I was just reading through the BBC website and looking at the match report for the Madrid derby that took place over the weekend. When I looked at the table on the left hand side, it really does highlight the lack of competition in most top European leagues aside from the Premiership. Below are the top 4 in France, Germany, Italy and Spain
G GD P
1 Paris Saint Germain 27 46 64
2 Monaco 27 23 56
3 Lille 27 13 49
4 St Etienne 27 15 48
1 Bayern Munich 23 56 65
2 Borussia Dortmund 23 27 45
3 Bayer 04 Leverkusen 23 13 43
4 FC Schalke 04 23 7 41
1 Juventus 26 43 69
2 Roma 25 38 58
3 Napoli 26 22 52
4 Fiorentina 26 16 45
1 Real Madrid 26 47 64
2 Barcelona 26 53 63
3 Atlético Madrid 26 40 61
4 Athletic Bilbao 26 19 50
Spain is the only one out of those 4 that seem to have a title race going on. After that, the staggering difference is the gap between 1st and 4th (between 15 - 24pts). Compare this to the Premiership
1 Chelsea 28 30 63
2 Liverpool 28 38 59
3 Arsenal 28 24 59
4 Man City 26 42 57
Granted this has been one of the closest seasons for ages, but you have to wonder why these leagues have become so disjointed? Germany looks like it's danger of becoming like the SPL (Munich being the equivalent of Celtic), yet Dortmund are a very good team. When you consider that English clubs do not look anywhere near as good technically in Europe at the moment, I wonder what is the better system to have? No disrespect to Ronaldo or Messi, because they are world class and you cannot argue with that at all. But, they must be up against some pretty poor teams defensively to regularly hit 50+ goals a season and have their goals to games ratio.
Another example is Soldado at Spurs. Almost 30 goals for Valencia last season, yet in the premiership I think it's 2 from open play.
I believe that the English league is the most competitive anywhere in the world, and would even go so far as to say the Championship is probably more interesting and exciting to watch than any of the top leagues listed above. Yet does this competitiveness mean we are always going to suffer technically, having an adverse effect on our domestic teams in European club competitions, and, our national team?
What I am definitely not saying is that if Simon Church went to play against Spanish defences he would suddenly start scoring goals. I've completely left out the SPL because to include it would be to draw a comparison with national leagues such as Gibraltar, Azerbaijan and Luxembourg
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Comments
Bayern Munich have just gone and signed Lewandowski from Dortmund (Summer Deal) and are being linked with Draxler of Schalke which is seriously weakening the league
Atletico Madrid are up there with Barcelona and Real Madrid at the moment but what are the chances of those two not coming along in the Summer and picking up the likes of Koke and Diego Costa weakening them again.
The reason the likes of Bayern / Barcelona and Real Madrid are so good in Europe is because they've such squads that can be rotated in La Liga and still come out smelling of roses hence why they're unbeatable at the moment whereas Arsenal / Chelsea / Man City are struggling because every week will be a hard fought out win for them
The English Premier League is getting less competitive, whilst upsets still occur they occur less often than previously. Further, how competitive is a league where 14 out of 20 teams have zero chance of winning it, a situation that can only change if some billionaire decides to invest.
Even if this occurs, how competitive will it be?
In the European Cup last 16, 5 ties appear decided after one leg, 2 favour the favourite and only one is in doubt.
Having a competitive league should help the players from the country concerned and should in turn help that countries national team.