What do Spaniards think of the Bundesliga and Premier League?
What do Brits think of the Bundesliga and La Liga?
What do Germans think of La Liga and the Premier League?
Etc. etc.
As an Englishman:
In the Bundesliga you have Bayern Munich aka “FC Hollywood”, who are one of the World’s superclubs and also currently superior to any PL team. However on the whole German clubs tend to have less disposable resources than PL clubs (though teams like Dortmund and Schalke have revenue comparable to Prem CL teams), so the drop-off from top to bottom is bigger. That is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Germany is a big country and has a larger pool of domestic players to draw on and so is not as reliant on the international transfer market and uses a healthier, less money-dominated model to run their football clubs. The league itself is entertaining and has good football.
Spain contains the two clubs with the most disposable resources on the planet and this is reflected in the fact that 3 out of the last 5 CL finals have been won by Spanish teams, they also have a good pool of home talent to draw on. There are a couple of teams, particularly Athletico who are also comparable to Prem CL teams, but the resources in La Liga are not well shared and the business model of clubs is in some cases appalling. Whilst watching two of the best teams in the World play is always good entertainment, the drop-off in quality from top to bottom is too large and too many games involving Real and Barca are shooting galleries.
Thanks! Superb answer.
Love for Euros to throw in opines on the up and coming French Ligue 1 and Italian Serie A in the mix.
Ligue 1 was an up and coming league until the Qataris bought PSG and, with their almost unlimited wealth, turned it into a one horse race.
Serie A hasn’t really recovered from the match fixing that came to light a few years back. The scale of it was incredible - match officials being bribed by clubs who weren’t even playing in the match, for instance - and I don’t think that they’ve regained the trust of supporters. Other than that, it’s always been a fairly open league with half a dozen title contenders at least and the odd surprise team (Chievio comes to mind) in the mix.
In La Liga it’s normally a two horse race between Real and Barcelona, although Atletico are challenging. Every club tries to play like Barca and gets slaughtered by them. They need a 1980’s Wimbledon in that league…
Bayern have dominated the Bundesliga for a few seasons, but I don’t expect that will last forever. I think it’s probably like Liverpool in the seventies over here; you think it will never end, but it does.
The Premier League? We’ve got an ex Halifax Town striker as top scorer for the leaders. That’ll do me…
Good post, fully agree (and likewise the first reply).
I personally don’t enjoy watching the Spanish/Barcelona style of play, I jokingly call it “pass it around until the other team gets bored and falls asleep, then walk it round them for another tap-in”. Maybe I’m too English and too old-fashioned, I know there’s a lot more too it than that but it just doesn’t interest me for some reason. But to be honest I rarely watch football at all these days, if you don’t have Sky in the UK you don’t have much chance unless you go down the pub. Ligue 1 and Serie A are very rarely shown even then so I know very little about them. I agree Bayern’s dominance is bad for the Bundesliga, there is a minor scandal going on there right now whereby it appears players on opposing teams are deliberately picking up yellow cards the week before they are due to play Bayern in order to get their suspensions out of the way (on the basis they have no hope of getting a result against them, so they may as well wipe the slate clean ready for the next game). A bit of a sad situation that ultimately is not in anyone’s interests, even Bayern’s - look at how the standard of Scottish football has declined since there has only been one decent team in their top league.
I’ve been a Tottenham Hotspur fan all my life - season ticket holder from when I moved back to London (1991) until I around 2003/4 when I moved overseas. They were not the greatest years to be a Spurs fan but I loved the atmosphere at WHL and still do when I make the odd mid-week game when down in London for work (most Europa League for which you can get tickets pretty easily).
Increasingly though as the Premier League got more and more awash with money the camaraderie of being a fan got increasingly sucked out. When you can no longer afford to take your kids to a game regularly then the whole thing changes. Too many games on TV only speed up that effect in my opinion.
I now live in Edinburgh, Scotland and - having married that rare beast, a female footy fanatic, I am again a season ticket holder in the SPFL. Not for a top tier club mind but the less than mighty Ayr United who currently languish in the third tier of a low quality League.
They get up to 1,500 home crowds (sadly much of Scotland will get on buses to see Rangers or Celtic rather than their local clubs and much of those remaining fans will follow Killi as Ayrshire’s only Premier League outfit.
The quality gap actually does not matter much in the end, I now enjoy watching live football almost exclusively. A season ticket costs me only £200 a year, the hard-core 150 away fans mostly know each other and it is a thoroughly enjoyable affair. It’s small time but the excitement level is just the same so long as you are involved and committed.
It’s cheap to do stuff like sponsor a shirt, or a mascot for a match so relatively ordinary folk get access to the Club and the players in a way long gone from other Leagues.
What is has done is reduce the amount of football I watch on TV hugely. I will watch Spurs live when I can - saw the second half of the Arsenal game in a pub in Brechin before the Ayr United kick-off. Rarely bother with watching other teams or even with highlight packages.
Never watch foreign football on TV. Have seen the odd game abroad - AS Roma when I lived there briefly. Italian fans really do know their football - probably the most “real” European League in my limited experience as a fan (with perhaps the Dutch as a close runner up from days watching Feyenoord although that was back in the 80’s).
Also seen the odd Bayern Munich match, and watched Athletico and Granada in Spain - both great atmospheres but somehow the football was not as engaging as in England or Italy. Less passion.