Madrid (AFP)

The draw between Eibar and Celta Vigo (0-0) this Saturday for the first day of the Spanish championship gave the timid start of this Liga season 2020-2021, in the absence of the big stars and in the anonymity of the small stadium of Ipurua.

A stadium of barely 8,000 seats, without an audience, neither goals, nor big stars: it is with soft steps that La Liga signed its return on Saturday afternoon in Eibar, hung by Celta Vigo for this curtain raiser of the Spanish Championship 2020-2021.

Real Madrid will return next weekend to Real Sociedad (Sunday 19:00 GMT) and Barca will enter the contention on the weekend of September 26-27 - teams that qualify for European competitions benefit from a few days of extra preparation for finishing the previous season later.

Eibar and Celta Vigo, who finished at the bottom of the table last season (17th place for Celta, 14th for Eibar), led a committed match, like the red card inflicted on Pape Diop for a too heavy tackle at the 87th.

But the lack of preparation and the lack of pace, as Basque technician José Luis Mendilibar feared, were notable, and led to a game with some chances, admittedly, but without a goal.

- More goals expected -

Ipurua had already been the scene of the first closed-door match of 2020 due to the novel coronavirus pandemic: it was March 10, on the occasion of the late 24th day of La Liga, against the neighbor of Real Sociedad (2-1 for Real), a few days before the suspension of football in Spain and confinement, one of the strictest in Europe, which paralyzed the country for nearly four months.

After an express end of the championship, with eleven days played in one month (June 11 - July 19) to lead to the coronation of Real Madrid, and marked by empty stadiums and the health protocol established by LaLiga, nothing has changed for the start of the 2020-2021 season.

Fifty-five days after the end of the previous fiscal year (the shortest time between two Spanish championships, ahead of the 62 days that had separated the 1998-1999 and 1999-2000 seasons), the pandemic continues to steadily hit Spain.

On Monday, the country of 47 million inhabitants exceeded the bar of 500,000 diagnosed cases (525,549 cases), which represents, compared to its population, a proportion approximately twice as large as that of France or Italy.

In the last two weeks, 7 to 8,000 cases per day have been detected on average, of which about a third in the region of Madrid, epicenter of the epidemic as in the spring.

And La Liga is not spared: forced to pass detection PCR tests before resuming collective training in August, players have tested positive in almost all the teams in the championship.

Among the players in this first La Liga 2020-2021 meeting, Eibar has counted two cases and Celta Vigo three, for example.

In total, around sixty La Liga players have been infected.

More goals are expected for Granada - Athletic Bilbao (16:30 GMT) tonight, and especially for the match between the promoted Cadiz and Osasuna (19:00 GMT), the two other posters of this first day of resumption of Liga, before the entry in contention with Real Sociedad, Villarreal and Valencia on Sunday.

© 2020 AFP