Fact or Fiction: The Russian Premier League will be the 6th best league in UEFA within 5 yrs

It seems likely. Only problems are players not wanting to go there unless they earn a lot more money compared to Western Europe and not much depth in quality domestic players.

 

so by that, the question of being 6th best within 5 years is rather pointless, as they are already 6th best.

 

Wow, so I guess this thread is closed then.

 

I'll wait till I see Russians teams in the knockout rounds of the Champions League before I accept them as being better than Portugal, Holland and Scotland. The Uefa rankings give far too much credit to the Uefa Cup.

 

If we are to determine the quality of the whole league, UEFA Cup is a factor equal to the Champions League. I think that we can agree that Russian third placed team would always be a huge favorite over a Scottish third placed team and that says something.

 

That's a safe assumption. The Scottish league would be an afterthought without the Old Firm.

 

I wouldn't be so sure, Lokomotiv Moscow are hardly anything special. If the Russian league is better than the Scottish league, when can we see Russian teams doing as well as Celtic in the Champions League?

 

I bet we won't have to wait for long.

 

Russian clubs face some of the longest travelling distances for domestic games.
They have games at some distant outposts like vladivostock ,tomsk ,grozny ,etc

 

Celtic deserve loads of respect for what they do in the CL (at home at least ), but they needed penalties to eliminate the Russian runner-up in the 3rd qualifying round this year.
But that's not really the point, the point is that besides the Old Firm duo Scottish sides mean nothing in Europe. On the other hand we have CSKA and Zenit as UEFA Cup winners and Spartak who are rather familiar with how it is to play CL.
Russian league simply has more depth and inner reserves.

 

So, intead of two teams you have three?

 

It does seem to have become a vouge league, particuarly in England numerous big money transfer rumours seem to involve a Russian clubs. Scouts seem to be convinced of it's quality.

 

That's a big point. Ticket prices are very low and a team like Zenit probably only takes about £1 million a year through ticket sales. That's less than a 4th tier side in England.

 

Low ticket prices = fans

 

Not necessarily....if a team is not successfull but it's ticket prices are low doens't mean that it will have a lot of fans come to their games...better put if you say a team without a solid tradition with low ticket prices also doesn't mean that fans will come to see their games just because the ticket prices are low

 

...except in Eastern Europe, where low ticket prices are a result of low salaries.

 

Um... Zenit 2 - Ranger 0 no?

But I do agree with your point. I don't believe those rankings. Porto have won both the Euro cup and the champions league in the last couple of years + provided a CL quartfinalist in Benfica and a Euro cup finalist in Boavista. PSV continuously reach the latter stages of the CL + Celtic and Rangers have both been doing well in the CL + Euro cup recently too. So I have to say that quote about the UEFA cup being overcredited is legit. It's a CL group dropout tournament. No offence Zenit fans.

 

Over the past 5 years or so the CL performance of Russian teams looks pretty similar to that of Scottish teams, and the Russian league is far less top-heavy. Top to bottom, I'd say Russia is better.

 

- Russian teams play half of their matches in European Cups during off-season. I'd consider that as a strong disadvantage.

When looking at coefficiants, you have to see that Russia always had just 4 teams in the competitions, while Portugal and Holland had 6 or 7. Portugal has 3 first round exits almost every year, Hollands small teams didn't look much better lately, while for Russia, at most 1 of 4 failed before group stage. We'll see how good Russia will do when they play with as many teams next year. I predict they'll lose grounds again, more because important matches in group stage and early knock out rounds are played during Russian off-season than because I believe they are the worse league.

BTW, I have seen both Rangers and Zenit play a couple of times in CL/UEFA Cup last season, a notion that Rangers would be better or even just as good as Zenit makes me laugh.

 

There's no real evidence for that. When we see two Russians teams reaching the knockout stages in the CL, then they can be compared to Scotland. I'm not sure what you're basing the depth argument on either.

 

Playing your games when you're rested and have an open schedule doesn't seem like much of a disadvantage to me.

 

I agree that the Russian accomplishments in CL have been less than overwhelming, but are you joking about strength in depth? Motherwell, the #3 SPL team this season, finished 26 points behind 2nd-placed Rangers, and #4 Aberdeen were 33 points back. That suggests a pretty serious lack of depth. The clubs outside the top two in Russia are much closer to competing for the title than in Scotland.