Explain european soccer to me.

[Stickman]

I watched Manchester play Roma(i think) yesterday in Champions League. I thought ManU played in the Premiership League. Also there's like Series A League or something like that. How does that all work? And how many regular season games are played?

I'm guessing, there's a bunch of leagues, and the league winners play the Champions League. AM I off base here?

[Mr. Monday Morning]

You're pretty much correct. Each country has a domestic league (i.e. Premiership in England, Serie A in Italy, La Liga in Spain). The winners of each of the main leagues, as well as some of the runners up (it's complicated but basically the stronger leagues get more teams entered) and some of the winners of smaller leagues (who normally playoff against the runners up beforehand) go into the Champions League, which is like the elite tournament for Europe. It used to be winners only, and a straight elimination tournament, but for cash and TV reasons it's now expanded to crazy proportions.

There is also the UEFA Cup, which is like the Champions League for teams who aren't quite good enough (i.e. the intial losers in the CL get put in there, as well as winners of smaller leagues who don't get in)

[Pardeep 619]

The Champions League is where most of the best teams in Europe play, depending on their performance the previous season in their domestic league. Serie A is the top Italian league, and the Premiership (or Premier League) is where the top 20 English clubs play in.

The Champions League is a cup competition in which the majority of teams that compete aren't even champions of their respective leagues. The top two teams in the English, Italian and Spanish leagues automatically qualify for the competition, and the 3rd or 4th placed team in those leagues enter into the final qualifying round. Countries like Bulgaria, Switzerland, Finland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Yugoslavia etc have to go through qualifying rounds to get into the group stages of the Champions League.

There are 4 teams per group stage - 32 teams in total. The top two teams that finish in their group stage qualify for the knockout round, the team that finishes third qualifies for the UEFA cup (alternative, not as lucrative European competiton), and the bottom team gets knocked out European competition completely.

[Pardeep 619]

In fact, although it's called the Champions League, Bayer Leverkusen once got to the final of the competition in 2002, yet they have never won their domestic championship (called Bundesliga). Also, Nottingham Forest have won the competition twice when it was called the Eurpoean Cup, yet they have only won the top league once.

[Stickman]

So how many games does a team play in each league? Roughly, I'm sure each league is a little different.

[Mr. Monday Morning]

In the top leagues it's normally 38 league games a season. Plus domestic cup games, Champions League, etc

[Stickman]

And Champions League is how many games?

Is it basically like here, we have regular seaon followed by playoffs? They just call playoffs by a different league name?

[Pardeep 619]

No, you have domestic league season, then depending on how well you have done you could then end up playing in the Champions League the following season where you have the qualifying rounds, group stage, and then knockout stage (which is pretty much a playoff). A lot of the big teams consistently play in the Champions League, but that is because of how they did the previous season. The winner of the Champions League automatically qualifies for the group stage of the Champions League the following season.

[Stickman]

So one year you could be in the Premiership and the next in Champions?

[Rob]

You are still in the premiership. It's your domestic league you have to play in. The Champions League is for all the European top teams to play in.

[Mr. Monday Morning]

The European seasons tend to run August-May, a few are different but those are the main months. The leagues run for the whole time, whereas the Champions League normally runs September-November and then March-May, concurrently.

[Stickman]

They dont' play in both during that time do they?

[Pardeep 619]

Top European clubs can often play a Champions League game on a Tuesday or Wednesday and end up playing a domestic game the following Saturday or Sunday. Man Utd played yesterday and are likely to play again in the league this weekend (haven't checked the fixtures though).

[Team Sheep]

Domestic league games (Premiership, Serie A, etc.) tend to play on weekends, whilst the Champions league games are always midweek games, either Tuesday or Wednesday.

To put it in simpler terms, the Champions league is a competition with 32 teams. They are the best 32 teams in Europe, and first off the competition has 8 groups of 4 teams (each team plays each other team in their group home and away).

The top 2 from each group at the end then go through to the last 16 teams, where it then turns into a straight knockout format, like the NFL playoffs. Last 16 turns into last 8, then last 4, then the final, where the champion of Europe is crowned.

[Y2C]

Isn't there also 1 for only teams in the UK or something like that? Is that the FA cup or is that something completely different?

[Rob Ban Fan]

<font color="#ff6600">The FA Cup is the domestic English knock out trophy. Theres also a lesser one who no one cares about (until they win it, then it becomes the most important trophy ever) which is the same format, called the League Cup.

Every country has a league system, England, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia, Switerzland etc. They vary slightly but most have a top league, where the best teams play and then lower leagues below it and teams can achieve promotion or relegation to the better or worse league based on their peformance the previous season.

For the most part in the league every team plays eachother twice, home and away then whoever has the most points at the end of the season wins the league, and whoever does worst is relegated to the league below, being replaced by the best teams from that league.

On top of the league each country usually has one or more domestic cup competition like the FA Cup, the German Cup, Copa Del Rey (Spain). Every team in the country can enter and matches are decided by drawing numbers out of a hat, so you can have a situation where the best team in the top league, like Manchester United, play the worst team in the bottom league like Southampton.

That tends to be a straight knock out competition, ie once you lose, you're out and if you win you go through to the next round, and after about 7 rounds theres only 2 teams left who play in the final and the winner wins the cup.

The Champions League is the European cup competition which has already been explained.

Teams play in all these competitions at the same time, so the better your team is, the more games you end up playing.

In the premiership with 20 teams, everyone plays 38 league games a season.
Then a shit team can expect to play 1 or 2 FA Cup games, where as a good team can play 6 or 7.
Same with the League Cup.
And then the best teams can expect to play maybe 10-12 European games a season too.

So the best teams can end up playing maybe 60 games a season, where as the not so good ones who don't get so far in competitions or get into Europe play maybe 40.</font>

[Stickman]

Seems pretty interesting, but at the same time, seems like a clusterfuck of teams, so knowing who's playing who when could be confusing.

[Rob]

That is why we have fixture lists.

[CSL]

<font color=white>That's a 'schedule' for you ;)</font>

[DaveWadding]

So what's the next thing we're going to have to explain to you, Stickman? Breathing?

[weather vane]

so complicated

[yianni]

The best is when it comes down to the last round of group matches and there's a tight group. Cunts going mental trying to get results of other games that are happening at the same time. Also there's something about mid-week night matches, the atmosphere is always better for some reason during night matches, there's a different sort of feel. Gotta love the Champions League.

[BCWWF]

Honestly, the best way to figure it out is Wikipedia. They have good descriptions of how the whole multiple domestic league system works as well as the European competitions, the domestic tournaments, the Community Shield, all that shit.

Wikipedia, it's good on this topic.

[Y2C]

I don't understand how you get 3 points for a win, but both teams get 1 point for a draw. Where the fuck does that other point go? :-\ :-\ :-\

[Mike the Metal Ed]

Quite simply, they used to award 2 points for a win, but they decided to give 3 points for a win to encourage more attacking teams. This took a while to be enforced across all competitions, so for some years you'd be given 3 points for a win in the First Division, and 2 for a win in the European Cup.

[Mike the Metal Ed]

In fact, to go even further back, when the Football League was originally formed, in 1888, there were 0 points for a draw, but they changed that to 1 not long after, to give teams that were trailing something to play for.

[ct2k]

The most important thing to remember is this:


EFC

[loopydate]

I was always terribly confused about how the leagues worked, but when my friend sold his PS2, I got a bunch of his games, including World Tour Soccer 2003. Now, I don't know whether this is a good soccer game or a bad soccer game, as it's the only one I've ever played (not counting Super Mario Strikers), but I enjoy it. And actually having to play league matches and cup matches has given me a much better understanding of the system than having someone explain it to me (and they've tried) ever could.

[Mooияakeя™]

The Champions Cup is CONCACAF's equivelent to the Champions League. The Galaxy won it last for the US. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONCACAF_Champions%27_Cup)

On a side note, DO NOT let the name fool you. It's stupid fuckers here in Europe (UEFA - the governing body), that call is a "Champions League" though 4th place in the domestic league here in England can get into it...

Yeah, champions, really...

[Boondock Saint]

The most important thing to remember is this:


Blackburn Rovers FC

Fixed.

[ct2k]

:rant:


Can't f'n believe we lost to the Hammers:o

[Boondock Saint]

Zamora.

[ct2k]

I loved that cunt for what he did to Arsenal last week, why he gotta go and break my heart like that?

WHYYYYYYYY:(????/