Which league is the strongest?

Luso wrote:
It just seems even Scotland, Turkey and Greece are considered better leagues, and quite simply, there are no figures that point in that direction.

By whom!!?

See, that's actually not more expensive than here in Germany, as I wrote earlier.

Werder Bremen season ticket prices (not CL):

http://www.werder.de/tickets/preise.php (scroll down)

Normal prices (without reductions for children, elders and disabled people): Between 120 EUR and 560 EUR a season.

And Werder has rather moderate prices, other clubs like Bayern are more expensive. The prices for a single match are actually similar to those figures 110% mentioned.

So the often used argument of "cheap ticket prices" being the reason for full stadia in Germany is simply not true.

Portugal and Holland are actually consistant overachievers, if you consider the size of the population of these countries. They do the best with their limited resources, compared to the big countries / leagues in Europe. That deserves respect, other countries can learn a lot from them, especially as far as the youth education systems are concerned.

blutgraetsche wrote:Portugal and Holland are actually consistant overachievers, if you consider the size of the population of these countries. They do the best with their limited resources, compared to the big countries / leagues in Europe. That deserves respect, other countries can learn a lot from them, especially as far as the youth education systems are concerned.

Overachievers from an effiency view (small population etc.), not for the quality we produce and demonstrate on field.

I'm not attacking you and I know you don't mean it this way, but the term overachievers implies that we're fluking our way to the top (as if we do it every year) - and are set to drop soon enough.
By doing it every year though, Netherlands and Portugal have shown to have the quality pedigree, indeed against odds - and are not going to sink anytime soon.


Thanks for the praise though.

You are not "fluking" it, of course. Just to make that clear. Your success has reasons, the most important one being the great talent you consistantly produce, due to the very good youth academies you have.

blutgraetsche wrote:You are not "fluking" it, of course. Just to make that clear. Your success has reasons, the most important one being the great talent you consistantly produce, due to the very good youth academies you have.

DD wrote:

blutgraetsche wrote:Portugal and Holland are actually consistant overachievers, if you consider the size of the population of these countries. They do the best with their limited resources, compared to the big countries / leagues in Europe. That deserves respect, other countries can learn a lot from them, especially as far as the youth education systems are concerned.

Overachievers from an effiency view (small population etc.), not for the quality we produce and demonstrate on field.

I'm not attacking you and I know you don't mean it this way, but the term overachievers implies that we're fluking our way to the top (as if we do it every year) - and are set to drop soon enough.
By doing it every year though, Netherlands and Portugal have shown to have the quality pedigree, indeed against odds - and are not going to sink anytime soon.


Thanks for the praise though.

Let's hope your right DD. I've always respected Dutch football and don't mind being considered along side it in terms of achievements and quality.

For the size and (lack of) economic strength of these two leagues, they do very well really. Quality players and usually good football.

DD wrote:

Luso wrote:
It just seems even Scotland, Turkey and Greece are considered better leagues, and quite simply, there are no figures that point in that direction.

By whom!!?

Seems to be the perception I've gotten from people in the past and at times even from certain media outlets.

Small example, but if you want to find something about Portuguese football, you really need to go to a Portuguese site. English speaking sites tend to only cover EPL, SPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga & Eridivisie.

Turkey was quite close to use recently and it seemed like people were convinced they're league was better than ours. I'm not saying these leagues don't have big clubs, they do, but it just seems they get recognition our clubs don't at times.

In the usual conversations over which league is the strongest in Europe, the issue of lower leagues and second divisions was brought up yesterday on Talksport. They seemed adamant that the Championship was strongest - despite admitting to never even watching the other second divisions in Europe. Certainly the attendances in the Championship stand out above the rest - I think down mainly to well run clubs with the community in mind.

They also claimed that the Championship has the biggest clubs in the league although looking through a list of the teams - I think it could be hotly disputed that Serie B has in general more bigger clubs who you would expect to be in the top division. In my own experiences of watching both the Championship and the segunda in Spain this season - I know that for style of play the Spanish version is miles above the Championship for entertainment factor. I think the only thing that is worse is the refereeing and perhaps at times the defending and lack of passion. Technically - it is much better.

In answer to the original question - Germany has to be fourth.

I guess one way to look at it would be to see how many players from the lower divisions manage to make the jump to the top flight and secure a starting place relatively quickly..

Yeh...in which case......

Do you know how many clubs in Spain are full time Oleguer? I think around half of 2b clubs are......but not 100%.

Not many in the Segunda b.. that is for sure. They have tiny budgets.

I think that in Spain we see quite a lot of Segunda A players managing to break into Primera teams. Of course this also has something to do with the fact that a lot of the smaller Primera teams can't afford to go fishing abroad.

Yeh I think Recre are a good example. Despite his injury, just look at Uche, has scored goals since he has been back in the team. 11 starts, five goals, not too bad....

I'll try and do some research regarding full time clubs. and yeh, the budgets are small in most. Makes it ridiculous that clubs from the Canaries have to play in the league with sides from Madrid.