Here we are. The La Liga season has just started up, and now we get to watch the league with the world's three best players, its two best teams, and the saddest hodgepodge of patsies since Enter the Dragon. In spite of these financial realities, Spain managed to produce Europe's wildest title race last season, as well as a handful of second-tier teams playing some of the best soccer you could see outside of the Champions League. Will this year match up?

As Andr from Outkast once said, "we-we-well, yes and no." As is customary in Spain, the rich stay rich, the pretty good get poached and have to rely on the country's seemingly inexhaustable farm of young talent to step up, and the bad are, frankly, godawful.

The pros: Each of the top three teams spent stupid moneyby the end of the transfer window, it's likely that all three will have shelled out over 100 million bringing in new playerstrying to strengthen their squads. The world's most electric player of last season, Luis Surez, now (well, not exactly now) plays in Spain. The most electric player of this summer's World Cup, James Rodrguez, also joins the fun. Oh, and so does maybe the best player on the World Cup's winning team, Toni Kroos. This isn't a shootout. It's a goddamn nuclear war. The battle for the fourth Champions League spot will be similarly tenacious, with maybe five teams thinking they can make the continent's most prestigious competition should they play their cards right.

The cons: Does anyone really believe returning champs Atltico Madrid can challenge for the title again? They have spent oodles of Euros deepening their roster, and seeing how their new star-in-the-making Antoine Griezmann performs in a freer role alongside better teammates has me envisioning a "#TeamGrizi 2014-15 Skills and Goals" video so badass I don't even mute the dubstep in the background, but they are still losing their best player, Diego Costa, as well as a key defensive piece in Filipe Lus. And they did only win the league with the worst Bara in years and a Real Madrid completely focused on La Decima.

A little further down the table, the fourth-place contenders will have to cope with the usual summer-window raid on their talent. Griezmann goes to Atltico from Real Sociedad, Ivan Rakiti moved to Barcelona from Sevilla, Ander Herrera left Athletic Bilbao for Manchester United, and so on. Only Valencia can claim to have gotten stronger, thanks to the (probable?) completion of the long-rumored, still sort of hazy sale of the club to super rich guy Peter Lim. The rest of them will have to plug in some younger guys and count on their development, which, to be fair, is a pretty good bet when you're dealing with Spaniards.

But the very bottom is still fucking terrible. Actually, let's just start there.

This group of teams suuuuuuuuucks. If ever there was evidence that Spain has no business fielding 20 teams, this season is it. Real Madrid are going to send 5-plus goals past a few very talented teams this season, but running over tiny squads whose entire operating budget is less than Cristiano's weekly hair products expenses will be more slaughter than battle.

Case-in-point: Eibar and Crdoba. These two newly-promoted sides are as close to locks to get shoved right back down to the Segunda as there is in world soccer. There's basically no reason to even talk about their squads, save to mention that Eibar will trot out Derek Boateng, of the Boateng clan of super-athletes, and maybe Fiorentina loanee Ryder Matos can show for Crdoba why the young Brazilian attacker has been so hyped for years now.

Don't feel sorry for Eibar, though, whose run of consecutive promotions to reach the promised land has been nothing short of miraculous. They will undoubtedly enjoy every moment of their top-league experience, ass-whippings and all.

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Ain't No Liga Like The One I Got: Your 2014-15 La Liga Preview