Football Thought Bubble

Part 1: Should We Americanize European Football here I want to clarify that I am not suggesting that the European game should copy the American system. Some policies are unusable in Europe, such as the relocation of teams, the lack of promotion & relegation, the match schedules, and the old penalty rules. As suggested in part 1, the MLS or Major League Soccer is a lot more competitive than the European game. This does not mean that the standard is higher, but instead, there are no teams can dominate year in and year out in the same way they do in Europe. The MLS has had six different winners in the last seven years, and this reality is very different from European Leagues or the Champions League. Part 1 explains this in greater detail. In this piece, I will take a look at some of the things the football/soccer organisers do to make the game different in the United States. First of all, some of the key terms that help explain why in the MLS is not so easy to predict and is ever-...

Written by Diarmuid Gillingham Inspired by DW Kick-Off and my friend, who supports Barcelona. Part One: Why The American Question Needs To Be Asked Part Two: How The MLS Approach Would Impact The European Game of Football Introduction and Context This will be the first of many blog posts comparing the European football scene with that of the USA.  While Europen societies are better known for their equality than the USA, the American way of doing sports is often more equal than their European counterparts. This fascinating cultural fact extends to the world's most popular game, which is football or soccer. In this first piece, I make a comparison between the European game and the MLS. This piece will mainly focus on why the European game is so one-sided towards the big clubs. On the 16th of August 2019, I watched Barcelona struggle in a 1-0 opening day defeat to Ath. Bilbao. What caught my attention more than anything was my friend's constant complaining about the Ba...

Part One here :  Posted First here :  Leading on from what we read at in part 1, which you can find  here  In part two I will examine the effects of population on the standard of club and national football in a country as well as examining the correlation between economic prosperity and success on the football pitch. Finally, both part 1 and 2 will be summed up in a few conclusions at the end. But first of all, the effect of foreign players in leading national leagues will be examined.    Effect % Of Foreign Players In Leading National Leagues.   With the recent success of both Spanish clubs and in particular the national team it should come as no surprise that out of Europe’s top 5 leagues, La Liga has the fewest % of foreign players at 42.8%. While England and Italy whose national teams have struggled in recent times have the highest % of players playing in their top leagues at 69.2% and 55.5%. Surprisingly 49.2% of players in t...

Part Two Here : First Posted: Feb 5th 2018 Here In recent years UEFA has tried to increase the importance of international football. Such measures include the spreading out of European championship qualification fixtures over a week period rather than just a couple of days and more recently the introduction of the Nations League. The Nations League aims to decrease the number of meaningless friendly games as well as reduce the number of one-sided matches often shared between nations. Except for fans from smaller countries, who are keen to see big names such as Harry Kane, or   Antoine Greizman, nobody benefits from seeing a nation like England or France beating San Marino 7-0. The Nation League aims to pit countries of similar standings against each other, by putting them into small groups. On top of this, these groups will have promotion and relegation and can be used as a way for nations to qualify for the next European Championships. Football fans can now look forward to se...