This weekend, the final major European league concluded as Serie A played out their last round of matches.
It’s been an unprecedented 2019/20 campaign across Europe - and the world - but it’s now finally over almost 12 months after it began.
While nobody could have predicted a global pandemic would halt the season for months - and force it to be cancelled in some countries - there weren’t too many surprises when it came to the title winners in the top five leagues.
Ok, Liverpool won their first ever Premier League title but it wasn't exactly a shock to see Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain win their respective leagues.
But how competitive was each division this season?
Well, an interesting graphic has emerged that shows the real points gap between the title winners of each of the top five leagues.
Let’s look at each league individually:
Premier League
Liverpool claimed the title by a ridiculous 18 points as nearest challengers Manchester City lost nine matches during the campaign. Third-place Manchester United were a massive 33 points adrift of the champions.
This season, the Premier League was by far the least competitive league in Europe’s top five.
La Liga
Real Madrid ended up winning the title by five points ahead of Barcelona. Interestingly, both Atletico Madrid and Sevilla finished 17 points behind the leaders meaning La Liga had four teams within that margin of the eventual winners, while the Premier League had zero.
Serie A
It seems strange to call Serie A the most competitive league in Europe’s top five leagues when Juventus won the title for a ninth consecutive season. But they only pipped Inter Milan by one point, while Atalanta and Lazio were five points adrift. Fifth-placed Roma and sixth-placed AC Milan were both closer to Juventus than Man City were to Liverpool as they came 13 and 17 points behind the champions respectively. Even seventh-placed Napoli can be seen in the graphic as they finished 19 points behind Juve.
Bundesliga
For most of the season, it looked as though we were going to have a proper title race in Germany. Then Bayern went on to win it by 13 points ahead of Borussia Dortmund. Remember, Italy had five teams within 13 points of their champions. RB Leipzig were 16 points behind, Borussia Monchengladbach a further point adrift while fifth-placed Bayer Leverkusen were 19 back.
Ligue 1
The French league finished with teams either playing 27 or 28 matches so still had another 10 match days to go. That didn’t stop PSG from finishing 12 points clear - a lead that would surely have been extended if the season had been completed. Third place Stade Rennais were 18 points behind - the same amount that Man City finished behind Liverpool - while Lille were a point further back.
