fans-fcb.blogspot.com || Four consecutive leagues on the horizon

Anna Segura

Obviously, one of the main objectives of the next season will be another league championship. That would be the fourth under Guardiola, and would match the achievement of the Dream Team, who became the first Barça team to win four leagues in a row.

On Thursday, defender Gerard Piqué spoke precisely about that when he said next season they would be aiming “to win the fourth league in a row”. But that won’t be an easy thing to do, for winning four consecutive leagues is something extremely rare in the major European tournaments. 

            Equalling the Dream Team

Pep Guardiola often said this season that he considered “the league to be the most important title. The Champions League is more glamorous, but the competition that shows who the best team of the year has been is the league”. And in that sense, FC Barcelona have certainly made their mark over the last three seasons, having won the league every year since their current manager took charge. One more would draw the side level with their predecessors coached by Johan Cruyff, who were crowned Spanish champions every year from 1990/91 to 1993/94). 

            Rare achievement

Other than the Dream Team, only one other team has managed to win that many consecutive championships, and that team is Real Madrid. In the 1960s they won as many as five leagues in a row between 1960/61 and 1964/65 and equalled that record in the 1980s when they won every title from 1985/86 to 1989/90). 

            No four-time winners in Premiership or Bundesliga

No team has ever managed to win the league four times in a row in England or Germany. Three is the record in the former, first by Huddersfield Town (1923/24 to 1925/26), then by Arsenal (1932/33 to 1934/35), Liverpool (1981/82 to 1984/85) and Manchester United have done it twice (1998/99 to 2000/01 and 2006/07 to 2008/09). 

In the Bundesliga, which was created in 1963, three is also the record, achieved three times by Bayern Munich (1971/72 to 1973/74; 1984/85 to 1986/87; 1998/99 to 2000/01), and once by Borussia Monchengladbach (1974/75 to 1976/77). 

                Inter in Italy

Inter Milan is the most recent team to have put together a massive run of domestic titles. In 2005/06 they won the first of five Serie A titles in a row, a streak that was finally interrupted by local rivals Milan this season. We have to go back to the 1930s to find the only other Italian team to win five in a row, Juventus (1930/31 to 1934/35), although between 1945/46 and 1948/49, Torino won four. 

In France, Olympique Lyon won a record six league titles between 2002/03 and 2007/08, beating the previous record set by Olympique Marseille, who had won four from 1988/89 to 1991/92.