Real Madrid: La Liga Title Proves Barcelona Far from World's Best Side

Barcelona has fallen from their perch as the world's best football team. Just a year ago, there was not another team that had any reasonable argument to holding this claim. 

Now that debate is wide open, and storied Barcelona has no right to be involved. That is what happens when you finish second in your own league. 

Real Madrid officially became La Liga champs on Wednesday with a 3-0 win over Athletic Bilbao. This was Madrid's 32nd Spanish League title and the first in four years. 

In the three years since their last La Liga triumph, Barcelona had won three straight La Liga titles—and they piled up numerous other titles to go with it. 

In the process of knocking Barca from atop La Liga, they have eliminated them from any consideration as being the world's best side. 

This was not a position that Barcelona gave up easily. They were closing their La Liga gap on Madrid in a big way, having won 11 straight Liga contests leading up to their April 21st showdown with Madrid, and most of those wins came in dominating fashion. 

Had they been able to take down Madrid in that match, their chance of a fourth straight La Liga crown would have been alive and well. 

Madrid wasn't about to have it. They won that contest in a thrilling 2-1 fashion on a late goal by Cristiano Ronaldo. 

That high-pressure match is the exact kind of setting where the world's best rises to the occasion; Barcelona didn't have enough gas in the tank to pull it off and Madrid did. 

You better believe that Barcelona will be gunning and ready to reclaim their crown as the world's best next season.

As for this one, they are stuck in the pile of also-rans.