Sevilla are top of La Liga and nobody saw it coming

Six points from six, a comeback against Rayo and a 1-3 win at San Mamés: Luis García Plaza's Sevilla lead La Liga. Why the lead is real but the table still misleads.

Sevilla are top of La Liga. That is not a typo or a pre-season table: after Saturday 22 August, Luis García Plaza's side are the only team in the 2026-27 La Liga standings with a perfect record, having come from behind to beat Rayo Vallecano at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán and then taken San Mamés apart 1-3. For a club that has spent the last few years living in the uncomfortable half of the table, six points from six is more than a statistical quirk. It is Sevilla's best start since 2021-22, Julen Lopetegui's season in charge, and a first proper warning to anyone who had already pencilled in this weekend's results on their coupon or in their prediction league with friends.

Sevilla top La Liga, and they did it the hard way

What stands out is not just that Sevilla have won twice, but the manner of it. On matchday one, on 15 August at the Sánchez-Pizjuán, Rayo Vallecano went ahead inside four minutes through Álvaro García and silenced the ground for the best part of an hour. Jon Guridi levelled from the penalty spot on 52 minutes. The winner did not arrive until the 97th, also from twelve yards, with Peque Fernández holding his nerve at the death.

Seven days later in Bilbao the plot was different but the outcome was just as emphatic. Joaquín 'Oso' Gauna put Sevilla ahead on 15 minutes, Chidera Ejuke doubled the lead on 50 and Isaac Romero made it three on 57. Aitor Paredes headed one back from a corner on 71, long after the game had stopped being a contest.

• Matchday 1 (15 August, Sánchez-Pizjuán): Sevilla 2-1 Rayo Vallecano — Álvaro García (4'), Guridi pen (52'), Peque pen (97').
• Matchday 2 (22 August, San Mamés): Athletic Club 1-3 Sevilla — Gauna (15'), Ejuke (50'), Isaac Romero (57'), Paredes (71').
• Record so far: two wins from two, six points, five scored and two conceded.

San Mamés, 1-3: Terzic's opening night turned into a nightmare

Bilbao had cast someone else in the lead role. This was Edin Terzic's first competitive match as Athletic head coach, one of the most talked-about appointments of the Spanish summer, and San Mamés had turned up for a party. It lasted eleven minutes. Yuri Berchiche's straight red card, furiously disputed by the home side, left Athletic a man down before the quarter-hour and turned the rest of the evening into damage limitation.

Sevilla were ruthless about it. Isaac Romero was the most influential player on the pitch: he set up Ejuke for the second and then punished a mistake by Areso for the third, in a second half where the visitors used their extra man without ever needing to rush. Local radio summed the whole thing up in a single word.

For Athletic it is an awkward read: two matchdays gone, a thin return at home and a brand-new project starting uphill. For Sevilla, winning at San Mamés in those circumstances is exactly the kind of result that changes the mood of a dressing room in August.

Why this La Liga table is still a little misleading

Here comes the asterisk, and it matters more than the headlines suggest: the 2026-27 La Liga table is not yet comparing every club on equal terms. Barcelona and Real Madrid opened their campaigns by playing matchday two before matchday one, and they catch up this week — Real Madrid host Real Sociedad at the Bernabéu on Wednesday 26 August, Barcelona face Athletic on Thursday 27.

So Sevilla's lead is real, but it has a short shelf life. Until matchday one is complete, reading the points column on its own will fool you. What is not in question is the perfect record, and that does not depend on anyone else's games in hand.

What Sevilla's start tells you about predicting football

A start like this is a very cheap reminder of something that is expensive to learn the hard way: in August, the badge on the shirt predicts far less than you think. Sevilla's two matches make the case beautifully.

• Two matchdays is a tiny sample. Six points do not make Sevilla title contenders, just as one point does not doom Athletic. Trustworthy trends take ten or twelve rounds to show up.
• Games turn on details nobody can forecast: two penalties against Rayo, one of them in the 97th minute, and a red card on 11 minutes at San Mamés.
• Bookmakers' odds are a better starting point than gut feel, but they did not see a 1-3 in Bilbao coming either.
• The draw remains the most undervalued outcome. Early in a season, with teams still short of rhythm, the tie comes up more often than most people put on their coupon.
• A new manager is a genuine unknown. A debut is fresh information, not a guarantee of anything.

Put another way: the point of a football coupon or an office prediction league is not to nail all fifteen results. It is to be wrong less often than everyone else on the strange games. And this weekend served up a couple of those.

If the opening fortnight has already caught you out, this might be the moment to find out how good your reading of a weekend really is. On quiniPrats you can set up a prediction league with friends in a couple of minutes, put everyone's calls on the table each matchday and see who handles a weekend like this best. No pressure and no rush — the season is long, and we already know the August table tells a few white lies.