When you factor in 3 goals came after the 80th minute in a high altitude environment when the losing team is in Pre season, I would say they are pretty well balanced and just ran out of gas at the end. If you really believe that I have a bridge to sell you. Combining Switzerland, Austria and another league would create a rival to England, Spain, Italy and Germany. It would make the Champions league less predictable 4 or 5 bigger clubs who could honestly compete at the Champions league level. You think that doesn’t appeal to UEFA to have a more competitive champions league, not to mention another league or 2 with the potential of the big 4 vs. the many smaller leagues who just don’t bring in the money and don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell in Champions League? While true, the really sad part is those teams don’t stand a chance in the Champions league. I guess its only for notoriety because they don’t make it out of group stage 9 out of 10 times. Combining two leagues would increase the level of play which would bring in more money for the leagues and allow them to better compete in champions league.. Oh well.
You missed that this conference was about Eastern Europe?... And if you seriously think that Austria and Switzerland together with say Slovenia could create anything resembling the big four you need to read up on European fan demographics more. Many Austrian fans for example already have a "Big Club" they tend to support..It´s called Bayern Munchen and the way they support it is similar to the support Glasgow Celtic draws from Ireland, on a smaller scale but nevertheless. The only logical "regions" I find are perhaps the Baltic states and the split Ex-Yugoslavia. Otherwise it seems a hard sell.
You can't tell me that Red Bull Salzburg or Rapid Wien couldn't at least double their attendance in an expanded league with let's say Switzerland, Czech Republic and Hungary. That would make them 30,000+ clubs in a league where all clubs are in double didgits for attendance. This may not turn them into Man Utd, but the best teams in this league could maybe match Man City which is better than now. Of course I'm pulling this comparison out of my ass ... it's just the way I see it. Imagine a league with : Rapid Wien Red Bull Zalzburg Sturm Graz Austria Wien FC Basel Grasshopper FC Zurich Sion Young Boys Neuchatel Xamax St. Gallen Ferencvaros Sparta Prague Slavia Prague Banik Ostrava Teplice Whichever club rises to the top would become very respectable.
Agreed. What is their alternative? To loose more and more ground to the Bundesliga teams? If they want to afford and keep better players, they need more revenue, which means a more competitive league that gives them at least a hope of advancing in the Champions League. My guess is any regional league might be smaller, limited to clubs with bigger stadiums and attendance. Still, if you took the "big" clubs from just Switzerland and Austria you would get a much stronger 10 team league than either country has now: SV Austria Salzburg - 15,109 average /17,388 high SK Rapid Wien - 14,572/17,096 SV Mattersburg - 9,974/15,689 SK Sturm Graz - 9,546/15,127 FK Austria Wien - 6.227/10.534 FC Basel - 20,144/34,070 BSC Young Boys Bern - 15,517/26,157 FC Sion - 12,304/15,200 FC Zürich - 10,871/18,137 Grasshopper Club Zürich - 6,920/17,666 The pickings get slimmer in the Czech Republic and Hungary, but you might add another four clubs from those countries too.
No thanks. Give me Luzern or St. Gallen over Mattersburg and Sturm Graz any day. Not that excited about Red Bull Salzburg and the Vienna sides either. But don't take my word for it, last week we had two Switzerland-Austria matches in the UEFA Cup: SV Ried - FC Sion 1:1 (Attendance 2,500) FC Basel - SV Mattersburg (Attendance 9,200) It seems many others feel the same way. We like our domestic rivals, period. PS: Has anyone actually read the article?
Putting a Yugoslav League back together would be a disaster. FourFourTwo did an article on the Croatia-Serbia thing about 4 to 6 months ago. There were all these appalling quotes in there about how Croatian fans hate all Jews, blacks, gays, Serbs, basically listed every group they could think of, and talked about how they wanted to kill them all. Then the fans were talking about how they wished they could play Red Star Belgrade and other Serbian teams again so they could crank up the violence. Red Star Belgrade - Dinamo Zagreb would make the Sicilian Derby disaster from last year look like a U-8 kick-around in Westchester County. Anything that results in Croatia - Bosnia - Serbia playing each other is just a terrible idea.
My guess is that most fans would react the same way in most countries. Still, I have some sympathy for the clubs themselves. Walter Smith talked about the problems facing Rangers and Celtic, that face an uphill battle in the Champions League but need that revenue to compete at a higher level: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ma...AVCBQUIV0?xml=/sport/2007/07/08/sfnrod108.xml Now, it is clearly better for the rest of the Old Firm to have them in the SPL, and I suspect the vast majority of Scottish fans prefer it, but that platform makes it difficult for them to keep pace with English clubs, just as the bigger clubs in Austria or Switzerland are in the shadow of Serie A and the Bundesliga. Combining First Divisions at least is an option to help those clubs without cherry picking out teams for a European League. To nudge this back to MLS, consider those Central American clubs again. Those are proud, successful teams that have historically rostered many domestic players for their national teams in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras. As MFL, and now MLS, teams grow in stature, however, they have financial resources at their disposal other countries top teams don't have. Together, the best Central American teams can raise their level of play and perhaps create some competition for TV and media deals. Left as they are, the disparity in CONCACAF won't be what it is in UEFA, but it will grow. I think FIFA needs to acknowledge they have an additional burden. If CONCACAF effectively allows the US and Canada to combine their first division, it seems very unfair to tell countries like Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras they can't do likewise if they wish to do so.
I could see how hard a decision a decision this would be for UEFA both to come to and where to draw the line. I mean, why not let France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium merge to get one up on Italy, Spain and England? And then why not let those countries merge in response? Then again, there clearly is a threshold underneath which smaller countries can participate in bigger leagues as a concession to reality. My recommendations would be: 1- That the countries involved must border each other unless they are islands, and then they must be reasonably (some number) nearby. 2- That the population of all but one of the countries be less than ~6 million, 3- That each of the leagues passes the merger by vote of its members (maybe with a 2/3rds majority), 4- That no more than 5 countries join Then, if the leagues want it, you could have your Baltic League, Nordic League (only Sweden is over 6 million), Czechoslovak League, a Gaelic League. But you couldn't have an Iberian League, an Austro-Hungarian Empire League (), a BeNeLux League (though Luxembourg could merge with any neighboring country), a CIS (Former Soviet) league and the like. Reason being that clubs from legitimate small countries should have some chance of competing on more than a Cinderella basis, but clubs from middle sized soccer powers shouldn't be trying to one-up the big leagues because that road has no logical endpoint. (The one I had the most trouble with was BeNeLux. Here you have a fairly accepted "region" and a combined population of only about 28 million, not too much more than Scandinavia [~24], but you have one already "pretty good" league in the Netherlands, that can produce teams that go deep in the champions league, possibly using a regional setup to start that destructive game of hopscotch.) -- In a CONCACAF context it should be somewhat different, because to be brutally frank the Central American and Caribbean countries seem not to hold the potential for development that the larger Central and Eastern European countries do. You could have somewhat bigger countries' leagues merging without having to worry about regretting it 40 years from now when those countries are all rich.
Thats UEFA cup though.. thats the poor mans champions league. Your going to tell me if they were playing a meaningful season game with a Champions league spot on the line they wouldnt draw more than 2.5k and 9.2k respectively ?
If it's a late season game sure, but an early season game? Again, I fail to see the excitement of a match against Mattersburg in November when we could be playing St. Gallen instead. People keep raising this tired 'Alpine League' (and it's mostly non-Swiss and non-Autrians) and don't think it all the way through. Exactly how is the distribution of spots to be handled? Is it a closed league? If not, how do you handle relegation? I like my league just the way it is - with all its shortcomings. Go merge somebody else's league.
The travelling supporters would have to cross borders and deal with local cops that would not be so willing to give the away die hards a fair shake inside or outside the grounds. There was talk of a SuperLiga in Europe between the best of Scotland (the Old-Firm), the Super 3 of Portugal, and the major clubs from Scandinavia and the like. I don't recall what came of that. "I was in Neuchatel, Switzerland last Thursday for a Fifa conference considering the viability of amalgamating certain eastern and central European leagues."---Thread Starters origianl post Going off topic but this line gave me a laugh cuz it reminded me of a scene from the movie 'There's Something About Mary'. I mean who makes it to Neuchatel, Switzerland on a Thursday for a conference on Eastern and Central Eurpean leagues??? Ha ha! That gave me a grin right there. "Have you ever been to...oh....Santiago Chile?"---Healy "Why twice last year.....did you build the soccer stadium Estadio Olimpico?"---Tucker "No, the casa cochuro right down the street."---Healy
Neuchâtel is on my destination list, but not for some silly conference: Capacity: 12,500 (built on top of a shopping centre) Opened at the beginning of the year...
hahahaha Balkan league They'd go bancrupt spending on security... We don't want anything to do with anyone to the east and south
The first year it may be arbitrary. A 16 team league, they may award 10 places to the Swiss. If Hungary is also involved, maybe just 8 teams. It would be somewhat arbitrary and controversial, but people get over it. There's always controversy in how World Cup spots are awarded, but I don't see people rioting in the streets over it. Anyways in a few years the league would correct itself after a couple of cycles of relegation/promotion. Doesn't have to be. You could have a 2nd division. The 3rd divisions and below could be regionalized. Something like 3rd division A, B, C etc ... The top teams in each division have a playoff at the end of season to get into 2nd division. This wouldn't be the first time football has evolved in a way contrary to popular opinion.
Seriously, is it actually on the roof o a shopping mall? Hahahaha, that is so awesome! As a follow-on... What's the proper name of the stadium so I can look it up on Wikipedia or something... Any idea of the cost to build it? Cheers!
*Cough*...Juventus vs Ajax in the Champions league, attendance 7.000... The truth is that unless it´s in a fairly advanced stage fans care a lot more about a game that involves some neighbouring town or at least a club you can despise for some traditional reason.
What happens when one country starts dominating the other? Take the often mentioned Benelux League. What if mostly Belgian teams get relegated year after year from the 1st and even the 2nd division? At one point the Belgian association may decide that it was better off before and decides to walk away. Now if you merge the associations entirely it's a different story, but then you also lose the individual national teams. Four years ago the Swiss and Austrian association announced a study on an Alpine League. It's been dead silent since. The only ones who keep bringing up this stupid idea have no connection to either country.
lol FIFA comes up with beauties...WTF are they on in these 'meetings'? well if it ever got to a vote, u know the establishment would oppose, as will fans. This is purely a way to try and get Celtic and Rangers in the EPL.... lol
Relegate the lowest finishing team from each country. After a few years you could re-adjust spots based on overall success of each country's participants.