Which Are The World's Best Soccer Leagues & Why?

Uhm.... seeing ISL (Indian Super League??) ranked at number #2 is enough for me to call Bulls*it on that article, despite of the little proof I have on which league is the best (or which 10 leagues are the best)

All I can say (and I agree with the general consensus on this one) is that the 4 best leagues in the world are - not arguably - the big 4 European leagues (in no particular order: Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A).

And the reasons I say these are by far the best 4 are obvious:

1) they give the most clubs for the UCL, which is. again, NOT arguably, the best club competition in the world
2) they have the best players in the world

I think there really isn't any bit of rational proof against these facts. At least not yet, cause this might change in the future, but for now Spain, UK, Germany and Spain are the world's leaders when it comes to club level football

 

EDIT: meant to say Spain, UK, Germany and Italy (not Spain again )

 

i have a nice quiz on my website
http://www.sportsoce.com/search/label/Quiz

 

The article you chose is pretty bad. There is not one part of the list that I feel good about at all, and as an American who follows MLS, I was surprised to see MLS called by a completely wrong name at number 11, and then listed again by the correct name outside the top 20.

You should completely bypass this source, it is worthless. You should probably have a couple of different starting points in mind. One- just know that the power leagues in Europe that have the most success are unquestionably the best leagues in the world. These have been pointed out to you, and you know what their success is like year to year in the UCL. Take a look at their coefficients from year to year, these are easy to find. Spain leads the way by plenty right now and will widen their lead, England and Germany are pretty close to each other in second and third. I think Italy is in fourth, they used to be in a better position but a couple of their best teams fell on moderately hard times and underperformed (perhaps didn't care?) when they qualified for Europa League play instead of the CL and sort of screwed their entire league over. They have bounced back to some extent but now they're playing at a bit of a disadvantage.

One other angle to come at it is to simply look at the money, especially in terms of TV revenue generated overall, paying particular attention to which leagues have attained global appeal and global TV revenue from well outside their own country. England and Spain are at a bit of an advantage simply because their languages are spoken in a whole lot of other countries, China also gets a nod because it's ruled by a dictator who loves soccer, their current domestic TV deal is more than double market value due to cronyism and the presumption of kickbacks, and MLS should get a bit of a nod for controlling expenses much much better than most.

You could also take into account the ability to develop your own talent domestically rather than simply buy it (big nod to Germany and several South American countries/leagues), and finally you may also want to take a serious look at which leagues have a bunch of overleveraged and potentially insolvent teams. Brazil is an excellent example of a country that produces incredible talent, loses it to wealthier countries, and tries but fails mightily to keep up with its wages, so much so that you can expect about five our six different teams to become financially insolvent within each decade. This is only getting worse. By the same metric, La Liga- despite the incredible success of its duopoly, and even that of a couple more teams- is mostly a league of financially insolvent teams, even at the top tier, and that's just not sustainable for the long term. Even the EPL, for all its revenue and relative parity, is a league with more than half of its top-tier teams in the red from year to year.

As for me, I choose Germany's Bundesliga as the top league, while conceding that they don't have the largest revenue or the most success in the CL on any kind of long term scale. I'm looking a bit more at a long term estimate, though. Germany is a tad late to the party when it comes to truly global appeal, but it is working hard at pursuing an American connection that should pay off big, it's unique in its regulations on foreign investment and concentration on domestic development, its top tier teams are nearly all turning a profit and that seems to be going in the right direction, and its local fan base is incredible- although that's partly because they go out of their way to keep ticket prices very low. And they also go out of their way to avoid alienating fans with questionable moves in ownership/management that could put some sort of oil prince or eccentric billionaire in charge of a club. Not that no one's tried to get that done, but the Bundesliga has stepped in and made several moves that cause this to be basically impossible.

Outside of Europe, Liga MX is probably the best league overall, partly because they've outperformed wealth-related expectations, partly because they really do an incredible job of developing talent, partly because they keep costs under control and maintain great depth and unpredictable competition without having a salary cap. And they completely own their confederation, as a league they very well could make it to 20 straight years of total domination in CONCACAF. MLS and the Chinese Super League are the other two to keep an eye on, for very different reasons. The Chinese league looks like it plans on simply buying all the best players in the world, starting in Brazil and moving right through Europe.

MLS has been on a more gradual, sustained, and cost-controlled rise that hardly anyone is watching on TV, but it's doing a few things right and will soon be in a much better place from two different standpoints having to do with expansion: 1, it's only just now getting a foothold in every media market in every part of the country, the southeast used to be a total dead zone, and 2, with the addition of more teams, travel becomes less of a liability as there are more short-ish trips that can be made. And to be quite honest, Canada is really pulling its weight to a greater extent than I ever would have expected 10 years ago or so. I mean, Canada's national team still has a long way to go, but especially considering that, their MLS teams are really outperforming expectations in every single way.

The EPL is the one league that can change my mind on a long-term scale, and this is exactly how they can do it. For quite awhile, the main strategy of English clubs was to spread most of the money around and splash it on as many of the best players in the world as they could get. The strategy is evolving just a bit though, as they have been noticing that a lot of truly elite players go elsewhere, sometimes- at least in part- due to a combination of a certain style of play available elsewhere, or because they want to play for a certain coach or manager. What England has been doing more of in recent years is this- they're splashing lots of money on managers, and some of the most successful bosses in other leagues have been persuaded to join the ranks of the English top flight. This is really a fantastic long-term strategy, in my opinion, for two reasons- it should have the knock-on effect of bringing some extra talent in with these guys, especially of the elite variety, and it should also have a long-term effect of locking in a more truly global variety of styles all within the same league. In theory, this should help all of the English boats rise in Champions League play since they will, in the long term, be more used to preparation and strategy for the full variety of styles and formations. If this does come to pass, if we do start to see a more recognizable variety in styles of play, if we do start to see English clubs more consistently successful for these specific reasons, I will be changing my answer. But as of right now, every one of the major English clubs that should be showing me these things is having a down year in domestic play and against the best of the rest of Europe. And the team that just won the league mostly features guys who spent much of their careers on second and third-tier teams in England that most casual fans have never heard of. The league as a whole will probably regress to the mean in coming years though, and we'll just have to see how much of a result this strategy is able to produce.

TL;DR....I see the Bundesliga as the single league in the world that is the best put together for sustained long-term growth, looking mostly at the strength of domestic development and the combination of unique investment regulations and cost-control measures that should give it long-term advantages over its nearest neighbors in competition. There are other things to consider, however, and right now Spain certainly has the best results in terms of continental competition....although, obviously, it isn't the most unpredictable or competitive league from top to bottom.

 

Two parts:

1 from the commercial interests ---- Premier League (England)

2 from the achievement----- La Liga (Spain)