Football (Soccer) Thread

[Sheilbh]

Aren't lots of the classic bigger teams in Spain still lower down due to catastrophic financial decisions during the boom, while well-run but traditionally smaller teams are generally doing a lot better - or is that over?

[celedhring]

It's still a thing. Lots of classic La Liga teams are still in Segunda or lower: Zaragoza, Racing, Depor, Málaga, Oviedo, Sporting, Mallorca, Las Palmas...

Espanyol is also down, but that's looking like a one-season blip.

[The Larch]

It's still a thing. Lots of classic La Liga teams are still in Segunda or lower: Zaragoza, Racing, Depor, Málaga, Oviedo, Sporting, Mallorca, Las Palmas...

Espanyol is also down, but that's looking like a one-season blip.

And at the same time (the last 15-20 years, give or take) we've had the creation of a new batch of mid-lower table clubs like Eibar, Alavés, Getafe, Levante and others who have managed to get promoted and stay in the first division far longer than expected, and even challenge for honors in the case of Villarreal.

Something relatively similar has happened in Italy too

[Sheilbh]

There's been a bit of churn in England with some of the classic clubs going down and some, like Leeds, finally coming back up.

But it is interesting - Bournemouth stayed up for far longer than anyone expeced, as did Burnley similarly Brighton are doing well with an interesting model and Brentford are a small club but routinely fighting for promotion from the Championship - and that's just the Bs But I think all of them have been clubs that came up with very small stadiums, normally they have a fairly defined identity and way of playing/approach in the transfer market and are run intelligently.

On the other hand you know classic big teams like Middlesborough, Stoke, Sunderland - Leeds for 16 years - have spent a lot of time outside of the top division, normally as a consequence of bad financial decisions and overpaying for poor/older players. Chopping and changing managers/styles/strategies every couple of years so constantly spending on a re-build and despite their far bigger support that has a cost.

That's part of why I find the Madrid-Barcelona push on this so frustrating. They are not the first clubs to have made a series of bad decisions that really hurts them financially. Other clubs when faced with that issue have had to sell players to get out of it and re-build - we see that in Spanish football with some of those clubs cel mentioned. It's the arrogance of them not doing that but instead trying to re-engineer the entire game so they can still buy Haaland

It's also why I find the pushback about punishments like points deductions so frustrating - with people saying that would just punish the fans not the owners. Wigan were relegated because of financial shenanigans from their owners. Similarly I was speaking last night to a friend who's a Southampton fan - because of their owners' decisions they got a 15 point deduction for two seasons running and were relegated both seasons.

[Sheilbh]

8,000 fans in the stadium for the League Cup final - weird but a very positive sign.

Edit: On the other hand I don't think I was emotionally prepared for a football manager being younger than me

[Josquius]

I think it's notable in the Premier league when you get a team like Moyes Sunderland you see they are clearly way below the others and absolutely not performing ons premier league level. It really highlights the gulf there.

And yep. The wealth sharing will definitely be a key part of this. The direct income of the teams too will play a part. A lot more 10k stadiums and small fan bases to be found in Spain than the Premier league.

Deviating elsewhere but things are really weird in England now with it often being the case the top 6 of the championship are better than the bottom 6 of the premiership. Of course this is heavily built on unsustainable spending to run up to the Premier league.

Also flipping topics again... Very interesting to see parallels between the rise and form of clubs and their cities in general. Note the modern massive success of London teams whilst Sunderland, formerly one of the country's richer cities....

[Sheilbh]

Deviating elsewhere but things are really weird in England now with it often being the case the top 6 of the championship are better than the bottom 6 of the premiership. Of course this is heavily built on unsustainable spending to run up to the Premier league.

I'm not sure if it is built on unsustainable spending any more. Just looking at the top six in the Championship now there's a few clubs that have quite a fixed way of doing things and are kind of comfortable being yo-yo clubs (Norwich, Watford - who'll not overspend in the Premier League, back on umbrella payments and bounce back up and down) and others are noted for having very smart owners with a very clear identity/strategy (Swansea, Brentford, Barnsley) - striking that a few of those are American owned and quite canny.

It definitely used to be a thing - Championship clubs massively overspending/betting it all on promotion. But I think it might be declining.

Also flipping topics again... Very interesting to see parallels between the rise and form of clubs and their cities in general. Note the modern massive success of London teams whilst Sunderland, formerly one of the country's richer cities....

Not just London but the South - it is easier to convince players to sign for Bournemouth or Brighton or Watford, because they can live around London. It's slightly mitigated in the North-West.

And I'd add Middlesbrough to Sunderland in lists of clubs. I think they probably have to either pay a little bit more or miss out on targets to less traditionally prominent clubs in the South.

Although this is also a thing at lower levels - just thinking in that On the Brink book and one of the issues cited by Carlisle is attracting players because they're so far/disconnected from Liverpool or Manchester. They normally have better luck getting players from Glasgow.

[The Larch]

A similar thing has happened in Spain, with rising clubs around Madrid (Getafe, Leganés), the Basque Country (Eibar, Alavés) and the Mediterranean coast (Villarreal, Levante, Elche this year), at the expense of clubs in poorer Northern regions like Asturias (Oviedo, Sporting Gijón) or Cantabria (Racing Santander) and the country's hinterland (Valladolid being the only team this year, together with Huesca, which is an oddity).

A lot more 10k stadiums and small fan bases to be found in Spain than the Premier league.

Tyr's weirdly reasoned and ill-informed take of the day (Tm).  It's not as if stadium size matters this year with no fans in attendance, but there are only two La Liga teams with such small pitches, Eibar (which as we said has been quite a miracle for them to stay up all these years and will most probably go down this year) and Huesca (which is also an oddity and battling relegation this year too). What happens in La Liga is the usual inequality that gets repeated in some many stats, the big teams have far larger stadiums while the rest of the teams have an average capacity that is much lower than their respective Premier League equivalents (half La Liga teams have stadiums with less than 30k capacity, while a Premier League average stadium is around 40k).

Smaller teams in La Liga have had TV rights as their main source of income for years already, with match day earnings being smaller and smaller as a share of revenues over the years. There are lots of interesting graphs in the following Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1386562133702414337

[Admiral Yi]

"Mins?"

[Sheilbh]

Mlns, no?

[Admiral Yi]

oops.  eyes going

[Sheilbh]

8,000 fans in the stadium for the League Cup final - weird but a very positive sign.

Edit: On the other hand I don't think I was emotionally prepared for a football manager being younger than me

I honestly just heard fan noise which was different from the sound on TV for empty stadiums. It was more responsive - ironic cheers and that sort of thing.

However, I missed the Spurs fans chanting "we want Levy out!"

[Duque de Bragança]

Smaller teams in La Liga have had TV rights as their main source of income for years already, with match day earnings being smaller and smaller as a share of revenues over the years. There are lots of interesting graphs in the following Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1386562133702414337

Thanks for the charts. I'll ad the French League miserably failed this year when trying to gain more money from TV rights, blinded by the billion or so offered by Jaume Roure's Mediapro, so they had to settle for a pittance only slightly superior to the Turkish League, the true Super League/Süper Lig. 

https://www.france24.com/en/sport/20201211-mediapro-seals-agreement-over-french-football-rights-dispute


As for Portugal, Primeira Liga, 80-90 % goes to the big three, so it's probably the most imbalanced.

[The Larch]

It also has to be mentioned as a sign that maybe the revenue potential of TV rights has already been maxed out or is close to it that both the Premier League and League 1 had issues with lack of payment of TV rights this season, League 1 with the Mediapro fiasco and the Premier League with the non-payment of their Chinese TV rights for this season. That also gives more ammo to those that thought that the ESL was vastly overrating the potential TV deal they could get.

[Sheilbh]

Yes.

Though I read, I think in the Athletic, about some streaming service that is owned by a number of the SL clubs and there was reference to content basically being club exclusives. I suspect that was where they were thinking of going - basically matches streamed by their service, plus interviews with club employed "journalists" etc all available on MUFC TV or whatever. Again I think the American sports are ahead of us here.

This was one of the big ideas of Project Big Picture was basically that I think each club would be given the rights to 8 of their games which they could then sell themselves - obviously that would massively increase the money the "big 6" earned v the rest.

But I think that is the model those clubs see as the future - no more omnibus big multi-billion rights deals for all 38 or whatever games, but rather the clubs themselves taking charge and becoming the channels to watch games plus all other football-adjacent content.

On the other hand the Women's Super League in England has just signed their first proper TV deal which is great news and massively increases the money in the women's game. Their games are free to watch at the minute on the FA's streaming service but it's a bit of a faff and it will be a lot better next year when the BBC will be playing games and also Sky has bought some games. I feel a little torn because I do think they'll benefit from the higher production values of proper broadcasters and more money while thinking things have gone too far in the men's game.