More than seven months later, the Primera Iberdrola starts up this Saturday with the start of the 2020/2021 season.
After the long hiatus due to the pandemic, the main women's soccer competition in Spain returns with several novelties and a few certainties, such as that of Barça, current champion and again a team to beat this year.
The Blaugranas, who won the tournament last season without losing a single game - they won 19 games and drew two until the league was suspended - continue with the same block of players with whom they also reached the Champions League semi-final, in where they lost against Wolfsburg (1-0) in a frustrating clash in which they were fed up with wasting chances.
This compact and consolidated group, which has been joined by two promises such as goalkeeper Cata Coll (19 years old) and forward Giovana Queiroz (17), opens this Sunday against a rookie: the new Real Madrid (13.30, Teledeporte).
The white club, after completing the absorption for some 300,000 euros of the Tacón - a Madrid team founded in 2014 - this summer, debuts with the name already made official in the elite of Spanish football, with the boost that this implies for the First Iberdrola, almost two decades after Barcelona and Atlético did.
Like his embryo last year, he faces the Catalans on the first day.
Then it was at the Johan Cruyff Stadium, in front of some 5,000 spectators, and Barça beat Tacón 9-1 in their debut in the elite - they had been promoted the previous season.
This Sunday will be in Valdebebas, without an audience due to the pandemic, and with a reinforced Real Madrid.
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The team led by David Aznar has signed, above all, young and national talent and has spruced up the defense, one of their moles last season, when they finished tenth with 33 goals for and 48 against, the worst defensive brand in the category .
The team has joined the goalkeeper Misa Rodríguez (21 years old), the defenders Ivana Andrés (26), Marta Corredera (29) and Kenti Robles (29), the midfielders Teresa Abelleira (20), Marta Cardona (25) and Maite Oroz ( 22) and the attacker Olga Carmona (20).
A bunch of additions to complement Swedish international forwards Sofia Jakobsson and Kosovare Asllani, who arrived at the Whites last year.
Real Madrid, which has yet to compare its level against Barcelona and Atlético - dominators of the league in this decade with eight of the last ten titles - has the first three places on the periscope, which this season will award the ticket to the Champions League - previously only the first two seats did.
In this First Iberdrola, there are also two more teams than last season: there are 18 clubs, instead of 16, due to the fact that there were no relegations but there were promotions.
The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), organizer of the tournament, made this
guarantee
decision
after the suspension of the league due to the pandemic: Santa Teresa (Badajoz) and Eibar, who were leaders in their respective Second Division groups, rose, and Espanyol, who had only five points, and Valencia, the latter, were saved when the championship was suspended with nine games to go.
This year, instead, there will be four teams that lose the category.
With the coronavirus ravaging the country —Madrid and nine other municipalities in the region have restricted mobility from this Friday at 10:00 p.m. and every day between 9,000 and 12,000 positives are reported in Spain—, the Primera Iberdrola, a non-professional league, will try to that the season does not end prematurely or remain on
standby
if the epidemiological situation worsens, as happened last season during the first wave of the pandemic.
The Higher Sports Council (CSD) approved a protocol on September 10 for the return of non-professional tournaments at the national level and the RFEF has made 200,000 antigen tests available to the teams - rapid tests whose results are obtained in about 15 minutes—, although it is the health authorities of each community who decide how many tests should be done and how often.
The delay in the achievement of the protocol has already caused the league to be delayed for a month - it was scheduled to start on September 5 - and the great concern of the teams is that the championship will be canceled again.
The match of the first day between Real Sociedad and Rayo, for example, has been postponed since the Vallecanas did not start the preseason until a protocol for the return was approved.
The suspension of the tournament would be a huge setback for women's football, an expanding universe in Spain that has been interspersing one of lime and another of sand for months: in February the first collective agreement for women's football in Europe was approved, but later it was suspended the league;
days ago the CSD announced that the competition will be considered professional next year, which will become the first women's tournament to achieve this status in the country and will thus join the First and Second men's divisions and the ACB, although the mess of television rights, with the RFEF and Mediapro at war, remains unsolved and for the moment not all the games will be televised.
Beyond the vagaries of the pandemic, the competition has another great contender, Atlético de Madrid, who was second last year and champion the previous one.
The mattresses have not beaten Barcelona since February 2019 - they have accumulated four defeats and a draw - but this summer they have been reinforced with several internationals - Italian defender Alia Guagni (33 years old), English midfielder Jade Moore (29) or the forward Turid Knaak (29) - and they competed greatly last August in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, where they lost to the Blaugranas by the minimum (1-0) despite arriving after ten days of quarantine, with only four training sessions and with five players isolated by covid-19.
It also remains to be seen how Levante performs, which was third last year.
This summer he has lost Marta Corredera (Real Madrid) and Ona Battle (Manchester United), although he has managed to keep Alba Redondo and Eva Navarro - two talented young people who have already made their debut in the senior team - and signed Irene Guerrero (Betis).
Real Sociedad, led for another year by its star, Nahikari, also oppose the upper zone;
Athletic, which has lost Maite Oroz (Real Madrid) and Damaris Egurrola (Everton) and has Ane Azkona, the pearl of the team, recovering from the torn cruciate ligament that he suffered last June;
and Deportivo Abanca, the revelation of last season, in which it achieved fourth place in its debut in the elite.
All of them are hunting for Barça, the great favorite to lift the title.
The first league match
These are the matches of the first league day:
CDEF Logroño - Levante UD.
Saturday, 11.30.
Las Gaunas Stadium.
Espanyol - Atlético de Madrid.
Saturday, 4:00 p.m.
Dani Jarque Sports City.
Athletic Club - Deportivo Abanca.
Saturday, 4:00 p.m.
Lezama.
Sporting de Huelva - Valencia Féminas.
Sunday, 11.00.
Sports field of the Order.
Eibar - Betis.
Sunday, 11.00.
Lower Unbe.
CD Santa Teresa - Seville.
Sunday, 12.00.
The Old Nursery.
UD Granadilla - Madrid CFF.
Sunday, 13.00.
Municipal La Palmera.
Real Madrid - FC Barcelona.
Sunday, 1.30pm.
Real Madrid sports city.
Real Sociedad - Rayo Vallecano.
Postponed.