IT REALLY can't have been much fun being part of Napoleon's inglorious retreat from the march towards Moscow in 1812 - bad decisions about when to attack, fatigue, injury, mutiny and the appalling spectre of a campaign without end.

Many set out but few survived. Take away the muskets, the intense cold (plus admittedly the near 500,000 casualties) and all the descriptive words transfer nicely to sum up Spain's La Liga season.

Like the French withdrawal, which gave birth to the agreeable by-product of Tchaikovsky's thunderous 1812 Overture, the fact that Spain has served up a brutal, sapping, sometimes inglorious season riven with bad decisions and self interest has also given birth to one of the most rivetingfinale's to a footballing competition in many years.

Above all, even above quality, the key to winning and losing this title, which has seen holders FC Barcelona, the initially ponderous but now thunderous Real Madrid and sleek old Sevilla nose to nose for weeks, has been fitness.

Since last August we have seen ludicrous fixture scheduling by the Spanish league authorities, naked greed from some of the La Liga clubs and players cracking up on television - it has been the apogee of the modern assumption that footballers can get faster, fitter and stronger each year while playing for 11 months and not resting properly.

Take Real Madrid. Their approach to the finishing line has been marvellous to watch - like Red Rum catching Crisp in the 1973 Grand National. Barcelona, like Crisp, have been carrying top weight (sorry Ronaldinho) and they have been hearing the crowd roar and the approaching hooves in equal measure - but for months they have looked to be running in slow motion. Not for want of trying - just sheer and utter exhaustion. Mental and physical.

Fabio Capello inherited a squad where failure had become institutionalised. All the old soaks kept dreaming of parole, claiming that they wouldn't re-offend but given a couple of months they were back doing porridge. Ronaldo was fat, Raul had lost his standards, Beckham had lost his fitness edge and was moping about not being "loved" enough to be given a new deal.

Guti was just poncing about everywhere like a shaggy-haired teenager with a face like Harry Enfield in Kevin and Perry. Nothing more sinister than Old Father Time was gnawing away at Roberto Carlos's allotted span as a top level footballer. For a number of years thanks to Florentino Perez's indulgence of his stars and the changing of first team coaches every three or four weekends Madrid's players lacked deep stamina or real match sharpness while lethargy had rotted team spirit.

Capello broke that with a physical preparation campaign in Austria which Jock Wallace and those who suffered on the sands of Gullane would have recognised. Add to the mix the fact that Ruud Van Nistelrooy had been kicked out of Manchester United because they thought his fitness was in terminal decline, the fact that Emerson and Cannavaro were in pieces after a long World Cup summer and short pre-season and you begin to understand what the underlying problem was when Madrid couldn't kill teams off when they came to defend at the Bernabéu.

That mid season stodge of losing at home to Levante and Recreativo, previously unthinkable, has given way to power of Terminator proportions as they have lost only one game in four months. They have won a record number of away games, Van Nistelrooy is in the upper echelons of any first season scorer in Madrid's 105 year history, Beckham is playing his best football since 1999,while Ronaldo has been shown the door, Raul doesn't look decrepit and Capello's side score more late goals than anyone else in Europe - Chelsea included.

"I feel powerful and about as fit as I have for several years" admits Madrid's top-scoring Dutch striker. "The pre-season training was brutal and you could see that several of the players who were new like me took time to settle in to what was needed here at Madrid. "But now I'm playing as well as I ever have and this season will end up close to my biggest total of goals."

The key to Real's revival, with respect to the melting pot of factors which have invigorated this mighty club, has been the fact that once out of the Champions League the rhythm of weekly training has been perfectly tailored. Always either one or two days off after a match (depending on whether the fixture is played on Saturday or Sunday), one day of physical hard work (Monday or Tuesday) a free day of personal choice for each player to choose ball work, gym work, jogging, massage etc, one day of warm ups and practice of pressing and five-a-sides, then the pre-match tactical work day.

There have been times, particularly in the streak of matches when Madrid won with a late goal to Valencia, fought back from 1-0 down to Sevilla, then scored injury time winners in consecutive matches against Espanyol and Recreativo when you'd swear that Popeye style muscles were bulging out of the famous white jerseys, but you couldn't tell who'd servedup the spinach.

Sevilla have been a different story. About 99% of Juande Ramos'ssquad didn't have a World Cup to trouble them. They train exceptionally with no trouble makers like Ronaldo or Guti, they have now undergone two superb pre-seasons in a row and it has needed unbelievable fitness in order to win two Uefa cups, one European Supercup, to qualify for the Champions League, to reach the Spanish Cup final and to sustain a La Liga challenge - all in the space of 12 months.

Take away the superstar culture, take away the impossibly short summer break, work on the pre-season, sign well and pull together and look what you get. Seville playing and organising football the way it once was before making money in Asia and playing an international tournament every single summer became obligatory.

Which leaves the wounded and tired Spanish champions of last season who conquered Europe and thrilled us all in 2005-6.

While Manchester United were opting for a totally revamped fitness programme in England in order to start like a train and overhaul the advantage which Chelsea had continuously built up in the previous two seasons, Barcelona's bosses were thinking purely about making money.

United were runaway champions of England, Barcelona have limped along all season. Ronaldinho was made to play friendly matches in Mexico and America around three weeks after finishing his World Cup - but without any pre-season training.

"I've lacked the ability to get away from my markers all season because of the impact of the summer" he complained this week. "I'm trying as hard as ever and no way have people seen all the tricks which I have up my sleeve this year because I just do not have the strength or stamina of recent years.

"If I beat one man I can't get past the last one and nothing will cure that apart from a good pre-season".

Luckily for Scottish football fans there is at least a chance that the remedy will be applied in St Andrews this summer given his refusal to play Copa America football for Brazil.

When FC Barcelona opted to tour North America and Mexico and ignored Edmilson, Eto'o and Oleguer telling them that there "will be a bill to pay physically and mentally by the end of the season", they forsook the option of being treated with respect. Fitness, mental and physical, has become the key factor in the modern footballing meat market.

Kaká recently admitted: "We were emotionally and psychologically battered at Milan in the first half of the season but a brilliant 11 day pre- season training camp at Christmas gave us the spurt we needed to become Champions of Europe".

Trophies or tours. It's becoming as simple as that. La Liga has been a compelling spectacle but at the cost of too many players failing to be able to cope with what their clubs and countries demand of them. Car-crash football, which makes all of us rubber neckers and complicit in the way in which our superstars are cracking and breaking.

It really is hard not to stare though.