Raps in 4 wrote:Sgt Major wrote:Onlytimewilltel wrote:I do agree that everyone in euro soccer is fighting for something, the issue is that typically all the other teams except the top team or top two teams are fighting for staying in the league, not actually winning it.
And I agree that tanking sucks and I do hope they keep working on ways to improve it or reduce the incentive (they’ve already done some of that), but at least in US we don’t know who the champion is gonna be for the next 30 years.
Euro league soccer is a joke when it comes to that. I mean look at the salaries in league 1 for example:
https://soccerprime.com/ligue-1-player-salaries/How could someone say that this “ain’t true and you’d know that if you watched the games” lol. PSG salaries are freaking almost three times as much as the next team, not even looking at the other poor losers.
Or Bundesliga:
https://soccerprime.com/bundesliga-player-salaries/Does there seem to be an enormous discrepancy between Bayern player salaries and everyone else? Heck even Borusia Dortmund are so far beneath, and then the rest of the poor suckers.
It’s a joke. Like I said I don’t like the tanking and hope they keep improving that. But it’s a lot more fair to have an actual rule on how much a team can spend so that all teams in the league are held to the same rules.
It’s dumb that you know exactly who the league winners will be years in advance because those are the only team or two teams that have a chance. I mean Bayern has been the Bundesleaga champion for literally 10 years straight. (I wonder if it has anything to do with having 2 or three times more salary compared to other teams)
PSG won 8 out of last 10 league titles. Shocker!!
No one watches French football except the French, but PSG never fails to entertain the world with bottling in the Champions League.
German league is a bloodbath, look at the 2. Bundesliga table - Schalke, Werder, Hamburger... Those teams won the Bundesliga in the last 20 years. Yeah, Bayern will win the league almost every year, but my point is that European sports is not only about domestic championships - there are international competitions, domestic cups, relegation and promotion battles, fights for the spots that guarantee place in the European cups.. None of that exists in the US.
It doesn't exist in American sports because every team has the opportunity to win the title in American sports.
Fans of European teams are forced to set lesser goals in order to find entertainment in watching their team because they are forever locked out of competing for the title.
Right, people need to realize Euro Football/Soccer can't be compared to American sports. They're totally different sporting landscapes. It's not even comparing apples to oranges. It's apples to watermelons.
Euro soccer/football is a multi-league Universe (UEFA). So you can have multiple in season tournaments and such and it would be very interesting. NBA is proposing that kind of stuff to copy it, but what is the point of having such a tournament when you are a single league universe and you already have your own tournament (the NBA playoffs) every year? There is no such point if you're not competing vs. other leagues or exist in their same universe.
In Euro football, the totem pole and order of established/dominant teams more or less being permanently up there is FIRMLY ACCEPTED by fans and players. So it's ACCEPTED by fans and players that a good prospect on a small/mid-level club is eventually going to be gobbled up by one of the bigger clubs. This is taboo among NBA fans, who expect that a "budding star" is going to stay loyal to his small market team and build a foundation and eventually a contender with said club. In Euro soccer, it's a surprise to everyone when a player would rather stay longer with his small club.
If the NBA was like UEFA, Giannis would have been FULLY EXPECTED to be in a Laker uniform by the time his 6th/7th season rolled around. It would've been a surprise if DIDN'T play in LA by then.
It's also firmly accepted that small teams are obviously never going to compete with the big ones. They're never going to win their league or the UCL. They know their place in the pecking order. And many clubs have a several decades long following among families of fans, and it's just "in their blood" that they're going to follow said club. So those factors combined mean that a relegation system can work. A team looking to break into the 1st division for the first time is essentially "winning the championship" by their standards. They know they're never going to win the 1st division league, so winning a relegation battle or knocking a rival into relegation essentially is as good as a championship to them and it's something compelling to watch.
Americans would never give a squat about a relegation battle. How many people watch minor league baseball? Nobody is going to closely follow the Baltimore Orioles as they try to avoid being relegated to the minors. They would just turn their attention to a different sports league altogether. As you said, American sports trades all this relegation/in season tournament stuff in for the possibility of every team having a realistic shot at winning a real championship. It's a totally different sporting landscape.
