Another question from an American about how the English Premiere League works. So one thing that’s confusing from the American perspective is how many different competitions there are that a team can be in. In American sports, the Dallas Cowboys play in the NFL regular season. At the end of the season, they may or may not have qualified for the playoffs, and may or may not make it to the super bowl. Before the season there are preseason exhibition games which matter absolutely not at all. And that’s it. No other games of any sort.
On the other hand, I’m right now watching Manchester United vs. Chelsea, both EPL teams, in something called the FA Cup. Which, as far as I can tell from the wikipedia article, is not part of the EPL season, but is just one big knockout tournament that kind of takes place at the same time, and involves all the EPL teams, plus all the teams from the next 6 or so levels of English football.
In addition, an EPL team might be playing in:
-The UEFA champions league
-The UEFA europa league
-Something called the Guinness international champions cup
-And of course the EPL season itself
So, my question is:
(1) How many of those things are actually really seriously cared about by the serious fan? And in what hierarchy of importance? If your team could win only one of those things, which would you want it to be?
(2) How the hell is all of that stuff scheduled so that a team doesn’t have to be in two places at the same time? (Not to mention of course that there is World Cup qualification going on right now as well, and EPL players come from many different countries, etc.)
(3) Am I correct in thinking that the EPL itself has just a “regular season”, with no playoffs or championship game at the end? Has that always been the case? Given that one imagines that a playoff/championship system would rake in the TV dollars, is that something that is proposed from time to time, or is it considered declasse to even discuss it?
Thanks!
As a fellow American getting into the EPL I would say this a big plus for me - every game matters when it comes to winning the championship (or avoiding relegation), it’s almost like the entire season is the “playoffs”.
The FA Cup is contested by roughly 750 or so English teams. I believe the eligibility requirements are that you play in the top 10 tiers of English football and you have a suitable stadium. The FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the World and has been contested every year (except for two breaks during WWI and WWII) since 1871, which still gives it some importance beyond its status as a domestic Cup competition. It used to be a massive deal, with FA Cup final day being the biggest day in the English sporting calender and winning it was only a bit behind winning the top league (i.e. the Premiership and it’s predecessor) in terms of prestige. Even as late as the 1990s I would say it was still a fairly close to that status, but it’s declined in importance as the focus becomes ever more on the Premiership and the Champions League.
I would say the hierarchy of competitions for a Premiership team would be:
Champions League
Premiership
Europa League
FA Cup
World Club Cup (inter-continental tournament between winners of the various Champions Leagues)
League Cup
European Super Cup (one-off game between winners of the Champions League and Europ League)
Charity Shield (one-off game between winners of the Premiership and FA Cup)
*The World Club Cup is a bit of a funny one, as it’s fairly new and it is something that FIFA are trying to push, but many still see it as a series of glorified friendlies and it’s never going to rival the Champions League in terms of prestige.
The International Guinness Cup is just one of a number of pre-season tournaments which come and go and are really there to help teams warm-up for the season and they’re not really considered serious competitions.
Scheduling can cause problems, especially if a team has some games postponed. However there’s always a way to fit all the games in.
The Premiership and it’s predecessor have always used format of all teams playing each other twice and the team with the most points at the end of the season wins since 1888. The only major changes have been the number of teams (12 in 1888, expanding to 22 briefly for two period in the 1980s and 1990s, before it’s present day total of 20) and the introduction of 3 points instead of 2 points for a win in 1981.
Some lower-level national leagues (not just MLS) have used various play-off systems. However you will never see play-offs in the Premiership and yes it is slightly heretical to even discuss! I would say there are already plenty of knockout tournaments and already enough fixtures, I couldn’t see the point of the play-offs and for me the best team over the course of the whole season deserves to be Champions. The best team will nearly always have a better record than the rest over 38 games.
Even though I’m from the US, I’ll try to answer the World Cup qualifying question. FIFA (I think it’s them) decrees a number of two week breaks in league play for international matches. There is only one weekend of games missed, but it gives enough time to put together an national team and play one or two matches. Often times, the players called up for national duty sit out the first league match after returning.
Asymptotically fat has basically nailed it. I will just add a couple of points. The “League Cup” that he mentions (currently known as The Capital One Cup - the sponsor tends to change every few years, it has previously been known as The Worthington’s Cup, The Coca Cola Cup, and The Milk Cup - yes, it used to be sponsored by milk!) is unique in that it is a knockout cup competition contested by all 92 clubs in the Football League (comprising the EPL - even though it’s technically a separate league - and the three next lowest divisions, currently known as The Championship, League One, and League Two - even though the latter is the fourth tier). Like the FA Cup, the top clubs don’t have to play until the later rounds - in the case of the League Cup, most clubs have to play in the second round. One way they avoid fixture congestion is by delaying the entry of clubs involved in European competitions until the third round.
If a team has a lot of games to play at the end of the season, they just have to play two or three times a week if necessary to fit them all in. For example, it would not be uncommon for a team to have games on Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday. I’m not sure what the minimum gap is between two games; I suspect it’s two days (i.e. in theory you could be forced to play on Saturday and again the following Monday), but this rarely happens in practice, with 3 or 4 days being preferred. Managers inevitably complain when this happens, regardless.
I hope there is never a play-off system in the EPL but sadly a lot of other sports have taken it on where there is no need for it (Rugby Union being the prime example, following in the footsteps of Rugby League), so I fear it may happen eventually. It’s purely money that’s behind it - no real fan wants it, teams have too many games already, as you say.
Otherwise, I agree with everything posted so far. Oh, and the United/Chelsea game you were watching must have been a re-run - they are due to play next Monday, 26 August, in the EPL, and they last played in the EPL on 5 May 2013. I can’t remember the last time they met in the FA Cup :).
Thought I don’t really follow EPL, I think maybe it’s worth noting that for teams that are towards the bottom of the league, the #1 priority is winning enough EPL games to avoid relegation. They probably won’t be competing in the Champions League anyway, and of course have no hope of winning the League Cup, so there’s no point in priority ranking them against avoiding relegation.
But my guess is given the choice of winning the FA Cup and being relegated, or staying in EPL but not winning the FA Cup, most fans (and certainly management) would choose the second.
Yep, if your team is one of the top 6 or 8 then you don’t have to worry about relegation. If not, staying in the Premiership is by far the biggest issue.
The very top players in the top clubs want to win the Champions League, but for everyone else … the league matters.
Personally, it’s all about the league for me - that and watching the latter knockout stages of the Champions League. Don’t even care about inertantionals.
Yes there’s a definite difference in expectations between the clubs and how they approach each competition.
There’s probably 3 teams this year that have an actual tangible chance of winning the Premiership (i.e. wouldn’t be a shock): Man City, Chelsea, Man Utd (in order of likelihood IMO), 2 darkhorse teams that’s it not inconceivable could win, but it would still move into the ‘upset’ category: Tottenham and Arsenal (again in order).
Those 5 teams are the main contenders for the 4 Champions League qualification spots, with two teams being darkhorses for the Champions League places: Everton and Liverpool. Those 7 teams will all be fairly much guaranteed to be at the least fighting it out for the 5th place Europa League spot.
The rest of the league in many ways is much of a muchness, as all could be counted as a dark horse to suddenly get in contention for the league Europa Cup place, yet relegation is a real threat. That not to say there aren’t definite differences between the teams in terms of quality (e.g. Newcastle Utd would sit easily at the top end and Hull City easily at the bottom end), but so often in the last few years, within this band, teams branded as no-hopers have done surprisingly well and the supposedly better teams have ended up being relegated.
As a Reading fan (a team that has spent 3 of the last 10 seasons in the Premiership and the rest in the second tier), I would actually take winning the FA Cup over retaining Premier League status.
As an outsider, talking about the playoffs-vs-no-playoffs issue, the most obvious drawback to not having a playoffs is that if one team is just way ahead with a month of the season left, there’s not much excitement on the surface. But I suppose that in the EPL, if one team is way ahead and certain to win the league, there are still likely close races for the various Euro spots, and for not-getting-relegated, which means there’s likely to always be something exciting to pay attention to. And of course, if it IS close with a month to go then every single match matters, which is kind of the ideal way for things to end.
The Europa league still baffles me, however. Looking at the final standings of the 2012-2013 EPL here, why is it that the Europa league teams are the ones that finished 5th, 9th and 18th? Is the Europa league just the consolation for not making it to the UEFA champions league?
And one more (final?) question: does the UEFA champions league happen after one EPL season finishes and conclude before the next one begins? Or does it overlap with the next season?
It certainly does sometimes happen that the Premier League is won a month or more before the end of the season, but as you say there’s also the battle for the Euro spots and the relegation dogfight to keep interest in the league.
I understand the excitement of the play-offs, IMO some of the most exciting games in the whole footballing World are the play-offs for a Premier League place between the 3rd-6th place teams in the Championship (1st and 2nd are automatically promoted). However for me play-offs to decide the Champions would just be too contrived: why play a full season with one team winning the league, only to say they are not the Champions and then having a play-offs? It’s not that some leagues don’t operate this way, but as I say it’s never going to happen in the Premiership.
In England, the Europa League spots are awarded to the 5th place team (1-4 qualify for the Champions League), plus the winners of the FA Cup and the League Cup (who finished 18th and 9th in the Premier League this year).
To understand the status of the European competitions, you probably have to look at their history. Formerly there were 3 European competitions: the European Cup, Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup (which was called the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in its early life). The European Cup was open only to teams that had won their league, the Cup Winners Cup was for those who won their domestic cup (e.g. the FA Cup) and the UEFA Cup was usually the best of the rest (i.e. highly-placed teams in their respective leagues). A group stage was added to the European Cup and it became the Champions League, which was quickly expanded so it included teams that weren’t the actual champions of the league. The Cup Winners Cup was absorbed into the UEFA Cup (though the Cup Winners Cup had been the more prestigious competition), to which a group stage was added and was recently renamed the Europa League.
In some ways the Europa League is a consolation competition as the prestige of winning the Europa League doesn’t really compare to the prestige of winning the Champions League. However it really is a case of YMMV in the way that different teams approach the Europa League.
It overlaps with the season. The Premiership has just started again last week, but they are already playing the final qualifying rounds for the Champions League. Despite the name, it isn’t really a league: the 1st round is a group stage with teams divided into groups of 4 playing each other home and away; the later stages are a knockout rounds with teams playing each other over two legs, except for the final which is a single game.
I find it bizarre that any fan wouldn’t. Wigan fans surely enjoyed winning the FA Cup more than looking forward to yet another season just fighting for survival in the top flight. The Championship isnt a bad league anyways and you get to see your team win more than a handful of games in a season.
If your goal is to find out who the best team is rather than how to make the most money then playing each team home and away and seeing who finishes top of the league is a better method than playoffs. Knockout competitions are much more of a lottery, as we saw with Wigan and Swansea winning them last season.
I tend to think of Champions League as roughly equivalent to our college basketball tournament with all the league champions and two dozen at large teams. Which kinda makes Europa League the NIT.
A bunch of late round losers in Champions League are also entered in the late rounds of Europa League. How often do these teams win the Europa League as opposed to the teams who originally started in Europa League?
If someone could answer this one I’d be grateful. I’m trying to cultivate an interest in the Premier League. So if I happen to have nothing else to watch, I’ll see if I can find a game. So if I turn a game on, how the hell do I know which team is which? They don’t appear to have anything on their jerseys to let you know, it seems to be advertising space. Is there a convention that the home wears light or dark? On the on-screen score graphics, is there a convention which team is listed first?
Normally, at least most of the time IIRC, the home side is listed first. So something like ARS 0 - TOT 0 would mean the game is at Arsenal.
The home side gets to wear their home colors, and the visitors either always wear road colors and wear a third jersey if there’s a conflict or try to wear their primary kit unless there is a conflict. So in that case you kind of have to know what the home side’s home kit looks like.
There is no real “light/dark” paradigm. Although generally if its garish it’s an alternate jersey.
Either way generally the announcers give it away pretty quickly.
According to wiki, 25 CL losers from the third and final playoff rounds (before group stage) also transfer over to the late rounds of Europa League. So all together, 161 of the lesser teams from around the continent plus 33 pretty decent teams who qualified for Champions League.
Both tournaments are pretty interesting in their structures. It’s a nice change of pace from American sports leagues, which all follow a pretty basic pattern. I hope interest in footy in this country continues to grow so MLS will begin promotion/relegation. There’s a school of thought out there that giving clubs the freedom to be great, even at the cost of parity, is what’s needed for us to attract great players and become even more competitive on the world stage.
Also, though it may be sometimes difficult to make out (on a small telly) you may well see a small splash of colour against the names in the top left corner, this will normally be the most obvious primary colour of the relevant team’s strip.