More stats Footballers in 1970s were not as professional as modern footballers and had the stamina (or work ethic) of amateur players. https://www.active.com/soccer/articles/how-far-do-you-run-during-a-soccer-game-872900 Right now im still finding accurate numbers for female footballers. According to a few studies, a female footballer covers somewhere between 8 and 11 km per game.
My updated rankings (Turkey got demoted for failing to qualify this year while Czech Republic got promoted for equaling Switzerland in number of UCL qualifications) 1) England 2) Spain 3) Germany 4) Italy 5) France ================ ↑ UCL contenders 6) Portugal 7) Russia 8) Ukraine 9) Netherlands 10) Belgium ================ ↑ UCL regular participants 11) Turkey 12) Greece 13) Switzerland 14) Austria 15) Scotland 16) Czech Republic ================ ↑ UCL non-regular participants 17) Denmark 18) Croatia 19) Sweden 20) Serbia 21) Poland ================ ↑ Top Representatives For A Region 22) Norway 23) Romania 24) Bulgaria 25) Slovakia 26) Slovenia 27) Hungary ================ ↑ Occasional Participants In Tourneys of International Football & Club Football (East. Mediterr.) 28) Israel 29) Cyprus ------------------------- (Former USSR) 30) Belarus 31) Kazakhstan 32) Azerbaijan 33) Moldova ================ ↑ Occasional Participants In Only Club Football Tourneys (British Isles) 34) Wales 35) Republic of Ireland ------------------------------------- (Western Balkan) 36) Albania 37) North Macedonia ------------------------------------- (Ice Hockey nations) 38) Finland 39) Latvia ========== ↑ Occasional Participants in Tourneys of International Football & Low-tier Club Football
The numbers are not bad for female players https://www.frontiersin.org/files/A...-634696-HTML/image_m/fspor-03-634696-t002.jpg https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2021.634696/full#F1 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33467387/ https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a20805366/the-distance-run-per-game-in-various-sports/ https://badmintonshoesnow.com/is-badminton-cardio/ Its not that the Everton player didnt have the stamina. They simply didnt want to run as much as they could in every single match of the season. Additionally the soccer ball in 1970s was a bit heavier than the soccer ball in modern times. Nonetheless the Everton player would not make it to EPL if they were to play in the modern game. In short, modern athletes are better than past athletes due to having not only better physicality but also stronger commitment / work ethic. Having the legs to run more than your average Joe is one thing but having the heart & mind to push your body to its highest limits in every single match is another thing. Football can either be the easiest sport or the hardest sport depending on how much of a slug or a workhorse you are.
When we think of footall and try to define what football truly is, its simply amazing how the sport manages to go outside of TV & stadiums and has become various forms of entertainment for everyone (working class people around the world, office employees, gamers & trained elephants) and a precious datamine for sport scientists. Here is an interesting table: (https://i.imgur.com/2hFwqvj.jpeg) You can see that when nations can choose only one sport to invest in, most of them choose football/soccer. To them, other sports are just recreational sports.
Now we can see why states are more involved in football than any other sport. Its because football is the only sport that poor states invest in or the sport that oil states invest in more heavily than any other sport.
The list of football associations that won UEFA Cup Winners' Cup are also consistent with my rankings of leagues. Number of cup wins 8 - England 7 - Spain 7 - Italy 5 - Germany 3 - Belgium 3 - Soviet Union (Russia + Ukraine in modern days) 2 - Scotland 1 - France 1 - Netherlands 1 - Portugal =============== ↑ (almost all of the top 10 here are also in the top 10 of my rankings) 1 - Czechoslovakia There was a time where Russia produced talents like Arshavin & Pavlyuchenko, where the big 5 in Europe could have been expanded to include Russia and become the big 6. But that ship has sailed. Now we have only the big 5 as the most important markets for the boardcasters of European competitions. https://eurosong-contest.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Five#articleComments
Age in Football In a sport like football where clubs have to give players long term contracts, players aged at 30 or over 30 are considered to be aging players and have no resell value because their physical performances are on a downward slope. In short, early 30s = aging and mid 30s = geriatric.
However not all positions in football are considered to be aging when they reach 30 years of age. For midfielders who have to run from one end of the pitch to another end, they will suffer a decline in their market value when they reach not 30 years of age but just 29. For central defenders who are allowed to stay back and do not have to commit themselves to an offensive play of their team, the drop-off in their market value happens when they get to 31 years of age.
Of hundreds of sports that require humans to use our hands, its the sport that reminds our commonality with animals - our legs - that becomes the most popular sport. The world does work in a mysterious way. And most of the nations that won World Cups are Catholic. With the exception of Germany who is evenly split between Catholicism & Protestantism, the Protestant nations dont do well at World Cup.
Footballers Stardom Football is blessed to have Ronaldo & Messi. Currently they are the 2nd and the 4th most followed people on Instagram, which means they are more popular on Instagram than any Hollywood celebrity. Insane numbers. These 2 guys from a sport industry have no business beating top names from American entertainment industry that is known to be manufacturer of stars. Football Online Popularity If you want to know why Ronaldo & Messi keep growing their numbers of social media followers at an insane rate, here is my explaination World Population Youtube Facebook Instagram As you can see, the number of Youtube's, FB's & Insta's accounts have already been maxed out in nations like US, Brazil, Russia (>= 50% of the population in each nation). However more than 60% of the populations in South Asian nations (India, Pakistan & Bangladesh) havent joined these sites. So right now what we are witnessing in internet is the increase of youtube & social media users from South Asia. In one or two decades time, we will see at least 2 hundred millions of new youtube & social media accounts from this region. Which sport (other than cricket) will benefit the most from this increase of youtube & social media accounts? Football. Because football is a global sport. Football is primed to blow most other sports out of the water in online popularity contest. Also dont forget the likes of Egypt & Nigeria who have their football players play in Europe top 5 leagues. A guy like Salah got 50m followers on Instagram when the site doesnt have many Egyptian accounts. Now think about how his number of followers will grow as more Egyptians are joining Instagram. Football is simply the most marketable sport in the world. You can field a club team with 11 guys from 11 nationalities and watch how people from these 11 nations will join the club's youtube channel to support the team. Most other sports dont have such advantage.
What is surprising to me is that 70% of the world population is already concentrated in just 22 nations. So mark my words. At some point in the future, the populations of these 22 nations will define whats popular & unpopular on the internet.
Football exists everywhere even in the slums of the poorest nations and what football needs is not the summer tours around the globe by the biggest football clubs but the internet being expanded into every forgotten corner of the planet to show how truly gigantic the sport is. Latin America vs Europe South America's top football clubs had been on equal footing with top Euro clubs until the rebranding of European Cup. (you can check the records of Intercontinental Cup from this wiki site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_Cup_(football)) Intercontinental Cup from 1960 to 1994: South America 20 cup wins vs Euro 13 cup wins. East v West disparity in women football No women national team from eastern europe (with the exception of Russia) has ever qualified for WWC. Money in football Are sport industries the most lucrative industries out there? The answer is obviously no. With regard to football, the sport is propped up by not only the spending money from the fans but also subsidizing money from states or national football federations (rich & poor ones) and sponsorship money from global financial corporations, Arab oil giants, major cargo & passenger airlines, big tech companies, consumer products manufacturers (like Redbull) and even dirty money from the underworld or shady oligarchs. Due to states & corporations, which are richer than the whole football industry, wanting to dominate many facets of the sport and use the popularity of the sport for their own gain, they simply pump some of their money into football. So if you want to be filthy rich, becoming a footballer is not the right option for you.
Here are elephant football vids. Amazing. The sport has the ability to exist everywhere and the simplicity that can be understood by everyone (including animals).
After showing you guys the funny part of football, its time to show the dark/ugly side of it. These are interesting documentaries How kid footballers are seen as "investment" by agents & big clubs and get molded by them to become a more "finished product" https://www.youtubetrimmer.com/view/?v=sCGmr-r6uj0&start=0&end=1307&loop=0 How African footballers dream of training in Europe & getting accepted by a European club/academy but end up as victims of human trafficking schemes https://qz.com/africa/1687177/european-football-drives-modern-slave-trade-of-young-africans Watch them if you have time. The documentaries are not the most important football videos but we should never overlook the ugly side of a sport.
Average Live Audience For The Final (meaning the number of viewers that watched the whole match, not the number of viewers that only tuned in for the last minutes of the match) (source: https://web.archive.org/web/2022121...22/12/16/world-cup-final-television-audience/) Domestic league football is made for fans, international tournament football is made for casuals. The idea of a final (WC final or UCL final) - the biggest game of the tourney - does attract viewers who dont watch football games on a weekly basis. And when you add in the romanticism of winning a championship for your nation & countrymen, more non football people tune in to watch the final. Cumulative Live Audience For The Final (source: https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/...t-of-the-worlds-most-watched-sporting-events/) The datas in the graph were collected before Feb 2016 so you can expect these numbers to be bigger in 2020s. According to this site (https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/sup...ns-league-viewing-figures/blte47db8809dbd0a6d) a UCL final in modern time can attract between 380 million and 400 million spectators. Of course these numbers dont represent the average live audience but rather the cumulative live audience.
https://firstsportz.com/football-ne...wl-which-was-the-most-watched-sporting-event/ UCL is a very prestigious football competition. The Old Continent has 55 football associations but only 15-17 associations can make it to UCL GS. To most clubs from small European leagues, getting a UCL qualification spot can make their fans celebrate way harder than winning a domestic trophy. On a different note, the high standard for UCL GS qualification is comparable to the high standard for WC qualification which allows only the top 13-16 national teams from UEFA to make it to the WC GS. Small European associations have a better chance of qualifying for Euro than for World Cup or modern UCL. The story of another underdog like Greece/Serbia winning a major trophy is more probable in Euro than in WC or modern UCL.
The Downfall of Domestic Cup Competitions Lets look at Liverpool's earnings (2nd in Premier League, runners-up in UCL, winners of FA Cup & Carabao Cup) https://www.insidesport.in/premier-...n-in-the-2022-23-pl-season-check-out-details/ https://www.sportingnews.com/us/soc...022-how-much-winners/alyjzqvtjjhxk311oivierzn EPL second place – £159.8m UCL runner-up – $91.44 m =============================== (an enormous gap) =============================== FA Cup win – £5m Carabao Cup win – £1m This is why big clubs field their 2nd teams in domestic cup games. The only good thing left from these domestic cup competitions is the good marketing of their finals. Still it sounds like BS to me. So many viewers but so little prize money. How? Even banter competitions like Europa League & Conference League offer greater amount of prize money (€20 million for a team that wins all of its games) https://www.sportsadda.com/football...rence-league-prize-money-winners-participants
In my previous posts, i said that club records are the most important criteria and national team records are used only as tiebreakers between associations with similar club records. As a result, the associations that qualified for UCL are put above the associations that have never qualified for UCL. But do I view UCL records as the "Be All End All" of everything related to football? Not really. I also appreciate associations with well rounded records more than associations that that have a big hole in either their clubs records or their national team records. Therefore in my rankings of all the associations that have never qualified for UCL, the associations with more well rounded records (WC or Euro participation + EL qualification) are placed above the associations that have a blank resume in either international footbal tourneys or low tier club football tourneys. However since the comparision is now between the associations that did participate in only WC or Euro vs the associations that did participate in only Europa League or Europa Confererence League, i have decided to put the associations with only WC or Euro records above the associations with only low tier club football records. Why? Because WC or Euro > Europa League or Europa Confererence League. Having participations not in UCL nor WC nor Euro but in only Europa League or Europa Confererence dont matter much to me. The only good things about Europa League are the chance of playing against a massive club that is currently in a slump (Barca, Man Utd) and the winner of the competition receiving a UCL qualification spot & getting to play a Super Cup game against the UCL winner. Thats it. Not many people care about 2nd tier and 3rd tier club football competitions but many do care about major international football competitions like WC and Euro. For a football association, not having ever quafified for UCL for more than 2 decades is a big failure but having qualifed for one or two major international football tournaments in recent decades somewhat redeems the football association from complete irrelevancy. Here are the 3 football associations that still have some purpose in their existence and have not become the bottom of the barrel like Faroe Islands & San Marino. (recent h2h club) Iceland vs Northern Ireland 4-0 (since 2010) Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Northern Ireland 1-1 Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Iceland Bosnia & Herzegovina won the last match between the two associations but the match happened in the distant past (in 2002) so its result doesnt count. (recent h2h national team) Iceland vs Northern Ireland 2-0 (since 2006) Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Northern Ireland 2-1 Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Iceland has not happened Conclusion Iceland > Northern Ireland Bosnia & Herzegovina > Northern Ireland Between the Bosnian national team and Icelandic national team, there is no clear achievement gap. Bosnia have better standings in Nations League while Iceland has better Euro records. Additionally there is no recent club h2h nor recent national team h2h between the 2 associations. So the tie breakers that im gonna use are the UEFA coefficient rankings of the 2 football associations since the 2015-1016 season. From the table, you can see that Icelandic club football has sufferred a decline while Bosnian club football has moved up in the rankings. Now if you want to judge a national team based on their reputation instead of their records, Bosnia are also considered to be a better side than Iceland since Bosnia have worked their way up to become a tricky national team while Iceland represents the typical "sudden rise and rapid fall" of a small football team. https://breakingthelines.com/historical/the-fall-of-bulgarian-football-a-sad-decline-or-corrupted-farce/ https://inf.news/en/sport/0600689c45cd0ba8abc126a361427738.html The reputation gap is also backed up by the 2 unreliable rankings (FIFA rankings & Elo ratings) where Bosnia are ranked above Iceland. Personally i dont recommend these 2 rankings and would only look at them once the primary tiebreakers (UEFA coefficent rankings in recent years & h2h records) can not show which association is better than the other. Conclusion Bosnia & Herzegovina > Iceland (for now) Here are my updated rankings 1) England 2) Spain 3) Germany 4) Italy 5) France ==================== ↑ UCL contenders 6) Portugal 7) Russia 8) Ukraine 9) Netherlands 10) Belgium ==================== ↑ UCL regulars 11) Turkey 12) Greece 13) Switzerland 14) Austria 15) Scotland 16) Czech Republic ==================== ↑ UCL non-regular participants 17) Denmark 18) Croatia 19) Sweden 20) Serbia 21) Poland ==================== ↑ Top Representatives For A Region 22) Norway 23) Romania 24) Bulgaria 25) Slovakia 26) Slovenia 27) Hungary ==================== ↑ Occasional Participants In Tourneys of International Football & Club Football (Eastern Mediterranean) 28) Israel 29) Cyprus ------------------------- (Former USSR) 30) Belarus 31) Kazakhstan 32) Azerbaijan 33) Moldova ==================== ↑ Occasional Participants In Only Club Football Tourneys (British Isles) 34) Wales 35) Republic of Ireland ------------------------------------- (Western Balkan) 36) Albania 37) North Macedonia ------------------------------------- (Ice Hockey nations) 38) Finland 39) Latvia ==================== ↑ Occasional Participants in Tourneys of International Football & Low-tier Club Football (Western Balkan) 40) Bosnia & Herzegovina ------------------------------------- (North Atlantic Island) 41) Iceland ------------------------------------- (British Isles) 42) Northern Ireland ==================== ↑ Occasional Participants In Only International Football Tourneys
World UCL Lets compare my rankings with the football league revenue rankings (with revenue numbers in the 1st right column) 1) England 2) Spain 3) Germany 4) Italy 5) France ==================== ↑ UCL contenders 6) Portugal 7) Russia 8) Ukraine 9) Netherlands 10) Belgium ==================== ↑ UCL regulars 10) Belgium ==================== ↑ UCL regulars 11) Turkey 12) Greece 13) Switzerland 14) Austria 15) Scotland 16) Czech Republic ==================== ↑ UCL non-regular participants 17) Denmark Now if there is a world version of UCL - The top clubs from US, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, China & Japan would be UCL regulars but not UCL contenders. - South Korea's & Saudi Arabia's top clubs would be UCL non regular participants like the top clubs from Switzerland, Austria & Scotland. - The rest dont have a good chance of reaching a UCL play off round. They would need alot of luck (like having an easy draw) and/or to perform much better than their usual level in order to qualify for UCL GS. Nevertheless financial might is one thing, the ability to produce world class footballers is another thing. Its not unreasonable to say that the US might struggle to consistently qualify for UCL GS and China might never reach a UCL play off round. Also I dont include Ukraine, Greece & Czech Republic in the comparision because they are the exceptions to the rule of money. In the specific case of Ukraine, i suspect their top clubs have some dirty money.
Proof that money cant buy everything Congratulations to Messi for becoming the 2nd most popular person on Instagram These 2 men will be known for elevating not only footballers but also many other athletes to their megastar status.
Prize money from European Club Football Competitions https://en.as.com/soccer/champions-...2-23-how-much-will-the-ucl-winners-receive-n/
Since the original vid has bad music, here is the same vid but with better theme: https://dai.ly/kBXsAK3Y59p8s5yqYXo
Prize Money from Big 5 No surprise that EPL offers the most money Season 2021-2022 1st place) £128 m + additional amounts 2nd place) £125.8 m + additional amounts 3rd place) £123.6 m + additional amounts 4th place) £121.4 m + additional amounts 5th place) £119.2 m + additional amounts 6th place) £117 m + additional amounts 7th place) £114.8 m + additional amounts Season 2022-2023 La Liga has made huge gain in their TV revenue Bundesliga https://topsoccerblog.com/german-bundesliga-prize-money-2022-2023/ Ligue 1 https://topsoccerblog.com/ligue-1-2022-23-prize-money/ Serie A went from being the best league in the 90s (with Milan & Juve making multiple UCL finals) to being a poverty league https://topsoccerblog.com/serie-a-prize-money-2022-2023/