Well, you still could have a single table if you made the CL the main event. Just have the top 20 teams in Europe play each other twice. I'm not sure how the rest of your observations solve the fact that the title races were essentially over before New Years. If you think its exciting to watch Man City stroll to the title over then next six months while contemplating whether Newcastle will yoyo once again, more power to you.
Insight is not the word you were looking for. Self aware is more apt. I am self aware enough to know the rest of the world does real football a helluva lot better than we do. I also have more humility than your typical arrogant american and see no need to fix that which is not broken. I find BVB must watch footy now to see if they make the CL, which they sit just out of, at one point out of second and three off tenth. It isn't all about the winner and first loser. I hate that winner take all mentality about America even if I am American. Even if it is not very Ricky Bobby of me. I think it is exciting to watch Dortmund even if their footy has gone from brilliant to shit to bang average. They are the only publicly traded football team in the world, which introduces some unique behind the scenes dynamics. The rivalry with S04 is an awesome thing to behold. Who is going to take over for Auba until Isak is ready, can Phillipe and Isak get them to the CL, with a healthy Reus, Pulisic Sancho combo for the rest of the season? CP's part in all this is also of great interest, since he could either be a key piece they build around under the incoming regime, or a piece of the financing for it. As stated above I don't care, as long as he gets a bit of a run in the middle at some point. I lied I do care because in my heart I have the sinking feeling he goes to 'pool just before Klopp gets binned, gets typecast as a winger, it all goes pear shaped, and I will have yet another reason to detest the bin dipping, granny shagging, scousers.
You really have no clue about what soccer means in Europe, going by this quote. FYI, the CL is going downhill in eyeballs in Europe. It is compensated by the recent popularity in Asia. Even in the UK, with the guaranteed 4 places the interest in it has fallen and the broadcaster is loosing money on it. The money that matters come from the domestic leagues and the CL money is a bonus. What you suggest would effectively kill the big clubs going into it. I suggest you get hold of that Swiss report on the income of the European clubs and type in your exell sheet the numbers of all the clubs in it and compare that number with what a CL the way you suggest has to generate as a minimum. It's not feasible. Before you go rambling about how we here are to run soccer, you better have a look at the total picture and take in account Europe isnot the USA (=one state with rather big provinces), but a continent with a diversity of peoples that up till in the 90ies were prepared to go at war with each other. What you suggest resembles the socalled superleague the big clubs were threatening the UEFA with and made the jelly spined jerks buckle and give then the fixed number of places per top league. But if that league would generate that kind of money, those clubs already would have jumped the ship. If I was running UEFA I would have told those clubs feck yourself and called their bluff. Money speaks and if that pot was really full of gold the stampede towards it would be instantly. There is no such thing as rivalry across borders. It only exist in peoples mind within their borders. Just ask a Liverpool fan if he's willing to trade an Everton match confrontation with a Lazio one etc.
The most rabid fans of the Champions I know are a group of Indian guys who never miss an Arsenal game. They even have Champions League parties.
Good for him if true. I hope he succeeds. What? Do you even hooligan, brah? How 'bout relegation battles, qualifying for Europe, Pokal and other domestic cups and European cups? Is winning the league the best thing that can happen to a club? Yes...but is it the only thing? Hell no.
The networks overpaid greatly for the NBA and last I looked the viewership is down. NFL peaked and got a huge tv payday but let's see where it is in 5 years. Baseball keeps hanging on with baby boomers but they're on the way out too. Soccer will only grow WW.
. it seems like you're lumping the entire sport of soccer's tv contracts globally, which wasn't my post. NFL NBA and MLB all have some of the highest in the world with their specific domestic partners.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...tv-viewership-up-32-espn-tnt-nbatv/910427001/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mauryb...teams-shows-mlb-rules-summer-tv/#6cc7453a204d lol do a quick google search. it would've served you well. (I didnt include NFL article, bc it might've peaked, but NFL still dominates ALL television). ALSO, even though you were were wrong in your post, no where in my post did i mention viewership, i referred specifically to the TV contracts.
I admitted it had been a while since researching. Contracts are fool's gold. Espin overpaid so much for SEC and other college sports they had to fire most of their overpaid on the air talent. It's a leaking balloon but you hang on to today's numbers. My point stands; Soccer will grow outside the US faster than those sports will grow in the US and if the US had legit club soccer it would grow here too. Network TV is on the way out as well if the streaming model isn't blocked by anti progress US government.
that isnt the Primary reason why that happened. but enough of that from me. lets hope pulisic contributes effectively in the final third on saturday.
The original point was talking about "Americanizing" the game. That is like saying McDonald's isn't hurting for dollars...but they're still shit. So is "Americanizing" footy.
A 40w shining light among 5w bulbs. Fact is, too many people think Pulisic should simply run around and everything will sort itself out when there really does have to be a system that frees him up or uses him to free up others. Nagbe, Acosta and Bradley were never going to do that. At BVB, otoh, there are a lot of competing agendas that don't really maximize Pulisic's value. I'd push for the Arsenal move If I were Pulisic, if it's there of course. .
Yes, if we had a league that was actually run by people who wanted to succeed, we would take notice of the "two markets" in the global village and develop at grass roots level instead of taking the "30 media markets, 30 teams" approach. Somebody was rhetorically asking if Lpudlians would give up Everton v Lpool to see a CL match. Of course not. I"d love to see Brooklyn v. Bronx but it's hard to get over the "2 teams in NY is enough" mentality, NJersey Rbulls and NY Yankees, that is.
To me, arguing that national leagues like England, where 1 team has already wrapped up the title, because the rest of the season will determine who will qualify for another competition, which those same people are arguing is an inferior product to the league, is a self refuting argument.
Americanization would just lead to a watered down product tied to corporate profit more so than anything else. Thanks, but I'll stick to watching the Europa League winners being crowned champions of Europe by lifting the Carabao Cup.
Going to try this one. For the lulz. Right now, as in today, I'd say: 1. EPL (yes, surprisingly, because of the top half), 2. La Liga, 3. Serie A, 4. Bundesliga (they're not doing well at all, only Bayern looks top class), 5. Ligue 1, 6. Brasilerao, 7. NOS (Port.), 7. Jupiler (Belg.), 8. Superliga (Arg.), 9. Russian Premier, 10. Ukrainian, 11. Switzerland, 12. Turkey, 13. Primera (Col.), 14. MX, 15. Eredivisie, 16. Serie A (Ecu.), 17. Austrian BuLi, 18. Botola (Mor.), 19. Superleague (Greece), 20. Primera (Par.), 21. Superligaen (Den.), 22. HET (Cze.), 23. Liga FPB (Bol.), 24. MLS (about even with EFL Championship and 2.BuLi, the two best second divisions in the world), 25. J-League (about even with the Spanish Segunda), 26. Premier (Egy.), 27. K-League (about even with Serie B and Ligue 2), 28. Campeonato Scotiabank (Chi.), 29. Saudi Pro League, 30. CLP-1 (Tun., about same level as the LigaPro, the Portuguese 2nd div.). Of course it's very tentative and no one has the time or the means to watch enough games to form even an educated opinion, but this is considering full-league strength (not just top teams) and trying my best to diversify my watching habits. You're free to laugh though. The one league that is impossible to follow but may belong there in the 25-30 range is the Linafoot from DR Congo, it has two of the most fun teams to watch in Africa: Mazembe and Vita, and I just watched Motema Pembe humiliate a South African club in a friendly. Sadly, you cannot get Linafoot games in North America not even as crappy streams. Also, for some reason, Chilean clubs underperform when playing away. It's something you'd expect from Bolivian clubs, but no: surprisingly the Bolivians are doing fine away --they may be the most improved South American league in the last decade. Also, the order between the Colombian and the Mexican leagues is debatable. I think they are almost equivalent at this point. The K-League is ranked higher than the J-League by the AFC, but I think part of it is that they've been lucky playing weaker teams in their Champions League. Personally, I find the J-League more tactically adept, in spite of the awful goalkeeping. Although the A-League (Australia) has probably even worse goalkeeping. Someone needs to make videos of them, for Youtube.
Your list is very similar to 538s. They unfortunately don't rank the African or Asian leagues or include any of their clubs in their club rankings.
Asian leagues are surprisingly weak, with defending that makes the Eredivisie look like Italy. Sub-Saharan African leagues are impossible to follow, no one streams them. At best you get highlights and see their teams in continental competitions. Most of them are one- or two- team leagues too, like the Ghana FCP Premier with Hearts & Kotoko, or the RD Congo league with Mazembe & Vita, but both have diversified of late with more new winners, and the Congolese teams look very good when they travel for friendlies in South Africa. Perhaps the strongest leagues outside the usual places are in North Africa. The strongest clubs in Morocco (Rabat & Casablanca) and Tunis (Etoile & Esperance) are stronger than anything MLS can offer, and are up there with the best clubs in Mexico (America & Tigres).
The European leagues are fairly easy to rank if you just look at the past two years results in the Europa Cups and look at the average https://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method5/crank2021.html The main problem with ranking the leagues of Europe is that outside top-6 (plus Turkey, Ukraine and Poland) the countries are rather small and a sudden drain of talent will happen from year to year due the vast number players being traded and moving abroad ... There is not that much money in Polish soccer and so they cant keep their players from moving abroad which is why they are not ranked that high ... but the ranking do not tell you much about where young players should go ... Turkey is probably got the worst league of all in that respect ... it has the highest average age of players, so it's a league for "old men" and foreign "names" past their prime and with very little export of talent, which also reflect in how the Turkish NT is doing ..