Where would the MLS hypothetically fit into the Uefa-Rankings?

I agree with your point, but Portugal is just as top-heavy as Spain. The Eeredivisie isn't particularly even, either, but then, compared to the MLS (or the Mexican or Brazilian leagues), no European league is.

It is fairly simple to rank the top 10, however. And once a top 10 list is constructed, one quickly realizes that the '11th to 16th' range is more at the level of the Mexican league (or Greece, Netherlands, Turkey, etc).

So MLS is not top 16 obviously.

I don't think Germany is that bad on this topic neither once you dismiss Bayern.

No. In Portugal there are 3 tops clubs, in Spain there are 2. So you have a 33% percent chance of guessing the winner in Portugal as opposed to 50% in Spain.

Spain is nore or less like the Scottish league in terms of competiveness.

Among the European topleagues, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 are the least topheavy ones.

Compare the revenue ratio between the league Top4 clubs with the league average:

Spain: 7.1
Italy: 4.1
England: 3.6
France: 3.2
Germany: 2.5

Stats from the UEFA Financial Fairplay Report

Topheavy leagues naturally punch above their weight in European competitions, while their domestic game suffers. Spain's an extreme example.

It's also worth looking at by what factor the highest revenue club earns more than the league's poorest:

Spain: 42.9
Germany: 9.3
Italy: 8.8
England: 6.7
France: 5.7

As one can see, La Liga's obscenely lopsided. This is largely down to the unfair individual TV rights marketing system you have in Spain. Real and Barca have leveraged this exploitation of Spain's other clubs to reduce La Liga to a two horse race and a dominance on the European stage. Neither is healthy. The fact that half of Spain's clubs are effectively insolvent shows this clearly.

Scotland also has a troubled league. And there the richest club earns 27.6 times what the league's poorest member does.

Looking at these stats, I argue league's do well to keep the factor at which the richest outearns the poorest in single digits. (The same ought to of course also apply to expenditure, which UEFA sensibly wants to bring roughly in line with income with the Financial Fairplay Rules).

Anyone got some more recent MLS finance stats than these old Forbes numbers from 2008?

Forbes' ranking of MLS franchises:
Rank Team value* revenue* profit/loss*
1 Galaxy $100M $36M $4.0M
2 Toronto FC $44M $17M $2.1M
3 Fire $41M $16M -$3.1M
4 FC Dallas $39M $15M $0.5M
5 Red Bulls $36M $10M -$4.5M
6 DC United $35M $13M -$3.0M
7 Dynamo $33M $10M -$1.8M
8 Rapids $31M $11M -$2.2M
9 Real Salt Lake $30M $7M -$2.1M
10 Revolution $27M $10M -$1.5M
11 Chivas USA $24M $10M -$1.0M
12 Crew $23M $6M -$4.5M
13 Wizards $22M $5M -$2.9M
*estimated
Source: Forbes

Spain's even worse. See the above stats I've cited.

According to my research, MLS would clock in at round UEFA's 24th strongest league. At the level of the Czech Republic or Cyprus. In terms of play quality, mind you. In terms of finances, MLS does better.

As for UEFA coefficients and the like, they're not a reliable benchmark. For starters, they are based on a league's best teams' performances in European competitions. They say nothing about how good the teams are which do not qualify for such. As a result, topheavy leagues tend to gain a UEFA coefficient that outperforms the league's actual overall strength. Many people fail to appreciate this and mistake UEFA coefficients as a straight reflection of league strength...

Let me quote a previous post of mine you apparently have missed:

And yet, I still regard the uefa coefficient as a more reliable benchmark than the "estimated market values" on Transfermarkt. The Uefa coefficient is based on actual results in European competitions, the "estimated market value" is based on the opinion of a few hundred German teenagers.

Germany is a little lopsided itself. It's just that instead of having a "big 2/3/4", it has a "big 1". Bayern have been very dominant over the years.

Of course, what this means is that when they have an off year or go through a lean period, the league opens up. But it's still but for the grace of BM go they.

In fairness to the Bundesliga however, since rise of Bayern, they've taken more steps than most in terms of making teams live within their means and fostering a competitive league.

The English top tier, pre-Premiership was very competitive. You had Liverpool frequently competing, while teams like Man United, Arsenal and Everton had significant spells of success, but you also had teams like Watford, QPR and Aston Villa getting promoted and challenging immediately.

In many ways, Sky TV and the UCL prize money have created a glass ceiling that only billionaire owners have been able to break (which in a way is actually even less competitive).

The fact that the magic number of four teams coincidentally held the top spots in recent years exacerbated the situation by ensuring the rest of the league was excluded from Champions League revenue and allowing the gap to widen.

I, for my part, would not a priori assume that "a few hundred German teenagers" are less accurate and trustworthy than some underpaid, time pinched hack at a newspaper, especially when the newspaper has an agenda.

transfermarkt.de is the only such comprehensive data source out there, and, in my opinion, it is quite good. All the market values of players I have looked up there are close to what I would have estimated.

Maybe it is "Stockholm syndrome", but I have grown to like the situation when there is one (and only one) big team in the league which - and that is the important part - is not so dominant that the other teams have no chance.

It is the "pack chases the hated (or loved) top dog/fat cat and, more often than not, tear him down" scenario. There is even a name for the (currently) leading member of the chasing pack: "Bayernjäger" (Bayern hunter).
And even when Bayern win the league, they have to fight until the end of the season in most years.

This, in my view, compares favorably to the English league where at the start of the season it is 95% certain which 6 clubs will be in the top 6, so that games between the other teams become largely meaningless, and most games between a top team and one of the other teams are already decided by half time. And when such a team manages a draw then in most cases by parking the bus.
Only games between the top 6 offer real excitement, but they are only 8.3% of all games (6*5 / 20*18).
(Before the ascent of Tottenham and ManC, the situation was even worse with only 4 top clubs).

But market values are determined by the market and not by football fans trying to estimate them. And there are often huge differences between the market values depicted on Transfermarkt and the actual transfer fees.

It is simply impossible to let some internet users estimate the market values every 6 months - the real market is simply too complex and dynamic.

I just want to add one example.

Is Stoke City better than Udinese Calcio? Well, if you believe that the market values on transfermarkt.de are a reliable benchmark, then that is the case, because Stoke City has a higher average market value.

Now I am not so sure on this and I don`t think you can compare individual clubs let alone entire leagues by means of Transfermarkt`s market value.

Sorry, if that was a little off topic.

The problem is not that internet users estimate the market values, the problem is that estimating market values is not an exact science. But overvaluations and undervaluations probably cancel each other out. And if you believe, as I do, that market value is the only somewhat reliable and objective indicator of quality, then this is still better than the alternatives.

As far as I have observed, transfermarkt.de does take transfer fees and bids into account and adjusts the figures accordingly - although they don't just put the transfer fee in as market value - quite rightly so, because transfer fees decrease with the time left on the contract of a player - even if the player is better (and therefore more "worth") than at the start of the contract.

And that is exactly the point where I disagree with you and the other poster. IMO the Uefa coefficient is - despite its shortcomings - a far better indicator of quality because it measures performances in European competitions and is not based on estimates.

It`s far more objective than comparing "estimated market values". The only problem is that only a few teams of each league participate in the Europa League and CL as has already been mentioned. In order to compare two leagues in its entirety you would need all teams of said leagues to participate against each other.

In all honesty the Portuguese League has 6 teams that are good enough to win the League those being Porto, Benfica, Sporting CP, SC Braga, VSC Guimaraes, and to an extent CS Maritimo and with that Iranian investor at SC Beira Mar they will make a push. Just look at what Portuguese clunbs are doing in Europe. Look at Boavista they were a powerhouse beating teams like BVB, Celtic, Internazionale and now they play in the 3rd division.


and even hought Barca and Real Madrid dominate La Liga teams like Atletico, Bilbao, Valencia and even Relegation team Villareal are nasty look at the EL final as proff

How many times has Guimaraes and Maritimo won the league in, say, the last 50 years?

never put how many times has Montpellier won Ligue 1 those two teams are builing as was Boavista who eventually won it and Braga win eventually win it too

76 of 78 seasons were won by the big 3 in Portugal. Boavista is the only non-big-3-club to win a championship in the last 65 years, whereas Ligue 1 had at least one club winning the Championship for the first time in every decade of its existence. I'd give Braga an outside chance to win it in the next couple of years, but Maritimo and Guimaraes? Right.

For a more accurate measure, you'd have to adjust the UEFA cofficients by factoring in league topheaviness.

Bayern financially may be dominant, but in league titles they do not overun, other teams win all of the time. Just since the turn of the millenium the BL champs you have:

Bayern - 6
Dortmund - 3
Bremen - 1
Stuttgart - 1
Wolfsburg - 1

During this period you also have many other highly competitive German clubs, like Schalke who have run the top teams so close several times. Moreover, only twice has any team repeated as champs - Bayern in 04-05 and 05-06, and now Dortmund the past two years. Other than that the title has switched hands every single year. No other top Euro league is as ballanced and open competitively as the BL.