Barca wins another Spanish Big Six in 2019-20, but Real closes in

Of all the new divisions to come from the divisions of top domestic leagues into internal pyramids, the Spanish Big Six is the toughest place to win a game.

We won't weigh in on which domestic league across the world is the best, but we will point out that when we parse some of these into internal pyramids, the Spanish Big Six is as brutal as it comes.

It is really hard to win a game. It's hard to win a game if you're Barcelona. It's hard to win a game if you're Real Madrid. It's hard to win a game, period.

First two years we ran the Spanish Big Six, nobody could win half of its games. In 2019-20, our third year, two teams finally reached that threshold (Barcelona and Real Madrid), just by a little.

Barcelona and Real Madrid both finished 6-3-1. Head-to-head, Real Madrid won 2-0 in Madrid and they drew, 0-0, in Barcelona. However, the tiebreaker here is goal differential, and Barcelona has a nice cushion, plus-15 to plus-10. Thus, Barcelona wins its third straight Spanish Big Six title out of three that have been manifest in these pages. 

Atlético Madrid and Sevilla are the other Spanish Big Six survivors. Atlético Madrid is the only team besides Barcelona and Real Madrid to appear in all three editions of the division, and they all will be in the fourth for 2020-21. The top four in the La Liga standings for 2019-20 are the same teams as this Big Six top four, but the order there puts Real ahead of Barça.

The Big Six was a little too fast and thick for Eibar and Real Betis, which both are headed to the Middle Six. Coming up from the Middle Six to the Big Six are ... so now we have to backtrack for a moment.

The Spanish Middle Six standings reveal that the winner is Leganés, which lost only once in ten games and racked up three wins and two draws in five road games. The Cucumber Growers finished more than a win better than second-place Real Sociedad. Clearly, Leganés deserves promotion to the Spanish Big Six.

But ... say, what? You mean that across La Liga, Leganés stunk up the joint so badly that it's being kicked down to the Segunda Division? You mean, the team that couldn't be handled by anyone else in the Middle Six managed only two wins and nine draws against 17 losses against the other clubs in the domestic league?

Yeah, it turns out that on the La Liga ladder, Leganés is 18th out of 20. Eight wins, 12 draws, 18 losses. Outta here!

So, what do we do with the pyramid? First, Leganés will be demoted here, not promoted. Next, we were going to demote the Big Six last-place team, Real Betis, and promote the Middle Six second-place team, Real Sociedad, and there's no reason not to, so we will. Now, we choose our poison: promote a third-place team, or fail to demote a seventh-place team? Do we promote Athletic Bilbao or do we reprieve Eibar?

In these cases, we like it decided on the field (always good to remember that anything happening during the season can always turn up in a tiebreaker). When Bilbao and Eibar played at Eibar, 2-2 draw. At Bilbao, 0-0 draw. It goes to Bilbao, on away goals. Bilbao gets promoted to the Big Six with Sociedad, while Eibar gets demoted to the Middle Six with Betis.

It's unusual to demote a team from the top of some division. Does it mean we no longer demote two teams from the bottom? We have to make that decision the same way in the transition between the Middle Six and the Little Six(ish). 

The bottom two teams in the Middle Six were Villarreal and Espanyol. Somehow, Villarreal finished fifth in La Liga and fifth in the Spanish Middle Six. The pyramids are nuts, sometimes. We're demoting Leganés, which then will be washed out of this pyramid when the domestic divisions change over. We know Espanyol, clearly the last-place team in the Middle Six, also will be demoted and washed away (Espanyol finished at the bottom of the La Liga table). We also know that the top two Little Six(ish) teams, Granada and Getafe, will be promoted.

Now, the same kind of question arises: Do we reprieve Villarreal in the Middle Six, or do we promote the third-place team from the Little Six(ish), Levant? Head-to-head, each team won at home, 2-1. That means each team had one away goal. At this point, we shall rule that no compelling reason has emerged through two tiebreakers to demote a third team from the Middle Six or promote a third team from the Little Six(ish), so Villarreal and Levant shall stay put.

Villarreal, by the way, was not a dud team by any stretch, qualifying for the Europa League at the group stage. And Villarreal would actually have been demoted to the Little Six(ish) if Leganés, somewhere in La Liga, had been able to knock in one goal to turn a draw into a win and edge out of the league-wide relegation zone.

Interesting. But it's a very strange league. And a great one.

Olimpio squeezes through tight race for 2020-21 Euro hoop lineal

The traveling championship through the top European basketball league in 2020-21 had many homes, spending barely more time with the Milanese club Olimpio than with anyone else.

Real Madrid and (Milan) Olimpia staged a strong race for the lineal championship across European pro basketball in 2020-21, and the title got around a bit, with 10 of the Euroleague's 18 teams holding it at least once.

In the end, Olimpia prevailed, because Olimpia had an extra opportunity and Real Madrid did not.

Real Madrid claimed the title at the start of December and held it for the entire month, six games, before succumbing to Olimpia at the start of January. Olimpia then held the title for all of January, six games, before succumbing to ASVEL at the start of February.

So, Real and Olimpia each held six games of the championship and it kicked around the rest of the league without anyone really claiming it. However, the Lithuanian club, Žalgiris, ended ASVEL's three-game title with a victory in Kaunas at the start of March, just in time for Olimpia to visit.

By defeating Žalgiris, then defending the new championship in Moscow against CSKA, Olimpia brought itself up to eight games of championship. 

When Barcelona snagged the title from Olimpia later in March, only four rounds of games remained in the season. Typically, a different team won the title in each of those rounds, enabling Olimpia to claim the lineal championship for the season.

Real Madrid wins European First hoop division in short 2019-20 season

The Euroleague declared no champions and no promotions after ending the 2019-20 season early because of coronavirus. However, enough games were completed to make reasonable promotions and demotions in our pyramid-within-the-pyramid.

The Euroleague season in 2019-20 ended abruptly because of the coronavirus, lopping off the final six rounds of games and leaving the schedule finished at 28 games.

The league decided to declare no champions and to promote and relegate no one from the 2019-20 results. But we decided here that we will promote and relegate because the results, incomplete as they are, still determine champions, promotees and relegates with little controversy.

In the First Division, for example, it turns out that Real Madrid was the only club in the Euroleague that played all 10 of its pyramid games, winning eight. Every other club in the First Division, playing fewer games, already had lost three or more. So Real Madrid is the First Division champ.

Similarly, at the bottom of the First Division, Baskonia already had clinched relegation and Fenerbahçe had all but clinched it when the lights went out. They both could have won every remaining game and Fenerbahçe would have tied somebody for fourth place only if Macabbi, CSKA or Zalgiris lost all three of its remaining games. Possible, but not likely enough wait on it under the circumstances.

In the Middle Six, we see a clear top two with Barcelona (7-1) and Anadolu Efes (6-2) in line for promotion. If the schedule had played out, there was only one chance for a different outcome. Panathinaikos, the Athenian squad coached by Rick Pitino, was third place at 4-4 with games remaining against Efes and Khimki, the Muscovite rival of CSKA. Efes also had two remaining, being against at home against Panithainakos and at Khimki. With two Panathinaikos wins and two Efes loss, they would have tied for second at 6-4 and the Athenians would win the tiebreaker for beating Efes twice during the season. 

So, we're looking at four games, and they all have to go the right way for Panithainakos to get into a tie. It requires Efes, which ended the year with the best league record at 24-4, to lose its remaining two games in the pyramid. Not likely. And Panithinaikos, 14-14 across the league, would have to win two. Possible. Panithainakos could have earned it on the floor, but there was no floor on which to earn it. So, we're going with what we have, promoting Barcelona and Efes.

On the bottom of the Middle Six, Bayern Munich is clearly to be relegated, and Olympiakos might have avoided it by winning the two it didn't play, but it would have depended on other teams collapsing. So, Olympiakos goes down with Bayern.

Obviously, the Little Six was wide open going to the Euroleague's final weeks in 2019-20. Only Zenit had no chance of earning promotion. Alba was the leader, but fifth-place Valencia was only a game away. One thing about the Little Six, though, is that we're not holding up the works over it, so although this division produced no outline of a resolution, we'll hold our nose and promote two.

Alba, the leader, is one. In second, we had a three-way tie between Red Star, Olimpia and ASVEL. Red Star (2-1) and ASVEL (2-1) survived the three-way head-to-head tiebreaker with Olimpia (0-2). Red Star and ASVEL split their two games during the season, with Red Star gaining the total points tiebreaker, 155-154. So, the second promotion here goes to Red Star, but we're so deep into tiebreakers that it's all but arbitrary.

One thing we don't have to worry about in 2020-21 is new teams being introduced to the Euroleague. Because of the coronavirus, domestic leagues were halted and those qualifiers couldn't be decided, anyway.

Anadolu Efes dominates 2019-20 Euro traveler, so long as it lasts

They only played 28 of 34 rounds of Euroleague games in 2019-20 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Of those 28 rounds, Istanbul power Anadolu Efes held the Euro basketball lineal for 13 of them.

They stopped playing basketball in the Euroleague after the games of March 6, 2020, due to the coronavirus. The season ended at 28 games, a little short of the 34 that were in the plans. 

They didn't run playoffs, either. They didn't declare a champion. They just ended it.

One team that might be relieved is Fenerbahçe, the Istanbul club that went to the Euroleague Final Four five years running before play ended in March 2020. At that point, Fenerbahçe was having quite a fight of defending its Euroleague championship, sitting eighth and barely in the playoffs. There's a good chance Fenerbahçe would have missed the playoffs completely.

Another Istanbul team with something to cheer for 2019-20 was Anadolu Efes, which held a two-point lead in the Euroleague over Real Madrid and Barcelona when play halted for 2019-20. They can always say they finished first, though the league won't.

Efes also dominated the lineal championship going through Europe, holding it for 13 of the 28 rounds of games. Anadolu held a five-game championship in November and December, then an eight-game title that began in January and ended in Tel Aviv on March 4, a 77-75 loss to Maccabi.

The Tel Aviv five immediately lost the traveler in its next outing at Belgrade, where homestanding Red Star produced a 92-76 victory and its first lineal title of the season. That happened on the night of March 6. After that, there were no more games.

Thus, Red Star held the European basketball lineal entering the 2020-21 season.

Real Madrid closes historic gap in Spanish soccer lineal

Real Madrid was the Spanish kingpin with the 2019-20 lineal soccer championship before the pandemic break, but Barcelona was that team after play resumed. In the end, Real drew itself closer to Barcelona at the top of the all-time standings.

With 14 wins in 21 outings for the Spanish traveling championship during the 2019-20 La Liga season, Real Madrid narrowed the all-time gap between itself and Barcelona at the top of the historic standings in the national lineal.

The Whites made two different runs with the championship, first holding it for three defenses after snagging it from Sevilla in September, then producing a 15-game title that ran from the end of October to the middle of February. By then, Real was up to 19 games of championship for the season, leaving no one with a chance to catch up.

In addition, the two titles brought Real up to 53 games of championship in five seasons of tracking Spain, still 11 behind Barcelona, the all-time leader. However, Barça took the championship from Mallorca on June 13, the first day that play resumed after the coronavirus interruption.

Barcelona then held on for eight defenses before falling to Osasuna in mid-July. The nine games of title brought the Catalans up to 73 all-time, expanding their lead over Real Madrid back to 20 games.

Titan struggle continues as Real, Barça battle for lineal glory

In five years of tracking the lineal championship through top-level Spanish soccer, we have seen very long ebbs and flows, all involving the two giants in this nation of leading clubs, Barcelona and Real Madrid.

The two top soccer clubs in Spain, Barcelona and Real Madrid, continue waging a furious battle for the all-time lead in the domestic traveling championship. No matter how far ahead one gets, the other comes raging back.

Barcelona entered this season with an overwhelming lead all-time, 64 games of championship in Spain, compared with 34 games for Real Madrid. But Real Madrid has come back strong with 19 games of championship in 2019-20, while Barcelona, so far, has goose-egged. Now, Real Madrid has 53 games of title, bringing itself to within one strong title of catching Barca.

The first year we tracked the traveler, 2015-16, Barcelona rang up 22 games of title, compared with 10 for Real Madrid. In 2016-17, Real turned the tables with 24 games of title and took the lead in this race, 34-28.

But Barcelona came back with a record-setting performance in 2017-18, holding the championship for 36 games out of a 38-game season. No other pro soccer club has accomplished anything close, so far as these pages have seen, though Liverpool is making a bid to meet or exceed that performance this year in England.

With that 36 games in 2017-18, the score reached 64-34 in favor of the Catalans, and it remained that way through 2018-19, when both teams failed in two bids to win the title.

Real Madrid's rally in 2019-20 has made the race close again and it could have gotten closer. The whites just now lost the championship in a 1-0 upset loss at Levante on Feb. 22. Levante will put the title on the line Feb. 29 at Eibar (4 a.m. PST).

As for the race in La Liga this season, it's what one always expects. First place, Barcelona, 55 points. Second place, Real, 53 points. No one else has more than 43 points, meaning everyone else is a full four games or more off the pace.

Larkin leads Anadolu Efes to Euroleague dominance

Shane Larkin, former ACC Player of the Year at Miami and son of baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin, is taking over the Euroleague as his Istanbul squad, Anadolu Efes, tears through the top level of European pro basketball.

Shane Larkin, shown here playing college ball at Miami, has become the new ace of the Euroleague (SneakinDeacon/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

The biggest development in the Euroleague this season is Shane Larkin, son of baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin and former ACC Player of the Year for Miami. Out of nowhere, Larkin is the best player in the Euroleague.

Larkin has found an unstoppable three-point shot, of which he made 74 in 131 attempts (51 percent) during the first 25 games of the Anadolu Efes season. With shooting like that, Larkin leads the Euroleague with a scoring average of 22.0 points per game.

Larkin also has the league's top "Index Rating" a composite number posted on the Euroleague's website. By the lights of Index Rating, Larkin is at 25.74. The next best score is quite a ways back, Nikola Mirotic of Barcelona at 21.76.

After leading Miami to the Sweet 16 in 2013, his sophomore season, Larkin entered the NBA draft and went to the Atlanta Hawks with the 18th overall pick. From that moment, Larkin's pro career turned nomadic. The Hawks immediately traded him to the Dallas Mavericks and he broke his ankle during summer league. After splitting his rookie year between the Mavs and their D-League affiliate in Frisco, Larkin was traded to the New York Knicks.

Larkin lasted a year with the Knicks, then a year with the Brooklyn Nets, then played for a year in Spain for Kirolbet Baskonia. He averaged 13.1 points and 5.7 assists for Baskonia in the Euroleague, so that secured a one-year deal with the Boston Celtics for 2017-18.

But when that deal ended, Larkin wound up in Istanbul, signing with Anadolu Efes before the 2018-19 season. He broke in slowly with the team and wound up averaging 12.5 points per game. But he became the starting point guard late in the season and exploded at the end.

In the Euroleague semifinal, Larkin scored 30 points with seven rebounds and seven assists, guiding the Efes to a 92-73 win against crosstown rival Fenerbahçe. In the championship game, Larkin scored 29 points, the most ever by a player in a Euroleague final, but the Efes fell to CSKA Moscow, 91-83. Larkin's 59 points were the most ever in a Euroleague Final Four. In the Turkish Süper Ligi championship game, Larkin scored 38 to lead an 89-74 win against Fenerbahçe.

Larkin has quickly obtained Turkish citizenship and there is talk that he will end up on the Turkish national team. This year, Larkin's stardom has been confirmed and Anadolu Efes is making a bid for its first Euroleague title. The Istanbul squad is 22-3 in the league, three games ahead of Spanish stalwarts Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Anadolu Efes also is dominating the European traveling championship, snagging the title twice this season and holding it for 11 games. The second title, which has reached six games, remains active.


Real Madrid, which rolled up 12 games of traveling championship to lead the effort in 2018-19, has taken only one crack at the title in 2019-20, losing, 80-75, at Anadolu Efes on January 24.

Barcelona captures second Spanish Big Six crown

For the second year in as many as we have run the Spanish inner pyramid, Barcelona emerged as the winner. But it was a bit more difficult for Barça, which won the division despite winning fewer than half of its games.

The difficulty of the Spanish Big Six is difficult to overstate. Two years in, only one team has managed to win half of its 10 games in a season.

That would have been Barcelona, which bagged seven wins and three draws in 2017-18 to win the Spanish Big Six with 24 points, nearly twice as many as second-place Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid.

Barcelona won the Spanish Big Six again in 2018-19, but not nearly so easily. This time, Barça only won four games and actually lost one, finishing with 17 points in the standings. This time, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid finished much closer in second, each with 14 points.

Valencia and Villareal, which won three Big Six games between them, both are headed to the Middle Six in 2018-19. Coming up to the top are Sevilla, which had just been demoted, and Real Betis, which won the Spanish Little Six(ish) in 2017-18 and finished second in the Middle Six in 2018-19.

Espanyol, which had just been demoted from the Middle Six, won the Little Six(ish) in 2018-19 and is going back up to the middle. Also being promoted is Leganés. Girona, which had just been promoted to the middle, is going back down to the bottom in 2019-20, along with Alavés.

Atlético Madrid reaches top of Spanish traveler in 2018-19

Atlético Madrid emerged as the leading club for the Spanish traveling soccer championship in 2018-19, while Barcelona and Real Madrid both goose-egged.

A new top club emerged for the Spanish traveling soccer championship in 2018-19.

Atlético Madrid held the championship for 16 games, including a run of 14 games that lasted from October to February. Thus, Atlético became the third team to win the annual traveling recognition in the four years we have run in Spain.

Atlético Madrid had never won the Spanish traveler before its 1-0 home win against Real Betis on Sept. 27. Before then, Atlético had six losses and a draw in its attempts to win the title.

The other two clubs that have won the annual and usually dominate were quiet in 2018-19. Barcelona took cracks against Atlético and Girona, but drew both times. Real Madrid drew in an attempt to take the prize from Getafe and later lost a bid against Real Sociedad.

It remains that Barcelona is the top club historically with the Spanish traveler, holding 64 games of championship through four years. Real Madrid remains second at 34 games and Atlético Madrid now has rocketed to third place all-time with 16 games of title.

Euro basketball pyramid gets complicated

The first pyramid for the top level of European pro basketball in 2018-19 produced at least one unsurprising result. The permanent clubs did pretty well.

One thing the world has shown us is that there are many ways to run an athletic league.

In the United States and Canada, the permanent franchise system is in play. The teams in the top leagues are there permanently, unless they just go out of business. The advantage is that the league can play to the strongest markets every year. The disadvantage is that dog teams are coddled to maximize those markets. The teams in the top leagues aren't necessarily there on competitive merit, though their market advantages certainly make them better than other teams.

In most of the world, particularly in Europe, they use the pyramid system, in which the worst teams at the top level are relegated to the next level down, while the best teams at that level come up to replace the clubs that were relegated. The downside is that teams could end up in the top league while playing in markets that aren't quite major league scale. The upside is that one never hears nonsense about tanking for the top draft choice. There is no reward for tanking. It is something of a death sentence. You're out of the league.

The Euroleague gives us something a little different, a mix of permanent teams and teams from the pyramid.

The Euroleague played with only 16 teams in 2018-19. Usually, it has run 18 clubs and it's going back to that in 2019-20.

But it is a mix. Of the 18 clubs, 11 are permanently licensed to compete in the Euroleague, two others are granted two-year licenses, one is the EuroCup champion and three are the champions of various top-level domestic leagues: The ABA (Adriatic Basketball League) First Division, the German Bundesliga and the VTB League of top clubs from Russia and neighboring countries.

One other spot goes to the best team in the Asociación de Clubs de Baloncesto (ACB) that isn't permanently licensed in the Euroleague. ACB, the top Spanish League, includes three permanent Euroleague clubs – Barcelona, Baskonia and Real Madrid. In 63 years of ABC or its predecessor, Liga Nacional, one of those three clubs has won it 56 times. But one of the unlicensed clubs might be good enough to win the EuroCup. When that happens, then ACB's unlicensed spot becomes a continental wild card.

It becomes really confusing when this publication gets involved and tries to make a pyramid out of it. Perhaps we can explain it as we go along.

We look at the first year of the Europyramid, 2018-19, for some help. First, we took the 2017-18 standings and just split the Euroleague into three divisions, with the top six clubs in the Big Six, the next six clubs in the Middle Six and the lower clubs in the Little Six(ish).

The clubs we see in the Big Six are no surprise. All of them are permanently licensed to the Euroleague. The winner here in 2018-19 was Fenerbahçe, the power from Istanbul, followed by CSKA Moscow, the top-ranked club in Europe. The two clubs being relegated for 2019-20 are the Grecian clubs, Olympiacos and Panathinaikos.

Now we look at the Middle Six and it gets a little complex down the standings. The top two clubs, which will be promoted, are permanent licensees – Baskonia and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Easy enough.

The third-place club here is Bayern Munich, which entered in 2018-19 as the Bundesliga champions. The club that actually played in the Euroleague as the Bundesliga champs in 2017-18, Brose Bramberg, established that spot Middle Six spot by finishing in the middle of the Euroleague. Bayern Munich solidified it with a 6-4 record in the Middle Six.

Ordinarily, the spot established by Brose Bramberg and solidified by Bayern Munich would be passed on in 2019-20 to the winner of the previous year's Bundesliga. But it happens that Bayern Munich is one of the clubs granted a two-year license. And, it happens, the club that won the Bundesliga was Bayern Munich. Thus, the new German entry, Alba Berlin, will enter the pyramid at the bottom level and Bayern Munich will remain in the Middle Six.

Who do we demote from the bottom of the Middle Six? We have three clubs there and two will be demoted. The tiebreaker is head-to-head among the three clubs, Darüşşafaka, Gran Canaria and Khimki. Turns out Khimki, a Russian club, was 3-1, compared with 2-2 for Gran Canaria and 1-3 for Darüşşafaka.

Khimki qualified for the Euroleague in 2017-18 as the VTB League representative, and repeated that distinction to return to the Euroleague (and, not incidentally, the pyramid) in 2018-19. The club earned the right to remain in the Middle Six. Khimki again finished second in the VTB League, for the third straight year, to take that spot. The spot is targeted to the VTB League winner, but that team is CSKA Moscow every year, and CSKA is permanently licensed for the Euroleague. So, Khimki gets the spot and will play 2019-20 in the Middle Division.

Gran Canaria and Darüşşafaka both are going to the Little Six in 2019-20, but not really. The Gran Canaria spot is for the club placing highest in the ACB that isn't otherwise licensed. However, it turned out that the team for this spot in 2019-20, Valencia Basket, won the EuroCup and qualified that way.

So, the Euroleague turned the final ACB spot into a wild card and awarded it to Zenit St. Petersburg of the VTB League.

Either way, the final team from Spain and the EuroCup winner both were going to the Little Six.  Who is going up? It's two permanently licensed Euroleague clubs, Barcelona and Anadolu Efes, both of which finished 4-2 in a four-team Little Six(ish). In 2019-20, the Little Six really will have six clubs. The two new clubs are Alba Berlin and a French club, ASVEL, which received the second two-year license.

One of the two holdovers in the Little Six is Olimpia Milan, which is a permanently licensed club. The other will be the ABA representative, Cevena zvezda from Belgrade, which will take up where the previous year's ABA champ, Budućnost, left it. The bottom division.

Real Madrid begins European top-level traveler like a champion

Real Madrid took the top-level European traveling basketball championship provisionally, then ran with it to post seven defenses, followed by three titles of its own in the first year of this competition.

The traveling pro basketball championship in Europe went off to a rousing start with Real Madrid, which posted eight games in a caretaker defense to start the 2018-19 season, then won it three more times.

When it was over, Real Madrid had 12 games of championship, well ahead of any other club. CSKA Moscow finished a distant second place with four games, followed by Panathinaikos, the Athenian club coached by Rick Pitino, with three games.

Real Madrid claimed its third title of the year with a win against Panathinaikos on March 28, ending the Greek club's three-game streak. But Real Madrid lost the final game of the season to Žalgiris, a Lithuanian club.

AS Roma declines ICC, Euro and world titles still stuck

The world and European traveling soccer championships have been stuck together for two years. We thought we might have a solution, but not quite.

This enterprise began tracking traveling championships across big league baseball in 2011, designating one championship within each of the leagues and another across both leagues. Before long, a problem arose.

It became easy for two of the championships to get stuck together. For example, the National League champion could simultaneously be the interleague champion. Nothing terribly wrong with that, but the more two titles run together, the less interesting it is to run them separately. So, methods are needed to un-stick titles.

In baseball, it's easy enough. Interleague play occurs regularly, and in those series only the interleague title can be contested. A team entering an interleague series with that title and its league title could lose the interleague title and retain the league title. Also, because baseball often ends in split series, we decreed that tiebreakers would come into play for the league titles. But the interleague champion would be considered to have defended it successfully in a split series. To be the man, you have to beat the man, a man once said. It's quite possible to get two different results from the same series that way and unstick the titles.

The matter arises here because anyone who looks at these standings a little bit will notice that the European and world traveling soccer championships have been stuck together for two solid years through the 2018-19 season.

One problem is that there isn't a lot of international club competition between continents, so we should expect some continent's championship to run with the world championship quite a lot.

It only took a year. We started in 2016-17 with Barcelona as the world champion and Real Madrid as the European champion. They were the right teams; Barcelona had won the last club World Cup and Real Madrid had won the last European Champions League. At the end of the year, they switched, with Real Madrid holding the world title and Barcelona holding the European championship.

It happened that the two clubs were to meet at the very start of the 2017-18 season in the Supercopa de España, as Barca now held the Copa del Rey and Real was to defend its La Liga championship.

Real Madrid united the traveling titles by winning both legs of Supercopa. And they have stayed that way.

So, we look now to the Club World Cup for the chance to unstick the titles, because the world traveling title will be contested in that tournament, but the European title will not. The only way for the world title to enter the Club World Cup is for Liverpool to take it there, as the Reds just won the 2018-19 Champions League and are the European entrant. Each continent gets one.

There is some chance of Liverpool holding the titles when it plays its World Cup opener in Qatar on Dec. 18. The Premiership and Serie A both are well represented in the European competitions, which both are now in the late qualifying rounds.

AS Roma, the team now holding the traveling titles, is entered in the group phase of the secondary tournament, the Europa League, along with Lazio of Serie A. That phase starts on Sept. 19. Another Italian club, Torino, is in qualifying for the same tournament and looks like a good bet to make the final round of group qualifying after a 5-0 first-leg win against the Belorussian squad Shakhtyor Soligorsk.

England has three clubs in the Europa League. Arsenal and Manchester United are entered to the group stage, and Wolverhampton Wanderers won the first leg of their present qualifier 4-0 against the Armenian squad Pyunik. We don't know how these Italian and English clubs will be grouped yet, but a path from AS Roma to Liverpool runs through this tournament, and the group stage will be about done when the club World Cup takes place.

The potential for interplay between England and Italy is even greater in the Champions League, in which each league enters four clubs directly to the group phase, which begins on Sept. 18. The English clubs are Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea. The Italian clubs are Juventus, Napoli, Inter Milan and Atalanta.

It would be rather surprising if the championships weren't in the hands of one of these clubs and some point in the next few months, and probably several. But we never know. We could end up sending these titles to six countries and it would be fascinating, but the only way to unstick them is to send them with Liverpool to the club World Cup.

In view of the difficulty involved in separating some continent's championship from the world championship, a more-or-less pragmatic decision came from headquarters this spring granting the International Champions Cup (ICC) standing for contesting the world traveling title.

The decision came with some reluctance because the ICC is a series of friendlies in which American promotors bring top European clubs to the states and other locales for preseason exhibition matches. Exhibition matches don't count because they shouldn't.

But that bullet will be bit here because the ICC brings in legitimate top-tier clubs who face off against each other multiple times, the crowds are terrific, and enough of a tendency has been established for teams entering this exhibition at the start of the year to still be standing for the final rounds of the UEFA Champions League. The last three years say that much, anyway.

In 2016, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain won ICC championships and Real Madrid played in the tournament. At the end of that season, in the 2017 European Champions League, Juventus beat Real Madrid in the finals and PSG made it to the round of 16.

When the 2017 ICC rolled around, Barcelona and Inter Milan won championships, while Real Madrid, Roma and Bayern Munich played in the tournament. At the of that year, in the 2018 Champions League, Real Madrid won it all, but Roma and Bayern both reached the semifinals.

Tottenham Hotspur, which hadn't been a huge player in Europe, won the ICC in 2018. Turned out to not be a freak occurrence, because Hotspur made it to the 2019 Champions League final before losing to Liverpool. Of the eight Champions League quarterfinalists, six -- Hotspur, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Juventus and Barcelona -- were in the ICC that preseason. Another seven clubs from that ICC -- Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, PSG, Lyon, Bayern and Roma -- reached the Champions League round of 16.

It would be better for our purposes if the promotors would mix in some South American, Asian and African clubs, but what they have here certainly counts for "international" competition. So, it was decided to put the world title on the line in the ICC, but not the European.

It happened that at the end of 2018-19, the team holding the two traveling championships was AS Roma, and Roma was going to enter the ICC in 2019. But anything involving AS Roma is complicated these days.

At the end of a difficult season, Roma was sixth in Serie A, which qualifies for nothing better than a preliminary round entry in the Europa League. On June 12, AS Roma passed along its regrets that it could not compete in the ICC because it now had to deal with Europa preliminary rounds as early as July 23. The ICC was scheduled for July 16-Aug. 10.

The fifth-place team in Serie A, which qualifies directly to the group stage of the Europa League, was AC Milan. UEFA tried to ban AC Milan for two years last summer over spending beyond the prescribed limits from 2015-17. The club fought off the ban temporarily last year by appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, a European quasi-judicial body that ultimately answers to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.

But AC Milan apparently tired of fighting and agreed to a one-year ban if UEFA would quit hounding them. So, on June 19, the club announced that it would sit out the Europa League. And that means AC Roma moves up one spot, to the one occupied by AC Milan, and now goes directly to the group stage.

So, the world traveling could have gone up for good fun in the ICC, but for poor timing. If AC Milan and UEFA could have reached an agreement two weeks earlier, it would have.

Amid turmoil, AS Roma completes best year in Euro traveler

The 2018-19 season was difficult for AS Roma, which lost a good number of people over it. But AS Roma did come out of it with the best season of anyone in the European traveling championship.

It would seem that there's some tension between the Romans and the Americans where AS Roma is concerned.

The Roman squad endured a difficult year in 2018-19, highlighted by internal disputes. A group of American investors bought the club from a Roman family in 2011, but Roma hasn't won a major trophy since.

For some reason, the Roma management team sold Egyptian power-hitter Mohamed Salah and goaltender Allison to Liverpool at the start of the season. The forward responded with 30 goals for his new club, 22 of them in the Premiership. The goaltender played a key role enabling Liverpool to win the Champions League.

The Romans were eliminated from the Champions League in March and fired their manager. When it ended, Roma finished sixth in Serie A, ticketing the club for qualifying in the Europa League, Europe's secondary competition.

Ending the year, the club decided to not resign one of their greats of all time, Daniele De Rossi, infuriating supporters. Another of the team's all-time greats, Francisco Totti, quit his position with the club's management. Totti, who retired as a player a couple of years ago, complained that the American ownership, led by Chairman James Palotta, wanted "the Romans out of Roma."

De Rossi and Totti both are born-and-bred Romans. De Rossi later signed with Boca Juniors in Argentina.

Little did any of them know that they were just wrapping up a pretty good 2018-19 season in the European and world traveling championships.

AS Roma took the championships into the season and defended them four times before losing to Real Madrid in the Champions League. The prizes kicked around Spain and Russia for about six months before Juventus carted them back to Italy with a 3-0 win at home against Atlético Madrid in a March 12 Champions League meeting.

A month later, Roma won it again, then defended it six times to complete the season. Roma will take the championship to begin the 2019-20 campaign.

For the year, Roma had 11 games of championship, most of any club in Europe. Sevilla, which has won the championship at least once in all three years of the competition, finished second in 2018-19 with seven games.

Overall, Real Madrid has a commanding lead in the European traveling championship with 44 games. Roma moved to second place with 19 games, followed by Barcelona with 17 and Sevilla with 14.

Barcelona sets dominance records in 2017-18 Spanish soccer chase

Barcelona knocked off the rust after losing the European traveling soccer title to Real Madrid, running through 36 games in defense of the Spanish traveling soccer championship.

Barcelona began the 2017-18 soccer season with a chance to make history as the first club to simultaneously hold the world, European and Spanish traveling championships. That didn't happen, but Barcelona still ended the season historically.

Ending 2016-17, Barcelona had been the Spanish and European champ for six games after a 3-2 win at Real Madrid on April 15. But the world championship took a much different path through that inaugural season of 2016-17, so Real Madrid held that title when it ended.

Which only meant that the world and European championships were somehow going to be unified in the Supercopa de España between those clubs to start 2017-18. However, only Barcelona could have unified those two titles with the Spanish title, because the national titles are contested only in the top domestic leagues. Thus, the Spanish title was not on the line.

Anyway, Real Madrid won both legs to start the season and marched off with the world and European championships. Holding only the Spanish title, Barcelona made history with it. Barça added 36 title defenses to the six games of title it brought into the season, adding up to a 42-game title streak that stands as the world traveling championship record in any soccer competition.

Barcelona finally lost the domestic traveler in one of the most stunning upsets of the season, a 5-4 loss at tiny Levante on May 13.

Thus, Barcelona stormed to a huge lead in the all-time traveling championship three years into the competition. The Catalans now have 64 games of championship all-time, with Real Madrid well behind at 34.

Not for nothing, Barcelona also improved its all-time positions in the world and European championships, despite the two losses against Real Madrid that began the season.

Barcelona tops table in 2017-18 world traveler

Despite being unable to wrestle for world traveling soccer title from Real Madrid to begin 2017-18, Barcelona won it back later in the year and increased its all-time lead in the competition.

During the first year of traveling soccer championships across Europe and the world, each prize took a completely different route to the same destination. That destination was the opening game of the 2017-18 season for the holders of those championships, Barcelona and Real Madrid.

At the start of 2016-17, Barcelona held the world championship, but Real Madrid held it at the end. At the start of 2016-17, Real Madrid held the European championship, but Barcelona held it at the end.

And then the two met to begin the 2017-18 season for the Supercopa de España, which pits the previous season's top tier domestic champion against the winner of the previous season's national cup competition. That would be Real Madrid, as defending La Liga champs, against Barcelona, which won the Copa del Rey.

Real Madrid won both legs, convincingly, and thus added the European title to the world title it already held. Unfortunately, the paths for the two championships never diverged. Real Madrid was, indeed, headed for the Club World Cup in December and would have at least put up the world title against a club from the United Arab Emirates (Al-Jazira) and a club from Brazil (Grêmio).

But Los Blancos fell to Real Betis in La Liga on Oct. 20 and the titles passed eight times through seven Spanish clubs before Barcelona took them from Eibar on Feb. 17. Then, Barcelona went on the best tour of the season, ten title defenses, ending the season with the best showing in Europe and the world.

Barcelona's first defense was a 1-1 draw at Chelsea in the Champions League. European wins against Chelsea and AS Roma followed. But the Roman club won the Champion's League rematch in Italy and both champions moved to Serie A for a moment. 

But AS Roma had to tangle with Liverpool in the Champions League. The Reds won their opener, 5-2, at home and defended it once in the Premiership before the return match in Rome, won by the Italian side. AS Roma finished out the season with three title defenses in Serie A.

Italy and England became the third and fourth countries to hold the world championship, after Spain and France both had it in 2016-17. 

Barça loses Euro traveler, gains it back

Barcelona lost the European traveling soccer championship to Real Madrid starting 2017-18, but took it back later and kept it for long enough to gain slightly on its rivals in the all-time standings. And Barça might even be ahead, depending on how we keep score.

What can be said about the European traveling soccer championship in 2017-18 that can't be said about the world championship played out at the same time?

Very little. It happened that the season began with the European titlist, Barcelona, taking on the world champ, Real Madrid, in the Supercopa de España. Short of two draws, the championships were going to be unified.

Real Madrid won both games decisively, and, thus took the European title on the same path that the world title was taking. Both paths ended the season with AS Roma.

Although Real Madrid unified the championships, Barcelona gained on the Madrid side in both competitions. Barcelona picked up both titles in mid-February and held them for 11 games, the best showing of the year across Europe and the world.

Real Madrid remains the all-time leader in Europe with 42 games of championship, compared with 17 for second-place Barcelona. That's even after Barcelona out-gamed Read Madrid 11 to six in 2017-18.

Of course, 27 of those wins for Real Madrid were in the caretaker role to begin the championship. Real Madrid absolutely was a legitimate caretaker and proved it by defending that provisional title 27 times. But if we date it back to when the first championship actually was won on the field, then Barcelona has a 17-15 lead all-time in games of championship.

Barcelona only Spanish Big Six side to win half its games

Barcelona won seven of its 10 games in the Spanish Big Six for 2017-18. No one else, including Real Madrid, won more than three.

Barcelona cruised to the first Spanish Big Six title in 2017-18, perhaps because it was too difficult for any other club to win a game in this group. 

Not even world-beating Real Madrid could win half of its games in the Big Six.

Barcelona won seven of its 10 games. Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid each won three. That's a tie for second place. But neither finished far from the relegation zone, which is occupied by Sevilla and Real Sociedad.

Valencia produced a dominating season in the Middle Six, earning top tier promotion along with second place Eibar. Dropping from the Middle Six to the bottom are Espanyol and Malaga.

Real Betis and Gerona tied on top of the Little Six(ish) and are moving to the next division up in 2018-19.