European Football Thread

[gunnar hendershow]

1 hour ago, TCO said:

PSG are doing a good job of the globalistion aspect. Signing Neymar, releasing Jordan gear and redesigning their badge so it has a massive Paris on it were all to this end. Only problem with them is that I don't think Ligue 1 will ever be popular enough worldwide.

West Ham also tried this by sticking London on their crest for no reason.

London and Paris are the most visited European cities by far (I think only Rome comes close). But in London you have roughly a half dozen good clubs plus an endless array of clubs in the lower tiers. In Paris it's PSG and no one. They are Paris' team, something no London club can really lay claim to.

Ligue 1 is likely never going to be a huge league internationally. At some point things will stabilize and a couple other clubs in France will likely have strong international investment and the league will be a little deeper and have more talent. As a result they'll get a better int'l TV package at some point. But even in that beat case scenario it'll still trail behind England, Germany, Spain, and Italy.

[Cymbols]

9 minutes ago, 9 to 5 said:

His failure cost me money. Uber fraud.

Stop taking betting tips from me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer the Bundesliga to the Premier League, as an aside. Probably helps that my German team aren’t completely shit, mind.

[The Lusophone]

So home advantage seems to not exist any more - only 3 home wins from 18 games thus far.

[Baddar]

This is why I think clubs will want to take steps to try to get some of that advantage back, especially next season, which presumably will be held without fans for the most part too.

[Hobo]

19 hours ago, metalman said:

Yeah. I remember some economist theorised that the relative struggles faced by clubs from capital cities (Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, Edinburgh) in the 20th century might be explained by these cities being comparatively less industrialised than the likes of Milan, Turin, Marseille, Manchester, Liverpool, Munich, Dortmund, Glasgow etc and thus having less of the kind of population that would set up and support football teams.

Meanwhile, he explained the strengths of teams from Madrid and Lisbon by their support from fascist regimes and their tendency to centralise power in the capital city.

And now, with the globalisation of football cities like Paris and London are coming to the fore because of their greater appeal to a global audience.

Or something like that...

On top of this with Berlin's case, the partition and subsequent reunification of Germany (and Berlin itself) has confounded matters. East German teams just weren't able to compete domestically and have mostly settled in the lower tiers.

[METALMAN]

Yes that was a bit of a stitch up by the Bundesliga. Poor Dynamo Dresden.

[gunnar hendershow]

Which East German cities have top flight clubs? Is it just Leipzig who basically were built from the ground up by a massive Red Bull investment?

Edit because Union Berlin were in the East German side of the city, but they also haven't been much of anything in their history.

[Hobo]

I think only Dynamo Dresden, Union Berlin, and Hansa Rostock have played in both the Bundesliga and the DDR Oberliga.

Most of the Oberliga teams who competed in the final season are spread out between the third-seventh tiers of German football. A couple are defunct. They struggled to transition out of how they had been able to exist during communism (as I understand it, a common problem in the former DDR). Things like not being able to compete with West German teams who lured away their best players and poor ownership plagued ex-East German clubs after reunification.

Thankfully the excellently named Chemnitzer FC, Carl Zeiss Jena and FC Energie Cottbus are still going though. According to wikipedia, FC Magdeburg (1974 Cup Winners Cup Champions) only turned pro again in 2015.

[The Lusophone]

Didn't help that as soon as unification happened people started leaving East Germany in droves and that hasn't really stopped.

[Adam]

I think when they unified they also didn't evenly merge the leagues, so only a couple of the top East German league teams got spots in the Bundesliga and the rest had to essentially go into lower leagues and there they have remained.

[Baddar]

Dortmund v Bayern is at 5.30pm this evening.

[Baddar]

A quite ridiculous lob from Kimmich has Bayern 1-0 up at HT.

Edit: And it stayed that way. Bayern surely have the title in the bag now.

[DavidMarrio]

1 hour ago, Baddar said:

A quite ridiculous lob from Kimmich has Bayern 1-0 up at HT.

Edit: And it stayed that way. Bayern surely have the title in the bag now.

Thought whilst the finish was good, the keeper really should have done a bit better with that. 

[Jimmy]

Baffled how that Boateng incident didn't go to VAR?

[Baddar]

30 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Baffled how that Boateng incident didn't go to VAR?

That was an odd one.

[Cymbols]

Wolfsburg have schooled an in-form Bayer Leverkusen tonight.

[Cymbols]

Ademola Lookman continues to be the fucking worst.

[Lineker]

VAR gives a red card to Cologne - I've almost missed it!

[Cymbols]

I was only thinking earlier that we hadn’t seen any red cards since the return of football. We’ve now had three tonight.

[Baddar]

Schalke beaten again. Wagner won't be there much longer, surely.