True, but you also have the Criterium du Dauphene warm-up race before it (and the Tour de Suisse next door) as well as the National Championships. Not that its a reason not to consider the summer, but the tour is a pretty significant competitor that shouldn't be overlooked.
Just finished watching season 2 of "Sunderland 'til I die". Pretty much an object lesson of how pro/rel makes games mean more to fans than is the case in closed leagues. Admittedly Sunderland is something of an extreme case of this given their abject off-pitch failings over a long period of time, but a lot of what's contained in that series resonates with what I've seen with many other teams in the English pyramid.
I'm sure it's a great watch, but the idea that there's an objectively "better" fan experience in one setup or the other strikes me as a thesis in search of evidence. Fans come to appreciate and value whatever competitive structure the sport they love happens to be organized under. I fell in love with soccer because I loved the GAME not how various competitions were organized. Started with the World Cup, then started following MLS, and later began following the UCL and eventually different Euro leagues/clubs. As I became more and more of a fan, I learned how each of those very different competitions were organized. But it was the sport of soccer itself--not the Group stage-followed by knockout rounds setup of the WC, the American-style regular-season followed by playoffs setup of MLS, the qualifications-by-league placement criteria for getting into the UCL, or pro/rel in most foreign leagues--which made me care.
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/video/coronavirus-rki-update-100.html Vizechef Schaade - RKI warnt vor "Erdrutsch an Lockerungen" Datum: 24.04.2020 11:10 Uhr Das Robert-Koch-Institut warnt vor weiteren Lockerungen. Die gute Situation in Deutschland könne zu falschen Schlüssen führen, mahnte Vizepräsident Schaade. I can't see how with stark warnings coming in, and the last days the ratio of infections creeping towards 1.0 again (when the ratio is 1 or higher the number of infections is increasing fast) the BuLi can imagine to start playing, even behind closed doors. Corona virus is affecting brain tissues too. Are those BuLi club managers having repercussions from that? What do those money hungry managers not get from the fact that the virus isnot gone and very lively still, there's no cure for infected people and not available for the next 12 months, there's no corona vaxxin available to curb infections and giving the "normal" developing and testing time frame of up to six-10 years for sure not available next year, to think about restarting the competition?
While your concerns are valid, I'm not sure characterizing managers as "Money hungry" is really fair.
Well, they plot it to play behind closed doors because it's the only way they can save 750 million in tv money.
I believe that sport is important to the morale of a nation and really should be something we start prioritizing. And televised sport is something that can keep other people at home. The top clubs have fantastic medical facilities and can implement very careful monitoring. Plus most players are young and otherwise healthy and not at high-risk. At the first sign of illness the thing can be shut down again. Some players may choose not to take that risk and that should be catered for. The F1 restart seems risky. It involves 20 or so mechanics and engineers working directly on the cars plus huge teams of support staff based mainly in central England.
The thing about STID that appears different there, perhaps its fancy editing, but there is perhaps not as much to do (support) sporting wise. Maybe there is a rugby team i don't know about. Here, in many locales, there is something else to follow. In Seattle, a relegated Sounders, would barely make a ripple. I still have MLB, NFL, and soon the NHL. Losing the Sonics was disappointing for sure but I wouldn't exactly say that Seattle is mourning them too much. They were nice to have but we still have NFL, MLB, MLS, and soon NHL. There is still major college football and basketball after that. As much as I enjoy soccer and going to and watching the Sounders, they wouldn't be missed in the second division and perhaps forgotten.
Fair enough. But I'm not unaware of what relegation battles are. I do have friends a family in Europe, you know; both the UK and the continent. I just don't think this stuff is all that mystical or hard to "get."
Are the managers driving that decision? And to the degree they are, is their motivation "money" or "saving the league"?
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/24/science.abb5793 Harvard scientists predict lockdown necesary until deep in 2022. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/24/science.abb5793
Well, sounds cool. But I still hold that either side of the equation is not some esoteric wisdom one can only appreciate through deep experience.
In an informal survey of MLS fans published in The Athletic today, 62.6% of respondents said they would like to see some form of promotion and relegation in the league. However, there was no consensus of how this could be done with the most popular idea being two divisions of 20 teams, rather than an open pyramid. According to the author's summary, pro/rel was not a top 5 issue.
The show is about an English team and an English league and English fans in England. Sunderland has a Nissan plant and a football team and through decades of economic hardship the team has come synonymous with the city in a way that will never happen with soccer in the US.
Not the point I was making and in fact I acknowledged Sunderland was an edge case. So, if you're going to play the "corrected your post" game, it really helps to end up with a logical sentence.
I don't get why a country where soccer is the 4th or 5th most popular team sport is compared to countries where soccer is the most popular sport by far. Wouldn't it make more sense to compare it to countries where soccer isn't the most popular sport, or at least to the 4th or 5th most popular team sports in England, Germany, Italy, Spain or France and see how pro/rel works in those sports' leagues.