Gone to the Dogs!

It's not that simple though. Clubs in leagues have always played friendlies in their winter breaks as weeks of not playing sees players lose their match fitness. Just look at the MLS, they are in the playoffs right now and the 1st round is the best of 3, LA Galaxy won the 1st two matches in their tie so they don't play the 3rd match so with an international break coming up they won't play for weeks while their opponent could have to play their 3rd match so they are already looking to arrange a friendly.

So with La Liga it really depends on how seriously the top 4 take them, if its just a series of friendly with lots of subs then its not an issue, if they play it seriously and you have basically the 1st 11 starting every match and most of them finishing then its an issue

 

Sure there is some greed from the clubs in the choice of where they are going to play (although its also obviously hot and dry there even in the winter which is why during the 1 week break the PL have been having many of the clubs went for a week in the Middle East for training) but you absolutely don't leave players not playing some football for the 3 weeks break they have (and for some its 4). There absolutely is a difference in playing competitive matches though and lower intensity friendlies. It's the number of competitive games players are complaining about more as the intensity of these is much higher

 

I was actually born in Carlisle but my dad worked for Esso and when I was around 2 they decided to consulate all the small regional offices into a few central locations. So all the office based roles for the North and Scotland was moved to Trafford so we moved to the greater Manchester region. As such I've never really felt like 'm from Carlisle, I don't really remember living there and even when we would go up to Cumbria for atleast a week as part of our summer holidays we would generally stay near my mums family who all lived own the edge of the Lake District and we would just go up to Carlisle to visit my dads side of the family for a single day.

Most of my friends actually supported Bolton as we were closer to Bolton than Manchester itself and United weren't exactly great in the 80's but my Dad went and watched the Busby babes a few times with my Granddad. My grandad was Irish and like alot of Irish at that time they followed United because of Best.

I actually have more affinity to your opponents today than I do Carlisle. Towards the end of the 80's my dads's job was consolidated further and he was moved to the Heathrow location (if you remember the IRA mortar attacks on Heathrow in 94 one of those happened on the edge of Esso's land). We moved to Farnborough in Hampshire which is a London commuter town thats right next to Aldershot. Being a commuter town next to the town that is the home of the British Army all my fiends were from all over the UK and we all supporters a variety of different clubs, apart from those who supported London clubs we generally couldn't go and watch our own club so we would go to watch one of the local clubs who had a home game on Saturday at 3pm, this was usually Farnborough but if they were playing away we would go to Aldershot or one of lower down clubs such as Cove or maybe a bit further for the likes of Basingstoke

 

Again though the Spanish sides have always played friendlies in their winter break, often against teams from countries who were also on a Winter break. Some of these in open stadiums, others behind closed doors. It's like how you will play matches in Pre-season and not just train, you can only get a certain amount of fitness in training, you need matches to obtain the next level.

Yes the Spanish clubs have seen this as a way to make more money from them but they would be playing friendlies even if they all had to be behind closed doors as having them play say 45mins is more useful than an extra day of training