Bayern winning 10. The premier league having a “big six” and only 2 different teams qualifying for UCL in years (Leicester and Newcastle). La Liga being a 2 horse race with occasional atletico. Even serie A has 5-6 good teams and every one doesn’t compete. Ligue 1 is only PSG. How do fans just accept that domestic leagues have no parity? There is no feasible way anyone can ever expect Brighton to win the PL when if they have one good year, their best players are bought. Big clubs are insanely well established and small teams can’t complete without getting bought out. It seems so unfair to me. Like, I feel like if the European scene was more fair with better parity, Dortmund should’ve been able to keep Haaland and Bellingham as their 2 starlets. The best example of this is Lewandowksi at Dortmund. He wins the league with Dortmund twice, loses to Bayern in the UCL final, and then just joins the best team. That was the best move for his career. It feels like the scene is just scene so a team like Dortmund can never compete with Bayern. Or how after Real beat Atletico in 2014, Atletico’s keeper joined Real 4 years later, and now Real remains the super team with Atletico just trying to qualify for UCL knockouts.
At least for Italy, the teams usually represent your city (Roma, Fiorentina for example) or region (Lazio). Apart from Juventus, Milan and Inter (supported everywhere in Italy), supporting a smaller team often means supporting the city it represents, taking pride in it and of course hoping for the victory and success of the team. I wouldn’t say that victory is the main reason someone supports a team, sometimes it’s also good just watching the team
I guess. But, wouldn’t want the situation to changed such that all teams in Serie A split revenue equally between all 20 teams? Cuz that way, the teams at the bottom may challenge the top of the table and we’d see new teams win (not just Roma, Juve, Inter, AC, Napoli, Atalanta, etc)
I don’t know, I don’t actually follow serie A, or big football anymore, more because i don’t like the tribalistic effect it can have on people. I prefer to follow my own town team (from Seconda Categoria, Italy has a total of 9 leagues, Seconda Categoria it’s the second last lol). Since there’s little to no money involved on it i always considered it the “real” football
Why should they though? Why should the popular teams share their ticket revenue, sponsorships or merchandise sales?
That just discourages teams from actually investing in the team to improve.
Not to mention that’d would make it near impossible for promoted Serie B teams to compete and stay up.
If all teams in Serie A are the same, then the teams from Serie B would have no chance of staying up after promotion. There are far more teams outside of the first league than in the top flight.
Sorry but AC Milan is called Milan, not AC. Just so you know :)
Why is everyone comparing to America? Did I miss any reference to America in the post?
As a Brazilian I think similar to OP, you can never be sure about who will win the “Brasileirão” or “Brazil Cup”, and it has happened many times that big teams are relegated.
I miss that in Europe, it makes it boring for me, predictable, and spoils the fun, Watching European football is just to watch the best players money can buy.
Hmm
Hm?
Parity. What are you? A commie? Always hilarious that Americans don’t mind making sure everyone is taken care of at all when it comes to sports, but making sure people don’t die of preventable causes goes too far.
I mean, what’s GOOD about the same 6 teams dominating the PL, or Bayern farming the BL, or Barca and Madrid monopolizing La Liga? Mate, im just here to talk about football
“Look at OP, he wants the biggest leagues in the world to be an actual competition for all the teams involved.”
I’d broadly classify club football fans into 4 major groups: purists, locals, plastics, non EU/SA.
Purists tune into domestic games between the top dogs (Barca v Real, Bayern v Dortmund, top 6 v top 6, etc) or watch teams with some promising talent or their favourite player.
Locals support a club based on a regional connection.
Plastics and non EU/SA likely make up the majority of the fanbase of a popular club and have a relatively superficial connection.
As a somewhat-purist, I don’t get the appeal of domestic leagues and why anyone would support their middle of the pack local club (considering the economics of modern football). What’s the thrill in watching a squad battle relegation for an entire season and not even have an outside chance of qualifying to the UCL let alone win the league. They get their talents poached and seem like fodder for the big dogs. Sure this wasn’t the case when the spending disparity between the richest and poorest club was close but today the gap is so huge it doesn’t even make sense. At what point can this be considered anti-competitive? UCL might as well be the last “true” competition in club football.
It’s completely anti competitive. There is very little reason for anyone to become a Bundesliga fan for reasons apart from fan culture (cuz of 50+1 and cheap tickets). Competition is non existent, it is Bayern’s training ground. Only the UCL still has competition since the teams which farm their own leagues (Big 6, Barca and Madrid, Bayern, PSG) are all equal with each other as being financial heavyweights and can thus fight fairly.
It’s insane to see “die-hard fans” of an average club in the first division of a league be pleased with pulling off a minor upset against a big dog in a season. Maybe cuz I grew up believing that sports is the pinnacle of competition and not merely a bonding exercise for families and cities.
I think you don’t understand and can’t feel the European ideology for this game. It’s a big scheme of different things that come down to tradition in the end. I imagine it’s hard to get excited about something when you have no real connection to any club or something.
That doesn’t change the parity lack tho
American sports fans absolutely have tradition and sports culture. It might look different, but that’s how different cultures work. IDK if you’re implying we don’t have that or not, but it’s not true that Americans just “can’t understand sports traditions” lol
Yes, I do mind. I watch football, American football, baseball and basketball and I think there is something broken about football leagues & tournaments that’s hard to ignore. I don’t think the loyal-fan-for-good-or-for-worse argument that’s supposed to make up for lack of excitement in football is valid: I am a Denver Broncos and Nuggets fan, there were plenty of bad times for both teams, you need that there as well. But it’s still nice to be able to realistically hope for a change of the situation. To abandon that hope and become ritualistic is a 19th century European survival strategy - the people who did not adopt it had a high probability to emigrate to the USA. So I guess we’re much more inclined to suffer.
OP, would you support the tools necessary to introduce parity? A salary cap? Transfer restrictions? I think there is a tradeoff between absolute quality and relative parity between teams.
I personally like the Any Given Sunday model that American sports favour. I want my team to win but if we were doing it because we outspent the rest of the league, the win feels hollow.
Of course, teams don’t have 100 years of history in North America.
I think a salary cap introduced over time, across Europe. This could help make it so, teams doing well like Aston Villa could eventually start challenging for league rather than just trying to get Europa League, cuz they could keep their best players rather than needing to sell cuz a big six team made an offer to their best player and now they can’t keep their best player hostage at risk of demonizing the club.
There are many people who don’t want a salary cap since it stops people from making even more money. There are also always ways to bypass these rules. Just look at Inter Miami in the MLS or Man City tricking FFP-rules in the Prem and Champions league. There is also the problem that football is popular nearly globally and if the European team won’t pay the players the money they deserve (which could not even legally be possible) leave for leagues in the middle east. We live in a capitalist world, and sport is also capitalistic. The teams earn a lot of money, which then means that the players will make a lot of money.
And if you institute that cap in Europe the only thing that will happen is that more players would move to for example Saudi Arabia or South America.
Dividing all the revenue by 20 would also be weird in the Bundesliga since they don’t have 20 teams. And it would also make clubs lazier. Because no matter what they do in terms of commercial activities they get their money.
Have you ever wattched F1?
Nope
I absolutely do mind personally. Teams will always have levels of dominance, you can go back over history to see that. However, with English football now, there seems to be a completely closed shop, only amplified by FFP. The game is a money game now and unfortunately other sides cannot catch up to the contenders without spending big, which comes with big risks.
Teams who aren’t from England, Germany, Italy, or Spain never even compete (idk why Ligue 1 is so bad). Like no team from Oslo, or Copenhagen, or Helsinki or Athens can even compete.
It’s all started going downhill when teams like Juventus, Bayern, Barcelona or Real classify a season as a failure when they have won the league when they don’t win the champions league. No league should be expected to be won. But that is the problem with football the last 10 years.
Just look at the final game of the Bundesliga last season people were calling it exciting and said “I don’t care that Bayern won it was so fun to watch”. How can it be exciting when the end result is the same as the last 11 years?
It goes in cycle Liverpool were all conquering in 70s and 80s crap in 90s and 2000s except for that night in Istanbul. Had little renaissance but still not dominating like in 80s.
I certainly mind. FFP is so unfair (ironically). Man United are allowed to spend so much more than most PL teams, yet they’re all in the same league.
Exactly! This. People who say City are cheats should see that City only “cheated” cuz this is a system where no one who doesn’t “cheat” gets ahead. In a fair league, everyone can spend as much as they want, or have an equal hard cap.
I mean even the larger teams are starting to struggle Serie A haven’t had that competitive teams even if inter made it to the finals most teams can’t compete against oil money
I understand where your coming from but you’re argument seems very narrow, at least when it comes to the PL. Back in the 90’s Tottenham usually finished 10th or lower and at the start of the century we had the Sky 4, 4 clubs that always finished in the top 4 and where treated like the only 4 that mattered. While it’s taken many years of careful management Tottenham are now part of that big six, and they’ve sold many of their best players over the years and still continued to improve. So it’s absolutely possible for teams to grow over time. The biggest problem are the state backed clubs who come in and give the clubs unlimited funds to compete, which of course is completely unfair. While the authorities have moved far too slowly and have damaged the game over the last 20 years there have been some improvements and supposedly now there is protection in place.