Sevilla's Frederic Kanoute, left, leads la liga in scoring with 18 goals this season. (Jose Jordan/Getty Images).

Seville - city of bullfighting, of opera, of Don Juan.

Immortalized in fiction (Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor") and song (Rossini's "Barber of Seville," and Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro"), Seville has struggled to emerge out from under the shadow of its more populous neighbours to the north, Barcelona and Madrid.

Well, no more.

Last weekend, Sevilla, down a goal and reduced to 10 men in the 28th minute, put on a clinic in defeating two-time Spanish league champions FC Barcelona 2-1 before a rabid audience of over 40,000 spectators crammed inside Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán.

The win propelled Sevilla to first place in la liga with 50 points, just ahead of Barcelona (49 points), Valencia (46) and Real Madrid (44). With 13 games left in the season, neither Barcelona nor Madrid nor Valencia are willing to concede anything just yet, but if they maintain their current form, Sevilla looks certain to claim their first Spanish league title since 1946.

Spanish soccer is a duopoly - Real Madrid and Barcelona have won 18 of the last 22 league titles and 47 Spanish championships in total since the formation of la liga in 1928. Real and Barca have used their considerable wealth and resources for more than half a century to buy top foreign stars and scoop up the best local talent in order to maintain their stranglehold on the Spanish game.

All of which makes Sevilla's recent rise to the top all the more remarkable.

Los rojiblancos - the red and whites - were playing in Spain's second division in 2001, but have finished eighth, tenth, sixth, sixth and fifth in the five years since earning promotion back to la liga.

Last season was Sevilla's coming out party as it announced its presence to the European community. The Spanish side thumped England's Middlesbrough 4-0 in the UEFA Cup final - the team's first piece of European silverware since the club's formation in 1905 - and finished fifth in la liga, narrowly missing out on qualification for this year's Champions League.

Sevilla began this season with a flourish when they thrashed FC Barcelona, the two-time Spanish league and Champions League winners, 3-0 in the curtain-raising UEFA European Super Cup last summer.

What's refreshing about Sevilla's success is that it has come about not as result of exorbitant spending - the club's budget for 2006 was $45.2 million Cda, while Real Madrid and Barcelona spent $525.1 million and $366.6 million, respectively.

Instead, Sevilla has built itself up through expert talent scouting, prudent purchases and timely sales in the transfer market and by taking a chance on youth.

Sporting director Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo, a former Sevilla goalkeeper, overhauled the club's youth team setup, producing players the calibre of winger Jose Antonio Reyes and Jesus Navas and defender Sergio Ramos. No less than 20 players from the youth team have made their debut for the senior team in the last 10 years.

The development of youth players also helped to line Sevilla's pockets. Reyes was sold to Arsenal in 2004 for $26 million and Ramos fetched $40 million when Real Madrid bought out his contract in 2005.

Sevilla also used its vast network of scouts to scour the globe in order to find a few diamonds in the rough.

Brazilian Julio Baptista was a defensive midfielder when they bought him for a meagre $4.5 million. Sevilla converted him into a striker - he ended up scoring 50 goals over two seasons - and then made a huge profit when they sold him to Real Madrid for $29.4 million in 2005.

Other shrewd transfer moves included buying influential Brazilian wingback Daniel Alves ($1.1 million), French defender Julien Escude ($2.7 million), Italian midfielder Enzo Maresca ($4.5 million) and Mali forward Frederic Kanouté ($9.7 million), all key members of the current Sevilla squad.

Playing an attacking brand of soccer at breathtaking speed, Sevilla have awed opponents and entertained fans with their go-for-broke style this season.

And it hasn't been one player that has stood out; instead, Sevilla's success is based on a total team effort.

Alves, a virtual unknown in his native Brazil before signing with Sevilla, has quietly established himself as one of the best wingbacks in the game, and has been compared to Roberto Carlos for his blinding runs down the flanks by giving Sevilla's attack more width.

Maresca, for years overlooked and under-utilized at Juventus, provides Sevilla with plenty of steel and grit in midfield, and was the star of the club's UEFA Cup winning campaign, while Andrés Palop has established himself as one of the top starting goalkeepers in Spain after years of serving as a backup at Valencia.

Navas has brilliantly filled in on the right wing since Sevilla sold Reyes to Arsenal, and the Spanish club has barely missed a beat.

Kanoute never really caught on in the Premiership during a five-year stint in England with West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur, but he has found his scoring shoes in Spain: the Mali international leads la liga in scoring this season with 18 goals and has drawn leering glances from Real Madrid and Juventus.

City of bullfighting, of opera, of Don Juan - and with any luck, Sevilla will soon be the city of champions.