European Soccer:
Part 1: The Competitions
So it pretty much goes down like this: every single country
has some form of their own league, and most if not all also have a 2nd
competition which is run similar to our playoff system. I’ll use a European country as an example
first then show you that although the MLS follows similar regulations, our end
season is a little different so I will use them as a second example.
Germany Bundesliga – This is the top 18 teams in
Germany. Some leagues have 20, others a
few more, some a few less. England,
Spain and Italy all use 20 which completes what many consider to be the 4 best
country leagues in the world. In the
Bundesliga every team plays 34 games, or a home and away vs every single
team. One of the reasons I first fell in
love with the sport is I like that no team has one advantage over any other as
far as scheduling goes. Like the Bills
who have to play the Patriots every single year twice. But some teams only have to face Brady once
every 4 years (like Min & GB). So in any case, they all have to see each
other the same amount of times at each facility. First place obviously wins the title, and in
the case of Germany – 2nd,3rd,4th all slot
into European Champions League spots. I’ll
do that (Champions League) later in this blog group.
Other leagues can also get a number of teams into Europe, and the number
is determined by how well those teams play in Europe. So Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are
two of Germany’s best clubs and they met in the final of the ECL in 2013. Because of that, Germany got an extra
European slot, although it’s the 6th spot which sends a team to the
Europa League. 5th & 6th
in Germany go to the Europa League which is kind of like a Champions League
B. Many countries 5th-7th
place teams qualify for it, and by the end you get some really good teams
playing in the final. So, really quick, (1-Champion)
(2,3,4- ECL) 5,6, (Europa). Then from 7th to 15th, those
teams don’t play in Europe but they are safe to play in Germany for another
season. 17th & 18th
are relegated, and they play the following season in the 2nd
Bundesliga, which is a division lower.
They can come straight back up, but usually the best players leave, and
sometimes the team gets stuck in the lower division for a while, i.e. MSV
Duisburg who was one of the top teams in Germany when I lived there. 16th in the Bundesliga plays 3rd
in the 2nd liga for a shot to stay in the league. It’s home/away so each team gets a home
game. The aggregate winner than stays/goes
to the Bundesliga. So for example, this
year Hamburg SV is in 16th place and they will play Gruether Furth
(3rd) for a chance to stay up.
HSV is really good, this would be the first time in their history to not
be in the top league.
German DFB Pokal (Cup) – So this is the cup. It’s set up just like our March Madness or
football playoffs. However, most if not
all leagues do a random draw. It’s set
up like a lottery with all the teams names on some lotto balls. Then they may draw HSV first. So they would host. Then out comes Borussia Dortmund. They draw all the way down to about the 3rd
division so occasionally you get a team from the 3rd division
beating a team from the 1st.
Pretty exciting when that happens.
So this year, Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga, Dortmund will finish in
2nd and they meet each other in the DFB final in about 2 weeks. If the winner hasn’t already qualified for
Europe, they would through winning this game.
In the case they already did, now 7th in the Bundesliga will
qualify for a Europa League place.
Top Leagues Europe Tables:
England 1,2,3,4 - Champions League: 5, 2 Cup winners - Europa League (England has
two cup competitions, the FA Cup and the League Cup. League is only for the top 4 divisions, FA
goes about 8-9 divisions deep)
Germany 1,2,3,4, - Champions League: 5,6, Cup winner – Europa League
Italy 1,2,3, - Champions League: 4,5, Cup winner – Europa League
Spain 1,2,3,4, - Champions League: 5, 6, Cup winner – Europa League.
Not important really, but some 3rd & 4th place teams in
these leagues along with many other non-champions from smaller countries have
to play each other in a qualification round before they can make the main round
of champions league. So an example would
be Arsenal who finished 4th in England may have to play Marseille
who finished 3rd in France.
The winner in 2 games (home/away) would make the final 32.
Our league: Just in case you want to know about the homeland
leagues, here’s a little info. I’m
personally not a fan, but I do get caught up in it around the end of the
season. I’d honestly prefer a system
like Europe where we have relegation and a title and such so the little teams
like Minnesota United could play in the MLS since we are currently the best
team in the “2nd division”.
MLS Cup – Major League Soccer's regular season runs from
March to October with its 19 teams playing 34 games in an unbalanced schedule.
Teams are divided into the Eastern and Western Conferences. Midway through the
season, teams break for the annual All-Star Game, a friendly game between the
league's finest players and a major club from a different league. Usually it’s
someone like Chelsea or Manchester United or Roma, a quality team like that. At
the end of the regular season, the team with the highest point total is awarded
the Supporters' Shield. (Similar to
every other league’s main trophy)
We then have playoffs.
(I’m using wikipedia’s description of it, because even I don’t
understand it completely. J Since
2012, the top five teams in each conference will qualify for the playoffs, in
which the two brackets are entirely separate. The First Round of each
conference is a one-off match between the 4th- and 5th-place teams, with the
4th-place team hosting. The First Round winner advances to play the
conference's top seed in the Conference Semifinals.
The Conference
Semifinals and Conference Finals are conducted in a home-and-away,
aggregate-goal format. The team that scores the most goals in the home-and-away
series advances to the two-game, total-goals Conference Finals. The away goals
rule was adopted for the 2014 season. In both rounds the lower-seeded
team hosts Game One and the higher-seeded team Game Two. If the teams are tied
after two games (180 minutes) in the Conference Semifinals or Finals, the team
which scored more goals away from home advances. If there is still a tie after
the away goals rule is applied, a 30-minute overtime period (divided into two
15-minute periods) will be played followed by a penalty kick shootout, if
necessary. The away goals rule does not apply to goals scored in the overtime
period.
In the case of ties
after 90 minutes of regulation in the First Round and MLS Cup final, 30 minutes
of overtime (divided into two 15-minute periods) would be played followed by
penalty kicks, if necessary, to determine the winners.
MLS Open Cup – Even though it says MLS, it is open to all
three divisions in the United States: The MLS, the NASL (which is Minnesota
United’s league) and the USL Pro league which replaced a broken league, so they
technically are the 3rd division.
It’s also a random draw like Europe and is set up the same way. It’s really fun when an MLS team comes to
town. The attendance is high, and we’ve
actually beaten a few MLS teams recently.
But of course we’ve never won a title… (The Rochester Rhinos did win it
in 1999, and they are considered a 3rd division team, which is
awesome.)
Before I finish:
Away goals is kind of confusing, but I’ll use a real life
example that just happened to make it easier.
Sevilla (Spain) and Valencia (Spain) just played each other in the
Europa League semi-finals last week.
Sevilla won the first game at home 2-0.
Then Valencia went up 3-0 in the second game, but gave up a goal late so
they “won” 3-1. But Sevilla scored more
away goals (1) and so it finished 3-3.
But Sevilla will play in the final, because they scored that away goal.
That’s pretty much it for competitions. There are a ton of them, and they seem to
always be going, but once you get the structure of everything, it makes a lot
of sense. Cup Finals are usually the
last game of the season in the specific countries. (Some do theirs earlier though). The
Champions League final is almost always the last game of the European
season. Our Champions league in North
America works a little differently, and I still don’t even get their rules
completely. But more often than not, the
final 8 are all MLS and Mexican teams.
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