60 years since 1960 league title

It was on 17 April 1960 that Barça won La Liga for the eighth time, and the second in a row, by thumping Real Zaragoza 5-0 on the final day with goals from Gensana, Suárez, Segarra, Eulogio Martínez and Evaristo.

The title race had gone down to the very last day. Real Madrid won 1-0 at UD Las Palmas on the same day, meaning the two rivals ended neck and neck with 46 points each.

In those, the tie-break system that was used in football is what was called ‘goal average’, worked out by dividing the number of goals scored by the number of goals conceded. Barça had a GA of 3.07 compared to 2.56 for Madrid.

The system would gradually get phased out of European football and replaced by the current ‘goal difference’ method. Even so, Barça would still have won the league using the modern system (with a +36 GD as opposed to Madrid’s +34), and had 3-points-for-a-win been operational back then, would have finished a point ahead of the all-whites.

Barça’s team on that final day was: Ramallets, Olivella, Rodri, Gràcia, Segarra, Gensana, Coll, Evaristo, Eulogio Martínez, Suárez and Villaverde.

Eulogio Martínez ended as top goalscorer in the competition with 23 goals in 24 game.

With Barça in such emphatic form, nobody could have imagined that it would take another fourteen years for the club to win the title again, in 1973/74 with Johan Cruyff, and a further ten years before Terry Venables led the team to the next title after that in 1984/85.