Soccer/football EPL organization

Factual Questions
1

Now that I have digital cable and lots of spare time on 4 days of each week, I have become fascinated with soccer, in particular the English Premier League. Being an American who was not raised in this religion, many of the fundamental workings of this League are a mystery to me. I tried searching for it, but most sites just want to tell me that Man. U is way out in front and they score alot of goals and that Arsenal is currently in second and doing quite well themselves. It seems many of the things I am interested in can be easily answered by any schoolboy from Leeds much easier than by trying to find a site that covers the questions, so here goes.

20 teams each year, how many get relagated to the lower league, what is that league called, and is any other criteria than record (er points that is) used to determine who is gonna get relagated? Do the bottom X number of teams go down? What critera is used to determine which teams come up to fill those slots?

I have been led to believe that a playoff system occurs among the top teams in the league, how many? Do they do this home and away match with aggregate goals thing?

If your feeling good, how about a little insight upon the Champions league? It matches up the winners of various leagues around Europe into another big tourney?

Man. U won that fabled treble I hear so damned much about. I know that one was the EPL, another was the Champions League, what was the 3rd big win?

And just for kicks, how many pounds is the admission price for an average EPL game?

American football seems a bit slow now that I have been enjoying the skills and endurance of the European and South American game. Watched some cricket today, you can keep that stuff across the pond.

Thanks,
Alantus

2

I’m really in the same boat as you. I watch CL on ESPN and the Premier League Show on Fox Sports, but I don’t really understand how the processes work. I’ll add a few questions of my own and try and answer some of yours.

Yes, but it takes the top several teams from the 4 major leagues. That may not fit the definition of “champion”, but the 3rd best teams in the Bundesliga, EPL, La Liga, and Serie A are probably better than the best Russian or Polish team.

Unless I’m mistaken, two or three teams are relegated. The league designations are straightforward. There’re more than two rungs, I think England has 5. Teams relegated from La Liga go to Segunda Liga and teams from Serie A go to Serie B. Either just the 2 or 3 teams with the least points go down or there’s a big tournament involving the worst teams in the upper league and the best teams in the lower league.

England
EPL
1st Div
2nd Div
3rd Div
4th Div

I believe they won it the last year that teams could participate in the UEFA Cup and the CL. Now, the UEFA Cup is just a moneymaker for teams who don’t make the CL or are eliminated from the CL early.

I’m not sure of any of this. It’s really just educated speculation.

My questions:

How do salaries work? It seems as though whoever pays the player’s transfer fee owns them. The weekly salary seems to be negotiable. Could Leeds tell Viduka that he better learn to live on L100 a week? Could Viduka tell Leeds he wanted L100,000 a week? How do they decide what to pay these players?

Australians seem to have more “rights” than other non EU players. Why aren’t Americans(another former Brit colony)afforded the same privileges? Offhand, it seems as though Aussies either count as EU players or don’t need work permits.

3

It didn’t take me long to discover the economic situation of the clubs was a very complex thing. Here is what I have gathered so far on the club money side of the equation.

Some clubs own there own stadium, which they can lease out, possibly very lucrative.

Some clubs field multiple teams at various levels/age groups.

Clubs often lend a player to another club, for a fee I am sure.

They play alot of soccer matches in Europe, and it seems that most of them fill the stadium, therefore the price of admission question…

La Liga is the Italian league? It seems to be at any rate, I was watching a match a few days ago. I know one of those other Leagues you mentioned is predominantly in Spain, which one is that? Where is this 4th league?

Where is that proverbial “any schoolboy from Leeds” at when you need him? They should be awake over there by now, wait, might have been a late night at the pub :slight_smile:

The search for knowledge continues.

Alantus

4

Nearly every soccer league (including the MLS here in the US) has two champions. One is the league champion, which in most cases is just the regular season champion (there are exceptions) and then there is a cup champion. In England, the comepetition is called the FA Cup and winning it is considered more prestigious than winning than the Premier League championship.

The FA Cup competition is a knockout tournament conducted while the regular season is going on. It’s sort of like the NBA having its playoffs while the season is going on. The only difference is that everybody participates, regardless of division. There are 602 teams participating in the 2000/01 competition.

As for relegation, I’m pretty sure it’s the bottom three teams that get sent down to the First Division and the top three teams from the First Division that get sent up.

If you are brave, you can try to navigate the Football Association’s website at http://www.the-fa.org

You can read about all-Europe competitions at http://www.uefa.com

5

Thanks for the links BobT. However my searches and link following there ended up with lots of info in areas I was not looking for. Unfortunately, they don’t have a link for “How this whole damned thing works” which is really what I want.

3 teams go down, 3 teams come up. Now I have a better understanding of the embarrasment associated with getting relegated. Kind of hard to grasp all the conversation when you don’t know what percentage of the league is subject to getting relagated.

They should play games in like 3 or 8 leagues at once just to make it all more confusing.

Alantus

6

Okay, let’s clear this up:

1. English domestic leagues

In England there are four professional (i.e. paid players, not part-time amateurs) divisions.

The Football Association Premier League (20 teams)
The Football League First Division (24 teams)
The Football League Second Division (24 teams)
The Football League Third Division (24 teams)

Below Division Three you hit the “amateur” leagues, starting with the Football Conference. Three teams are promoted into the Conference from a “pyramid” of regional amateur leagues.

The Football Association and Football League are the governing bodies for these divisions. From the mid-1960s there were four divisions of the Football League, but the richest clubs decided to increase their bargaining powers for TV rights by breaking away to form the Premier League in the early 1990s. Before the mid-1960s the lower divisions were split geographically (i.e. “Division Three North”); don’t ask me about that.

The divisions are often known by the sponsor name – many refer to the Premier League as the FA-Carling Premier League, and to the Nationwide League First Division.

The bottom three teams in the Premier League at the end of the season are relegated to the First Division. Standings in all divisions are determined as follows:

  • points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw)
  • goals scored (if tied on points) or goal difference (the difference between goals scored and goals conceded). I can’t remember which is currently used.

The top two teams from the First are promoted automatically, with a divisional playoff between the next four teams to determine a third team to be promoted. The initial stages and semi-finals of the playoffs use aggregate totals of goals (each tie is played over two legs to ensure no team gets an unfair home advantage), although the final is a plain old single match with “Golden Goal” extra time to settle it (i.e. in extra time the first to score wins). These playoffs were introduced in the 1980s to inject some excitement into the season end, where previously the top three teams were often so far ahead on points that there was very little interest in anyone else at the end of the season.

Four teams are relegated from the First and from the Second, with four teams promoted from the Second and the Third to replace them (three automatic, one via divisional playoffs). The bottom team of the Third Division is relegated into amateur league football in the Football Conference, and the top Conference side is promoted. However, this is dependent on strict stadium regulations, and in the past a number of Conference teams have been denied promotion on the grounds that their stadia weren’t up to scratch.

2. Cup competitions

The main cup competition is the Football Association or FA Cup. Any team registered with the FA in the country is eligible for this. The lower amateur teams playoff in a large number of qualifying rounds in the autumn, before the Second and Third Divisions get involved in the FA Cup Second Round Proper in late autumn. The First Division and Premier League teams get involved in the FA Cup Third Round Proper in January - historically a lot of fun as big clubs suffer shock defeats at the hands of part-timers! The final is played in late May.

There is also a League Cup competition for which the top four divisions only are eligible. This has become increasingly unpopular as a burden on players, particularly when they are also trying to fit in the more important (i.e. because there’s more money in it!) European matches. In recent years the big clubs have taken to playing reserves or youth players instead.

There are also a number of smaller cup competitions for the lower divisions, of which one example is the LDV Vans Trophy, open only to Divisions Two and Three. Nobody really cares much for these competitions.

3. Your other questions

The average admission price is expensive. I believe Chelsea charge around £25 (c. $35), but unless you’re a season ticket holder you’ll have a lot of trouble getting tickets for the “big” games.

Manchester United’s treble was the Premier League, the European Champions Cup (aka Champions League) and the English Football Association Cup.

Lawmill

Not entirely right, I’m afraid. See the league structure above. The Champions Cup is open to the winner of the league in a number of European countries, not just the top four (Austrian, Belgian, Dutch, Polish, Norwegian and Greek teams are all regular visitors!). Once past the initial knockout rounds the survivors are matched up in mini-leagues of four teams each, with the winners and runners-up moving on to another league round before knockout semi-finals and final. The big teams from England, Spain, Germany and Italy usually end up dominating at this point.

There’s also the Cup-Winners Cup, which I don’t have the will to live to explain, and the UEFA Cup, which is the big one that lots of national teams can enter in a variety of ways (being knocked out of the Champions Cup, being runner-up in the domestic league, winning a domestic cup competition, winning the crap summer Intertoto Cup etc). The Champions League / Cup is the big moneyspinner, with the UEFA Cup a distant second.

With regards to salaries, players received a basic weekly wage (extortionate at the top level – £50,000 a week isn’t unheard of – but very average at lower levels; players in Division Three can make between £200 and £1,000 a week). On top of this comes win bonuses, playing bonuses (for making the team), bonuses for achieving certain targets (i.e. European qualification), sponsorship deals and so on. Because these are specified in a contract they’re not easy to change, and clubs cannot force players to accept contracts that would leave them worse off without also entitling them to leave without a transfer fee (a “free transfer”). Players have enormous power at the top level; clubs fall over themselves to wave the cash, especially given that there is an increasing move towards a system without transfer fees (due to European Union free trade laws coming into conflict).

With regard to permits, all non-EU players require work permits. In the UK these are based on the relative ranking of the player’s home country (i.e. Australia ranks higher than, say, Mozambique - these rankings are constantly changing based on the results of international matches) and the percentage of matches that the player has played for their country. In England a player must have played 75% of the international matches he has been eligible for. Australians regularly suffer problems; West Ham United is struggling to get Hayden Foxe past the Department for Employment, and Mark Viduka only made it in through his Croatian links.

BobT

Almost - the FA Cup is very prestigious, but the Premier League is more challenging because it’s played over time rather than as a knockout tournament. It’s also more important to club chairmen as it involved lucrative TV rights, much more so than the FA Cup.

7

If anyone has any other questions, fire away. I’m around most of today, and I love football.

8

Your the man mattk, apologies if you didn’t grow up in Leeds :slight_smile: Since your here, let me just try to clear up a few more things a bit.

  1. The Premier League has no playoff? Its quite possible that Man. U or Aresenal is gonna have this thing wrapped up with 3 matches to play? The winner is determined entirely upon points (3 for win, 1 for draw) is what I understood you to say.

  2. You said:

In these playoffs with aggregate totals, the number of away goals is used to determine the winner? Win/Loss has nothing to do with it? Or is the aggregate total merely a tie breaking method? It is possible that 4-4 draw in the first game followed by a 1-0 win would have one team with a record of 1 win and 1 draw but behind on aggregate? In the final match with Golden Goal, is it played at a neutral site or do they draw straws for home field advantage?

  1. Other than that decent goalkeeper, are there any more Americans camped out over there?

Many thanks, may your headers never go off the woodwork the wrong way.

Alantus

9

Cheers Alantus!

[list]
[li]Yes, there’s no playoff for the Premier League. However, the competition is usually quite tough, so there’s often no clear leader until mid-spring. Plus, the following pack is competing for places in the UEFA Cup, and occasionally for extra places in the Champions Cup (at UEFA’s whim).[/li][li]In the playoffs, there are two semi-finals. These are played over two legs, once at each team’s home ground. The winner is the team with a clear advantage on aggregate, or the team which has scored more away goals at the opponent’s ground. If the results were, say, 1-1 and 1-1, I believe the winner is decided by playing “Golden Goal” extra time at the ground they’re at until one team scores. If there’s no more scoring after 30 minutes of extra time, the match goes to a penalty shoot-out, with each team taking five penalty kicks. The team who scores more of the five wins. If both teams score the same number, they keep taking penalties until one team misses and the other team scores. I think that the record for penalties is something like 44 taken by each side (in a recent amateur cup match).[/li][li]Americans in England…hmmm…there’s Brad Friedel at Blackburn (I think he recently moved from Liverpool), although he hasn’t really played many games at all.[/li]- Claudio Reyna is doing quite well for Glasgow Rangers in the Scottish Premier League

  • Eddie Lewis is playing for Fulham in the First Division, who are almost certain to be in the Premier League next season
  • Ben Olsen is on loan at Nottingham Forest, doing much worse in the First Division, and he scored an own goal recently
  • Joe-Max Moore started well at Everton last season, but hasn’t been in the team much this year
    Other recent US players in England have included Cobi Jones (never really cut it at Coventry), Roy Wegerle (fairly successful at QPR), Tony Meola (Brighton - didn’t last long), Kasey Keller (one of the most successful Americans of recent years - very good at Millwall and Leicester City until his hair disappeared), Jurgen Sommer (quite good at QPR), and Preki (quite good for Everton, although he wasn’t a naturalised American at that point)
10

Here I am, the schoolboy from Leeds, but it was rather a long time since I’m 43.

When Mattkwas talking about national teams he meant club teams rather than teams of Nations, ie International sides.

Where there is big money involved then finance becomes complex, true of most things I suppose.

Leeds United recently signed up a player who was being chased very hard by several other teams and the price tag was around £10-12 mill.

Leeds could not afford the risk of such an amount on such a young player and their cashflow would have been severely disrupted, so they have signed him on loan from his Italian club until the end of the season with the option to buy at its finish.

The money is so great for good players that they are often less interested in that aspect and more interested in how likely they can get into a trophy winning team and often international recognition.In Leeds Utd there is enormous potential since the side is very young, average age is less than 24 and might well be in a position to dominate English soccer in the next few years, if Manchester Utd weaken even slightly that is.

Players also get a cut of the transfer fee and this has been seen by some as way to unsettle a player, 5% of £10 mill is plenty and soccer agents who represent the players are accused of advising players to make transfers just to cash in on this when maybe it is not necessarily a good career move.

Most loan players go on loan with a view to a permanent transfer to the borrowing club, their own club may have excess players in a particular position or, in a recent development large, rich clubs are putting resources into small and financially weaker clubs but with the option to buy up any talent they discover. Those extra resources are used for the most part to run soccer academies. It also increases the catchment area of a major club since they are not allowed to sign up kids from beyond something like a 50 mile radius, this has been done so that schoolboys are not forced to travel huge distances to train and play when they should be concentrating on schoolwork.

Although English soccer leagues are known by their sponsors names very many of us still call it The Football League, unlike say the Bundesleague which is literally The German Football League, simply it was the first proffessional football league in the world and so had no need to declare its nationality.

Come on Leeds get out of that bad run, we need European soccer next year!!!
…and the obligatory (for a Leeds fan) comment,

Hey Manchester Utd, have an unhappy new year!!!

11

No, I meant that the major leagues are allowed to send several teams, not just their champions. Now, it seems as though Greece is sending two teams this year:Olympiakos and Panathanikos. Did one of these teams win the regualr season and the other some sort of tournament? I know that Deportiva La Coruna and AC Milan didn’t win their respective national leagues. Did they gain entry to the CL just because they finished near the top of the table?

La Liga-Spain
Serie A-Italy
EPL-England
Bundesliga-Germany

Personally, I like to watch La Liga the most. The Spanish play a very flowing style and the best teams aren’t afraid to spend. The EPL seems to be focused on speed rather than skill, it’s very exciting though. Serie A has most of the world’s good attackers. Consequently, most of the teams play very defensively and hope that their excellent forwards can do the work of a whole offense. I don’t see much Bundesliga, but it seems to be very orderly. These are generalizations, each team may play completely differently.

The other leagues get so little press over here that I don’t remember their names.

Really? I was under the impression that NF had practically agreed to a transfer fee of ~L2.5 for Benny. From what I’ve heard, 1st Division squads aren’t quite as good as MLS teams.

from http://www.fifa.com/rank/index_E.html:
16 United States
17 England
72 Australia

USA is currently ranked higher than England and much higher than Australia on the FIFA rankings. Yet, it seems as though you see many more Aussies playing in England. Are you sure that national team rankings are the only difference?

The FIFA rankings are pretty messed up though. Cote D’ Ivoire(51) and Burkina Faso(69) are hardly better than Australia.

new question:

Here in the states, I hear about how black players playing away games in Italy take lots of racial abuse from the fans. Offhand, Edgar Davids is one of the best players in Serie A. Do the fans just do this to players in other national leagues? Rascism must not be quite as taboo if the fans will chant rascist things just to throw a player off his game.

12

Lawmill
One problem FIFA has in its rating system is that it goes on wins but since competition in Europe is far greater and standards higher than in many regions teams that do badly here can end up with a lower rating in world terms than they perhaps ought to.There will be nations who qualify for the world cup that are nowhere near as good as England but they are playing in easier regions.

Australia certainly have some very good players but they did quite badly in their last competition, which is surprising.
I suppose it is too cynical to suggest that those players where very concerned about being injured and unable to play for their clubs in Europe where the real money and reputations are to be made.

Leeds Utd has two very good Aussies, Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka, and there was a great deal of concern over this, Kewell was unable to play due to a long term injury, but Leeds had a terrible casuality list and their side was largely a make do one.Fans in Leeds were relieved when Australia went out of their regional international competition early on.

As for the low rating of England, well one has to say that we had a great motivational manager in Kevin Keegan but he was tactically naive, we are going to struggle to qualify fo the next world cup. For various reasons we don’t always get the best man for the job when it comes to our international team.

13

Sorry, Lawmill, I misunderstood your post. Apologies.

1 / I don’t know exactly why UEFA are allowing non-champion teams into the Champions League. It sounds basically like a money-spinning idea to keep rich club chairmen and the powerful delegates from the “big” national associations happy.

2 / You’re dead right in your characterisations of the various leagues. Serie A is nice to watch for technical skills - beautiful, flowing movements, flicks and deadly accurate passes. I still prefer the passion and sheer bloody-minded stupidity of a muddy January Premier League match, though!

3 / Sorry, when I said “worse” I meant that Nottingham Forest are a much worse team than Fulham, who Eddie Lewis plays for. They’re still struggling to cope with relegation a few seasons back. Olsen is definitely on loan, although that is often with a view to a permanent deal, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he did sign on.

4 / Aussies tend to have more talented young players coming through the ranks than in America. Of course, this might must be because scouts are more used to the league set-up in Australia and have a better idea of where to look than in the States, rather than because they’re actually better. A lot of Australians also come to England via Europe, so they have more experience of the type of footie. Plus, I get the impression that MLS teams understand transfer values much more, so Australians are cheaper than American players.

5 / Racism is sadly still prevalent. Italy is particularly bad, as the recent investigation of Lazio’s Sinisa Mihajlovic over his comments to Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira have shown. Italian football hasn’t really come to terms with violence and racism, and the Yugoslav conflict has also exacerbated tensions. I can’t speak for Germany or Spain, but in England the problem is still persistent, although much, much better than in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s more of a problem in the lower divisions or in amateur league circles.

14

Now now Matt. Ben has actually had a very successful spell at Forest, and the club itself isn’t doing too badly - seventh in Division One and still well within reach of a playoff spot.

The terms of his deal are still being hammered out, but (unless something significant happened in the past week when I was away) it’s essentially just an extension to his loan deal rather than a permanent signing.

Other Americans in England:

Jeff Agoos at West Bromwich Albion (loan)
Brian McBride at Preston North End (loan)
Ian Feuer has played for Luton, Cardiff City (a Welsh team that plays in the English league), West Ham and now Wimbledon
Espen Baardsen Doesn’t really count as he’s a Norwegian international (through his parents), but he was actually born and raised in California so I’m including him anyway. Should have taken the #1 keeper spot at Spurs except Graham is an eejit, now at Watford instead.

A few more obscure names:

Joseph Carver is at Chester City.
Jake Edwards was at Wrexham (another Welsh club in the English league) and is now at Telford United
Marcus Hahnemann is at Fulham
Stefani Miglioranzi is at Portsmouth
Junior McDougald is at Dagenham & Redbridge

Since mattk decided to include a Scottish League player in his reply, here’s a few more:

Ian Joy is at Stirling Albion
John MacDonald is at St Mirren, currently struggling in the SPL
Steve Pittman is at Clydebank

and across the Irish Sea, Russell Payne is on loan at Derry City.

A couple other things -

The FA Cup has lost some of its prestige in recent years thanks in large part to the cash cow that is the Premiership. Doing well in the FA Cup used to be a much larger priority for First Division clubs, now their primary aim is promotion. Of course Man Utd’s dropping out of the competition last season has also devalued it though it remains to be seen how lasting that effect will be.

Deportivo La Coruna got into the Champions League the old fashioned way: by winning La Liga in Season 1999/2000.

Manchester United’s treble Yes, a great achievement, but it was just as great an achievement when Celtic, Ajax and PSV did it before them. It seemed like it took English commentators forever to twig that the treble was only “unique” and “unprecedented” for an English club.

15

That should of course read “lower division clubs”. When the FA Cup really meant something, the First Division was the highest level of football in England.

16

Thanks ruadh, I didn’t know 3 other teams had pulled off there own treble. Of course when Man. U pulled it off, I had far fewer opportunities to watch than I do now, so I didn’t have a very good chance to hear of the accomplishments of the other fine sides of the past.

Alantus

17

What’s the deal with Galatsaray? I know they aren’t in the English league, but I got FIFA 2001 and that team is on there. I asked in a chat room and some dude started talking about some stabbing incident or something, he didn’t go into detail though.

18

Galatasaray are a Turkish side with some of the most hated and feared supporters in football.

The stabbing incident took place April last, the day before a UEFA Cup semi-final in Istanbul between Galatasaray and Leeds (a club whose supporters haven’t exactly got the best reputation themselves). Allegedly a Leeds supporter pissed on a Turkish flag and a fight broke out which led to two men - by all accounts innocent of any wrongdoing, not hooligans, just Leeds fans in the wrong place at the wrong time - being killed and several others injured.

Galatasaray went on to win both legs of the semi-final and then won the trophy by beating Arsenal on penalties in the final.

19

Ruadh - wow, I’m impressed. That kind of knowledge would take me a couple of days with the Rothman’s guide.

Re: Ben Olsen. I think I may have my wires crossed. For some reason I thought Forest were in the lower half of the table (and I was obviously wrong).

One more American player that popped into mind was Jovan Kirovski. He was on Manchester United’s books but I think he left last season to play in Germany. Apparently he’s a future world-class player.

20

Kirovski left Manchester several years ago after being denied a work permit, went on to play for Dortmund and then another club in Germany and is now at Sporting Lisbon.

He never really got beyond United’s reserves, though he did have a spectacular scoring record there. He’s been fairly quiet the past few years, though since Bruce Arena took over the national team he’s made regular appearances for them and scored a number of goals. I don’t know if Sporting are making much use of him, though. A lot of people seem to have already written him off but he’s still only about 24 so hopefully he’ll still have the chance to develop into the player he looked like becoming a few years ago.