Football (not American)

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Football is the sprt of Europe, there is little else that takes the stand for the widely most viewed sport, I spend at least 2 hours a day and 10 hours at the w/e watching reading listening to it, ITS THE BEST!!!

And as for loosing against germany, try loosing against portugal after beating germany 5-1...

 

That's not really all that odd either, Portugal is a wildcard that can blow any team away on any given night. Especially on their own hometurf. Or did you think England was invincible or something ?

 

@Caleb -
I said Adu was being touted as the best young player in the world. Not by me personally but ask yourself -
How many other players do you know that started professionally at 14 and had signed a million dollar deal with Nike at that age?
none
Come to think of it how many other 15 year old professionals do you know?
If he's lying about his age - so what?
Also I appreciate the FIFA rankings are very inaccurate -
But there isn't much of gap between the US and Sweden as you might like to think. Sweden have about 4 reasonable international players but maybe only one I'd call world class.

Italy are hardly a form side at the moment - they have talented players but they need to change the way they play their game to start making an impact on the world stage again.

We are going way OT here the point of my post was to give Aldeth something to follow in terms of Football closer to his doorstep.

 

Sorry to get back to this on where you can see soccer/football on U.S. television, but my two cents worth:

1. ESPN: I have a family of ESPN channels, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, and ESPN Classic. NONE of these stations broadcast soccer games with any regularity. Now I will give props to EPSN in that they do put up soccer scores on the sports ticker. (The sports ticker is that strip on the bottom of the screen that gives updates of scores in other games. For example, if you're watching one game of American football, it scrolls through the other games going on, and even scores in other leagues, such as MLS and MLB.) Also, SportCenter is the highlight show, and they always show soccer highlights. So while you can keep up with what's happening in the world of soccer by watching ESPN, you actually aren't going to have an opportunity to see a lot of games.

2. Fox Sports pack: This is a family of channels as well. It is NOT included in regular cable. It is on the same payment schedule as things like HBO, Cinemax, etc. I can get this family of channels for about $12 per month. I currently don't though, so I can't make any comments on how much soccer they show.

3. Pay-per-view: There are two pay-per-view items you can get via satellite (I do have a satellite btw, so this is an option available to me). The first is the MLS PPV. That gives you something like 15 MLS games per week, and costs about $150 per season of MLS. There's also a PPV European Championship. It works similarly to the MLS version. You basically get all of the games, and you pay something like $150 for the year's subscription.

 

To be honest at home I can overdose on football 24 hours a day watching the sky sports programs. They focus mainly on the English & Scottish Leagues but you can get the Spanish games at least once a week as well. This costs about £15 ($22) a month.
I am not sure wether this is available in the US (try the link below) - otherwise you maybe able to find Eurosport has a more evenly spread coverage of european football and other sports. I know this is a free channel over in the UK.

Try the following link for sky sports-

http://www.skysports.com/skysports/home

there is a subscription button on the top right of the page.

Unless you speak other European languages such as Spanish, Italian or German this is probably your best bet.

 

Hmm, I only have the more or less most basic Swedish TV florae and I can watch two champions league games and a couple of la liga games a week, add to that all Sweden's caps. For about 20$ a month I could watch more football than I could ever want.

Aldeth, if you ever really want to watch some footie and have the oppurtunity to choose it is the Champions league I would recommend. You get all the best players and generally speaking the best football. You dont risk getting a game where the teams are resting their best players. For instance I am watching Juventus - Bayer Munich right now, two of the biggest teams in the world with players like Kahn, Makaay, Emerson, Nedved, Zambrotta, Buffon, Ibrahimovich and Del Piero. Class players all the way. There are a lot more football teams in Europe than there are pro teams in various sports in the US but the 7-8 biggest teams tend to dry clean the market for all the best players which makes for wicked games between those teams. No draft system or anything like that here, money is the main decider on who gets who. Also the European teams are not franchises like in the US but self owned clubs of which some have registered themselves on the stock market. The league systems of all the European countries are organised in such a way that there are many layers of leagues from the top pro league in every country down to a bunch of buddies who gets together to play some footie. Both the pro's and the complete amateurs are part of the same system and if a pro team have a real bad year they will be relegated to a lower division while a small team consisting of a bunch of amateurs have the theoritcal chance of rising through the series system.

Wow, what a rant. I just gosh darn it love football so much and want to take the oppurtunity to save a poor yank here.

 

I disagree about the atractiveness of the CL, there's too much "bargaining" going on in the groups, because there's too much money at stake. Big names is no guarantee for good football, in fact, the lesser teams often show much more actractive football. If they really want to bring the excitement back in the CL, they should get rid of the group system, and start playing the good old knock out system again. Also, no teams should have a protected status, so that for example AC Milan could run into Real Madrid in the first round, and not just in the semi's. That way the smaller teams also have a chance of winning a trophy every now and then. The current CL is all about money, which is NOT good for the overall excitement.

 

@joaquin

I wouldn't count the Netherlands among the top 6 national Fifa teams. They might have been once but not any more. I catogorise them as follow:

Brasil
Argentina
Germany
Italy

These are the top four in the world. Germany is questionable as of late but they won the world cup multiple times and they get to the finals even with a lousy team, mentally the strongest by far.

After that come:

England
Portugal
France
Netherlands

These teams usually have good teams but on the deciding moments (France excluded but I think this was the first time?) they can't push through

After that:

Sweden
Spain
Denmark
Greece

These teams are a bit irregular (especially Greece ). Denmark won the EC once but that was in the laudrup and smigel era. Spain I don't understand, one of the top national leagues in Europe but can never make a fist as a national team.

Of course there are several very good teams such as the Czech republic but I can't place them as I don't know what they accomplished in the past. I know roumania and Bulgarie had good teams but I can't place them. Same goes for croatia.

Also I find the quality of the Dutch competition decreasing. Over the past few years we can't really compete with Europes best. The problem is that if we have a good team, half of the players are sold before they can really shine at their dutch team.

 

It really depends on the sport you're watching in the U.S. For example, there is full revenue sharing in football, so while there are individual team owners, everyone makes the same amount of money every year, so speaking of football teams as individual franchises is accurate to a degree.

On the other end of the spetrum there is baseball, which functions pretty much exactly as CL that you describe. Generally speaking, when a player's contract expires, he's a free agent and can go to the highest bidder. This typically means teams with the most money (like the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, etc.) typically get the best players. The corrolary to this statement is that it is difficult for the teams with small payrolls to get better because they can't pay to land the best players, and if they develop a young player that turns out to be really good, he will sign with another team as soon as his contract expires.

It's a vicious circle. To make more money, you need to field a competitive team, so more people show up to watch, and you get additional playoff games to sell tickets and concession items. However, you can't field a competitive team without having money in the first place.

 

Wahey a fellow Celtic fan

 

The CL is not really a league per se, it is more of a big international tournament where the best teams from the various national league face each other. Clubs can buy/sign players from practically anywhere though, they dont even need to wait for the contract to expire. A club can offer another club X amount of money for one of their players and the club can then accept or reject the offer, if it is accepted it is up to the player to decide if he wants to move. Generally speaking so is not an offer made before a club has made sure that the player is willing to move. This leads to small clubs not even being able to keep their players for the length of the contract without someone bigger snapping them up. Wayne Rooney went from Everton to Man Utd for something like 40m$.

It is fun to see that money is not everything though, Real Madrid lost the Spanish title to Valencia which is if not a small poor team it is a lot smaller and less rich than Real Madrid. You dont have the best team even if you have all the best players. Greece winning the EC is a shining example of that and the big clubs which are the most succesful are generally those who build solid foundations and just dont buy every player they lay their eyes on. I would guess this is the case in most sports, just look at Colorado and Lakers in the US last year.

 

There's one other thing that's been bugging me for a long time now, the number of foreigners that are allowed to play in a team. I regard the CL as a duel between the nation's best teams, but if Arsenal, which consists mostly out of Frenchmen, a handful of other nationalities, and one or two lost Brits, plays against real Madrid, which is a colourful collection of nationalities with the addition of a few Spaniards, you can hardly speak of a clash between England and Spain. I liked it a lot better when there were no more than two foreigners allowed per team. That way you get a better view on which country produces the best players and teams. Now it's a matter of money, the team with most cash, usually wins, and if they don't, they simply buy all the keyplayers from the team that was their nemesis. That's usually AC Milan's way of doing business. They don't buy players to improve their roster, they buy them to weaken their opponents.

 

They havent really done all that much of that lately. I am very torn on the issue of Milan, I love the way they play football and they have some great players but it is Berlusconi's team and Berlusconi is nothing but a glorified thug, a mobster and doing his best to turn himself into a fascist dictator as well.

I understand your point about foreigners but I dont know, I think two are too few. On the other hand it is kinda sad to see teams with have not a single player of their own nationality in the first team. There are still EU rules however, you can't have as many non-EU nationals as you like in your teams. Thats something.

 

Anyone got any opinions on the Champions league? Are there any real sure teams to win, or is it wide open this season? Do Arsenal come to mind? I support Liverpool, and Im having doubts on thier current performance under Bernitez, anyone ctach the extreemly frustrating game against Deportivo? I say no more...

 

A bit off topic, but what do you think of the Milan-Barca game tonight? I think it was one of the best games I have seen this season, despite the misleading 1-0. It shows two teams can play very tactical football but still produce a highly entertaining game, lots of thinking-football and chances for both teams. IMHO Barca was a bit better and deserved a point at the very least. I am planning to come to Barcelona in the start of November to watch Barca smite Milan at Camp Neu. Just hope I can get my hands on an affordable ticket...

 

Barcelona have always been in my mind as favourites, but they were unlucky tonight, they havent been as good this season in the champions league as they were a couple back, but at least they have an easy group to qualify from, sorry celtic fans out there...

 

There are a few traditional favourites, like Real Madrid, AC Milan, Inter perhaps, maybe even Valencia, based on their previous campaigns, but that's about it. Teams like Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Man U can be considered as outsiders, along with Barcelona, Porto and Chelsea. But it's anyone's game really. Arsenal will probably choke when it really matters, they always do.

 

Good, I hope they do, I need some sort of concilation prize when Liverpool fail to prove to us fans what they are really are made of, and I don't think Rafael can show us that this season but I will give him patience. I would like to see madrid win after Owen seeing them win against Dynamo Kiev with his first goal.

 

I have posted a new thread for all the people who feel need to discuss the European International teams