MADRID - A study published Wednesday in Spanish sports daily Diario AS highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected results in La Liga, with the majority of the teams in Spain's top flight finding it harder to win their home matches than before the pandemic.

The report explains that, before the 2019-20 season was halted for safety reasons in March, the first 27 rounds of matches saw teams playing in front of their fans take a total of 465 points from a total of 807 - representing 57.6 percent of all possible points.

The report explains that, before the 2019-20 season was halted for safety reasons in March, the first 27 rounds of matches saw teams playing in front of their fans take a total of 465 points from a total of 807 - representing 57.6 percent of all possible points

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However, the return of football in empty stadiums in June saw most teams fail to reproduce that form, taking 224 points from a possible 459 - just 48 percent of the total number of points.

Only five teams out of 20 in La Liga have improved the percentage of points they have taken playing in front of empty stands (Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, Villarreal and Elche - although Elche was in the second division last season).

Real Madrid has taken 100 percent of the points up for grabs (compared to 79 percent before the lockdown) as it has played its games in the Alfredo Di Stefano Stadium in its Valdebebas training complex, while Atletico Madrid has taken 80 percent of all available points in the empty Wanda Metropolitano Stadium, compared to 69 percent previously.

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FC Barcelona is one of the teams who have suffered the most from not having fans in the Camp Nou stadium, taking just 66.6 percent of the available points from its home games, while it took 95.2 percent before the March lockdown.

Other teams to suffer badly are Basque sides Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad, with Athletic taking a mere 33.3 percent of the available points in the San Mames compared with 61.5 previously, and Real Sociedad seeing its points haul halved from 66.6 percent to 33.3 percent.

It seems in football there may be no place like home, but if that home is empty, it's not as welcoming as it used to be.