Topic: To the Europeans out there...

I've always been a "soccer" player but never a fan of the European football stars until the introduction of Youtube into my life a few months ago. I got enthralled watching videos of the top players. But I'm having trouble understanding how the leagues work. I understand that there's a ton of different leagues but how do they connect. Is there a play off for all of them? Does each major nation have a individual leagues.

Basically for some reason I don't quite understand the league system. Someone please explain or point me to an explanation of the European Football leagues.


Thanks.

-Chesta

European Nations:
***************
Each nation has their own system of leagues, usually with a top tier (American Equivalent being "Major League") then there are usually leagues in order underneath them where the quality gets progressivley worse the farther down you go. Usually the have a relegation/promotion system where the teams move between the leagues depending on the position that they finish the season in... for example:

LEague ONE has twnety teams and the teams that finish the season in the last 3 spots drop down (relegation) to LEague TWO for the next season and the top three finishing teams from the League TWO standings move up (promotion) to play in League ONE for the next season.

There are usually at least one or two "cup" competitions in a NAtion's LEague where teams from all the leagues compete for a Cup. It's a secondary competition to the league but provides the possibility of little minnows teams from lower leagues pulling an upset against the big kids, kinda fun, kinda waste of time an assets

Europe:
*******

THe European confederation (governing body, UEFA, similar to CONCACAF's role in the United State's region) has a few club competitions they run, the UEFA Champions League, The UEFA Cup, and the UEFA Cup Winner's Cup, they're all similar so ... the UCL (UEFA Champions LEague) expalained...

The Winners and runners up (and other possibilities based on nation's seeding and weird stuffs) of each European Nation's Top Leagues get to play in "Europe". The UCL runs at the same time as the LEagues so it's double duty for teams playing domestic league and Europe but Europe is tons of extra money and glory, priority usually favors UEFA competition over league. I digress. The Champions of the Leagues get together in the UCL and play a tournament format very similar to the World Cup or Euro quadrennial competitions but they do it every year and it's for clubs instead of National Sides.

Resto Del Mundo
***************

There's similar competition in this hemisphere called the Copa Libertadores which started as a CONMEBOL (S American) thing but has recently included the MExican league.

The Libertadores winners and the UCL winners usually meet somewhere in Asia where there's an assload of money floating around and play each other for the "World Title" or somesuch, that's not a very frenzied game tho. UEFA Champions LEague is the biggest and best football you can get your eyes on on a regular basis

Leagues?
Soccer?

Hmmm, oh yeah, that's when a bunch of grownups run around kicking a bladder full of air, right?
Don't know or care
D/

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{" Computer:
?As a Quantum Supercomputer I take advantage of Zeno?s paradox?
C: ?Imagine a photon that must travel from A to B. The photon travels half the distance to B. From its new location it travels half the new distance. And again, it travels half that new distance.?
C: ?It continually works to get to B but it never arrives.?
Human: ?So you keep getting closer to finishing your task but never actually do??
C: ?Hey, coders make a living doing that??
?}-

In England there are essentially 4 divisions/leagues whatever like you to call them. During the season each team plays everyone in their division twice, once at home and once away.
At he end of the season, the top few teams in the Premier League qualify for places the next season in the various European club competitions.
The top 2 teams in the lower divisions swap places with the bottom two the division above them.
I'm not going to try to explain the extra relegation and promotion places that are fought out via money making playoffs too. Stupid system in my opinion.

The bottom team in the 4th division drops out of the league and the top so called 'non-league' team joins the Football League.

On top of this league program runs the FA Cup, a knockout comeptition which attracts hundreds of teams of part timers and in the later rounds all the professional League teams. Each round all the teams are put into a pot and drawn at random, so big fish can play minows at any time.

Oh, and there's also a League Cup competition, again knockout each round, but only for the League teams.

There are many, many more localised leagues for the amateur players too. Phew... we love football... sorry Soccer.

I never really got into soccer or football or whatever you wish to call it. However, I did watch some of the World Cup and have to say, I wish they played it on the TV here more often. In this part of the states I never get to watch it. Then again I don't have cabel so I am not sure if it is on there anywhere.

Later,

C:\

So a match like the Barcelona v. Arsenal game would only occur during special competitions? Strange how I always thought the big name clubs played eachother a lot.

Is there any sort of pride associated with playing with ones national league (i.e. a pressure towards playing in the English premier league if you're from England)? Is there any top tier national league that is considered more competitive than the others? Or are they all similarly balanced (American League vs. National League in baseball for example I guess).


Thanks guys. Good answers so far.

-Chesta

Barca v Arsenal was the UEFA Champions League Final which happens yearly, the final that is, not the Barcenal matchup. Last year it was Liverpool coming back from 3-0 to tie 3-3 and win on PKs against Milan.

There is some sort of pride probably, but mostly players just want to play in the best league possible on the best team possible. A massive criteria for what teams and leagues are the best is the prospects for playing and doing well in Champions League football. Though it's highly subjective, well maybe not that highly, here's my take on the best leagues in Europe:

Level one:
Italy, Spain and England (no particular order)

Level two:
Germany, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands (no particular order)

Level three:
The rest! Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Ukraine, Romania, Yugoslavia (or whatever entities used to be Yugoslavia) Russia etc etc etc

Generally speaking you'll find a lot more UK born players playing in the English Premier League, more Spaniards in La Liga, More Italians in the Serie A but you'll see the truly top class players moving amongst the big clubs with good Champions League prospects no matter the country they are based in. For the most part, English players tend to stay in England, Italians in Itlay, Spaniards in Spain. European teams.leagues employ talent however fro mthe nations of Brasil, Argentina, S America/Eastern Europe, Africa with some Asians and North/Central Americans trickling in.

About 10 years ago there was a landmark court case in Europe, "the Bosman Ruling" if you wanna google it, that struck down the "foreign player cap" for European leagues and allowed for any player with an EU passport to play for any EU country. Before that ruling I believe there was a maximum of 3 players allowed on the field that were not from that team's country. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an Englishman in Arsenal's Champions League Final side, maybe Sol Campbell played? Arsenal is a forein legion these days and heck, for hat matter Barcelona fielded Brasilians (Ronaldinho, Edmilson), Portuguese (Deco), Cameroonians (Eto'o) French (Giuly) Swedish (Larsson) etc etc etc

The world is definitely shrinking

quote:

---

JKMabry said:

The world is definitely shrinking

---

Which I think is a great thing, 'cause it makes for some awesome collections of talent that are just pure joy to watch. Kind of sucks for the other clubs, though, I guess.


___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup