (his 2011-12 BVB squad was the last team not named Bayern Munich to win the Bundesliga), and his club is doing it again this season. If you’re a romantic, this would be the storybook ending for Klopp. His Liverpool side had already looked untouchable ahead of his announcement in January. Now, they look like a team of destiny.
The Reds have weathered the loss of talisman Mo Salah to the African Cup of Nations in January (and his lingering injury suffered in that tournament), as well as injuries to just about every other attacking player. And yet tuning in to recent Liverpool matches has felt like injecting five cans of Red Bull into your veins.
Liverpool has lost just once in 2024, while recently winning the EFL Cup with a team that mostly consisted of academy kids by the end of the match. To watch a Liverpool game now can seem like an exercise in feeling old as hell. In some of their recent games, multiple players who scored were born well after the turn of the century. It makes one wonder whether the emergence of the younger ranks could prompt Klopp to reconsider his choice, à la Alex Ferguson. Forget “Liverpool 2.0”—this is Liverpool 3.0, ahead of schedule.
Regardless of Klopp’s unintended reliance on youth, Liverpool could be considered the cautious favorites to win the league—yes, even ahead of City. Quiet as they’ve kept, Liverpool have sat at the top of the table for months now, thanks to their penchant for dominating most games and finding late breakthroughs in others. But Liverpool’s limitations may be laid bare by their dwindling squad. If they keep suffering injuries and their returning players don’t hit the ground running, holding on to the league lead will only grow more difficult.
That leaves Arsenal, last season’s upstart who stumbled at the final hurdles in 2023. The Gunners have been scoring for fun since their poor festive period raised questions about their striker situation. Ever since Arsenal took a winter break to Dubai and were blessed by the fork of Salt Bae, the club has looked revitalized. Arsenal’s last few Premier League score lines look FIFA—ahem, EA Sports FC 24—esque.
This Gunners team seems to have unlocked its attacking potential by placing Kai Havertz up top and having him act as a false nine to link play between Arsenal’s speedy wingers and a midfield trio of Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice, and either Jorginho or Leandro Trossard.
It’s easy to look at Arsenal’s recent fixtures and dismiss their opponents as weaker competition because, frankly, they are. Sheffield United are going down. Burnley … going down. Newcastle and West Ham have looked disjointed in 2024, and Crystal Palace are the eternal definition of “mediocre” and were languishing under since-dismissed manager Roy Hodgson.
But as much attention as Arsenal’s attacking prowess has garnered in recent weeks, it’s the defense that has been most impressive this season. There’s been a lot of whataboutism about whether Arsenal could have won the league last season had William Saliba not gotten injured, but he’s played every available minute for the Gunners this season, and it’s shown in the results.
The defensive pairing of Saliba and Gabriel Magalhães has been damn near impenetrable this season. Arsenal have conceded the lowest number of goals in the division, and that’s not just down to luck. Their expected goals against puts the rest of the league to shame, and if you need a tangible example, just watch the best striker in the world try to compete against them. So while the goals are certainly nice for the Gooners, Arsenal’s title chances will probably come down to the defense. There’s supposed to be a famous saying about that, I think.
Nothing is set in stone, and that’s what makes this year’s title race enthralling. While City and Liverpool’s game on Sunday will be momentous, it won’t decide anything. The top three will still have 10 games each left to play. Arsenal have away trips to the Etihad, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and Old Trafford, while both City and Liverpool have dates against Aston Villa and Spurs on the horizon.
With the teams at the top playing thrilling football and the title still up for grabs this late in the season, this has a chance to be the most exciting three-way race in the past decade. Hay liga, indeed.
