Throughout this document, and indeed even in the title, I'm going to use the term "football" to mean the game that people in the U.S. usually call "soccer." This is the correct term to use when discussing the european leagues and competitions-- not to mention lager-laden arguments with european fans-- and the word that everyone outside the the U.S. to describe the world's most popular sport. I will use the term "American Football" when I am referring to the game played by Montana, Namath, and Starr. (I am not particularly happy with this verbiage either, in deference to our Canadian neighbors who are also "North Americans." Due to the common usage, however, I'll stick to "American" meaning "from the United States.")
This document is intended to help the average American fan get their head around what goes on in Europe with football, and to a lesser extent internationally in general. More correctly, if you have read this far in this document, you are clearly not the "average" fan in the U.S. since the average fan in the U.S. doesn't even care if the World Cup Final is pre-empted by reruns of the Jerry Springer show. So I suppose it's better to say that this is for the football fan who:
Let me say for the record that I am not one of these maniacs who likes exactly one niche sport and ignores all the rest, or, worse yet, pretends to not know what you are talking about when you refer to "that time Jordan was sick in the NBA finals and carried his whole team past the Jazz." I like sports in general-- I watch lots of NBA & NFL games and the occasional Maddux or Glavine pitching exhibition-- I just think football is the best sport to watch on TV and the most interesting to follow. (In case you're wondering, it's the best for TV because it only has commercials at halftime!)
Sadly, what little coverage of football we get in the United States tends to be about the Major League Soccer teams and this lacks much of the intrigue and excitement that european brethren enjoy. I am not disrespecting MLS at all, in fact I think it's great that we have a big-time football league in this country! I go to the games! However, in "Americanizing" the sport I think MLS went for the lowest common denominator; I appreciate this strategy fiscally, since teams and leagues need money to operate, but this strategy's downside is that you end up with a league that has little "product differentiation" from the other big sports leagues in the U.S. I hope this document can give you a flavor of what goes on in Europe and what a strange yet wonderful system they have.
All of what you read in this document should be considered "Ian's thoughts," not a set of facts. I have been following European football for a couple or three years and I have managed to piece together what (I think) I know by paying attention to the commentatary on televised games, reading lots of web pages, and grabbing lots of newspapers on my junkets to England. Thus, any of this information could be wrong, but I've done enough research to feel confident that if you talk about the things I mention you won't be laughed at and considered a "stupid American." Readers from Europe are invited to correct me on any mistakes I've made, but please don't give me any flak; I wouldn't be writing this document if somebody else had done it before!
This is probably the first thing you need to understand about the way european, and international football generally, works. "Clubs" are the professional football teams that exist in just about every European village of any size. Most any major city has two clubs and some have several clubs. I know of six clubs in London alone, and I don't even live there!
"Country" here refers to playing for one's country. As I am sure you are aware due to World Cup '94 in the U.S., countries play each other in international competitions of various sorts, most importantly in the World Cup held every four years. Countries pick their best players (obviously) to play for them and, generally speaking, you can pick any player holding a passport from your country to play for you. There are no stupid amateur rules here as in the Olympics [sic]. I personally feel that this "pick anybody you want" strategy yields the best possible competition and gives nobody an "easy out" in terms of why they lost a given match.
The phrase "club and country" is frequently used in reference to the conflict between club and country. Here's the basic scoop:
As an example, consider the situation of the United States' best goalkeeper, Kasey Keller. He plays professionally for Leceister City in England's top league. If the U.S. wants him to play 'keeper in an international match, the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) can notify Leceister City of their intentions and his employer is forced to let him get on a plane and fly to wherever he needs to go to play. (I believe that players have the option of refusing to serve their country, but this is extremely bad form and certainly not done very often.)
This type of "duty" is tough on players since many times they have to travel long distances to reach their home country or the location of an international match. When they arrive, of course, they practice with their countrymen play a match, and then quickly return to club matches. With europeans who play club football elsewhere in europe, sometimes these trips last only a few days!
As a basic rule, clubs are known by the name of the town-- or even neighborhood in the case of bigger cities-- in which they are based. This is due to the roots of the sport being the best players of one village playing against the best players of another village. Unlike the sports teams in the United States, clubs don't have nicknames. This is not absolutely true, some teams do have nicknames like the "Gunners," "Rovers," or "Rangers," but these are the exception not the rule.
It should be mentioned that teams in Europe don't move like teams in the United States do. Please bow your heads in silence for the fans in Cleveland and Brooklyn for a moment here. For reasons that are partially explained below in the section on Relegation and partially historical teams tend to stay put in their city, town, village, or neighborhood. This could also be attributed to the fact that since every hamlet probably already has a team there really isn't anywhere to go or (ala the U.S.) threaten to go if your demands aren't met. Let's hope this saturation point is reached soon in the United States. I think this "I'll threaten to move unless my team gets a new stadium" stupidity that we have here in the U.S. has reached Europe recently; I seem to recall that the south London club Wimbledon threatened to move to Dublin, Ireland before FIFA slapped them down.
If you see or hear people refer to a club with the suffix of "FC" you can safely assume that this means "Football Club." One would assume that "AC" indicates Athletic Club but I haven't been able to confirm this.
Almost every nation of Europe has some type of a national professional league, most have several leagues. I say "almost" because I just don't know if Luxembourg has a league, but any decent sized-- by european standards-- country has at least one league. These leagues compete against members of their own league each year in a season that runs from fall to spring, usually with a sizable "winter break" at Christmas time. (It's cold in Europe in December!)
Generally, the bigger leagues have around eighteen or twenty teams and each team plays each other team once at home and once away for a league schedule of about forty games. Some leagues are smaller, most notably Scotland which has only ten teams in its top league.
Most countries have several leagues which are referred to as "divisions." Lower divisions are like our somewhat like the minor leagues in baseball in the U.S. This explained in more detail later on, but one primary difference is that lower division teams in Europe are not owned by the higher division clubs like the "farm system" of U.S. baseball. In most countries, the "first division" is the highest league so saying a player plays in "France's second division" is like a saying a baseball player plays in AAA in France.
Confusing the issue substantially are England and Scotland which call their uppermost division the "premier division" and then number the divisions below "the premiership." So the "first division" of England is really "the second division" if you see what I'm getting at. This development is quite recent-- the early 90's -- and causes substantial difficulties when a commentator says something like, "... the most goals scored in a first division match in England in the last thirty years!" What he means is that this is the most goals scored in a match in the uppermost division in the last thirty years; the Premiere division is only a few years old. (As far as I have seen, this splitting into the Premiere division appears to be more about television revenue than football.)
None of the first division leagues of Europe, to my knowlege, use the playoff system that we find so much fun here in the U.S. to decide the title of a league. There are playoffs in some cases in lower divisions. So, the league champion is the team with best record over the course of the season and such titles are fiercely contested. This system is like the "good old days" of baseball in the United States, before the 1967 split of the American and National leagues into the eastern and western divisions.
Every league of Europe, in fact every league that I know of except the U.S.' MLS, uses the same system to decide the best team. (This is basically the same system used that was used in the NHL until the recent introduction of overtime.) A team gets three points for a win, none for a loss, and both teams get one point for a tie, or "draw." There is no overtime. The first tie breaker in most leagues is the "goal differential" which is season-long difference between goals scored and allowed.
In discussing the title of league or any championship race, you'll hear references to "the table," which is Euro-speak for the standings. So, "Manchester United is again at the top of the table" means Manchester United is back in first place in the standings.
The five most powerful leagues of Europe are (in alphabetical order to avoid flak):
A final note on leagues: Some of the most hotly contested league matches, even when not particularly important to the table are so called "derby matches" which pit two teams from the same city against each other. Many of these matchups go back over one hundred years and in cities where teams are closely followed can be serious business. (Even more serious than a Cowboy-Redskin matchup on Monday night!) Some fun derby matches to watch if you can are: Scotland's Rangers v. Celtic (Glasgow... these matches are sometimes called "The Old Firm" for some reason), England's Arsenal vs Chelsea (North London vs. South London) and Italy's A.S. Roma vs. Lazio (Rome).
If you were wondering how the European's got along without the drama of "win or go home" playoffs, here it is: Cup play. Just about every european country has a "domestic cup" which is given to the winner of a tournament played between all the clubs in the country. This is a highly desired piece of hardware!
Note that above I said, "all the clubs" in a country, and that's exactly what I meant. So this not only includes all the lower division teams, but, I believe, also includes amateur and semi-pro clubs (clubs where the players have day jobs). Imagine the AA Chattanooga Lookouts in a baseball tournament with the almighty Yankees! I know the most about the Cup play in England, called the "Football Association Cup" or just "F.A. Cup," because the F.A. Cup is the about the only cup competition covered over on this side of the pond. I'm going to stick to the assumption that the other cup competitions are similar to England's, as this seems to be the case in the limited reports I get about cup play in Scotland, France, and Italy.
The beauty of the cup scheme that they have in Europe is quite similar to what everybody loves about the NCAA tournament here in the US: giantkillers. Invariably, a team from somewhere out in the sticks puts a few lucky breaks together with a hot player or two and goes farther than anybody would have predicted, frequently at the expense of a big name team with a roster of multi-millionaire players. Sometimes, one of these smaller teams even goes all the way and wins the cup!
Adding to the drama in these tournaments is that the early round matches (say, before the semi-finals) are played as a home-and-home series with the winner decided on the better aggregate score. This is great fun when a small club with (say) a one thousand seat stadium and muddy, miserable, hole-ridden field gets to play host to a team used to the towering stadiums and manicured grass. (FIFA rightfully forbids artificial surfaces for any match!) Think of the beauty of owning a season ticket to one of these little clubs and getting to see the giants of the league play up close! Further, these poorly kept fields ("pitches") are frequently used to the disadvantage of visiting clubs used to far better conditions. It's the the "home pitch advantage."
These days, the elite clubs don't even start playing in these competitions until later rounds, I think the fourth, for example, in England. So the likelihood of serious upsets are somewhat lessened, although top clubs can still get embarassed at very early stages of the tournaments. These tournaments last all year (fall to spring) and are played in addition to a club's regular league matches. This can add substantial wear and tear on players, since it might add a dozen or so matches to a club's schedule and these are played in between league matches.
Finally, some countries have more than one "cup competition" such as England's League Cup, a.k.a. "the Coca-Cola Cup." Generally speaking, if it says "cup" on the end, it's a tournament. The U.S. has a cup competition like the one I described above, it's the U.S. Open Cup and it was won last year by D.C. United although the plucky San Francisco Bay Seals (a semi-pro team) got all the way to to the semifinals. Stupidly, our domestic league, MLS, uses a playoff scheme to decide its champion and then calls the title trophy the "MLS cup." Argh.
Imagine if you will a scenario in Major League Baseball where the team with the worst record in each league got pushed down and became a minor league (AAA) team the next year. Further, imagine that this lousy team's place was taken by the team with the best AAA record from the previous season. That scenario describes relegation and promotion respectively, and this scheme is exactly what they have in Europe for football! Imagine the joy in towns like Las Vegas or Louisville when they got promoted from AAA to the majors! Further, imagine the ferocity of those late season series in September between teams at the bottom of the league in their battle to avoid being "sent down."
I'm sure that you can tell that I am a big fan of this scheme, but of course I don't have a few hundred million dollars tied up in owning a club. In any case, this should at least partially explain why there is no "farm system" with lower division clubs. For one, the lower and upper division teams can change places! Further, every owner of a lower division club wants to improve his or her own club with good players so the club can get promoted to a higher division.
In reality, promotion and relegation are really only an issue in the top league of a country for clubs "on the bubble" between the first and second divisions. The top clubs usually have sufficient money and (thus) personnel to avoid being in any danger of relegation. Very seldom does an elite club come anywhere near the "relegation zone" of the table. For example, in England there are twenty teams in the premiere division and only three get sent down each year so a lot of teams in the middle are not in contention for the title but not going to get relegated either.
It is fair to say that there is significantly more revenue (tickets, merchandise, TV rights) to be had by being a higher division so there is significant competition in the lower divisions for promotion. The share of TV rights for a team in getting promoted to a top league is a substantial prize indeed!
A quick mention here towards the "double" is merited. Winning the "double" means winning the league championship and the domestic cup competition in the same season (year). This is quite a feat, perhaps on par with having the best record in college basketball for the season and also winning the NCAA tournament. In 1998, Arsenal won the double in England.
Now, we have reached the part of our discussion where things take a turn. You have probably noticed that I have not talked much about "European" level football, only the various intra-country battles for league titles and cup trophies. I'm sure you can imagine how an Arsenal fan might say to a Juventus fan, "Oh, that league in Italy, it's so weak! Arsenal would win that league by a mile!" The European competitions allow the best clubs from each country to play each other and settle these types of pub disputes on the field.
Probably the second most prestigous of any European competition, but any European-level trophy is worth a bunch. This competition is played between the previous year's domestic cup winners. So for example, in 1998 Hearts won the Scottish Cup and will compete in the 1999 Cup Winner's Cup against all (well, most) the other domestic cup winners of Europe.
This creates the somewhat strange situation for the American fan of a team competing in a tournament based on last year's performance. Further confusing the issue for the fan from the U.S. is that frequently teams change their personnel between seasons, so the team in the European tournament may or may not be the same one that did so well last season.
The Cup Winner's Cup is also played in the home-and-home format and the winner decided on aggregate score. In case of a tie, the team scoring more away goals wins. If that is even, the game goes thirty minutes of extra time and if that fails to produce a winner it is decided on a penalty shootout. The final of the Cup Winner's Cup is played at neutral site and is only one match. Chelsea (London) won the 1998 Cup Winner's Cup.
Again, a team playing in the Cup Winner's Cup is doing so in addition to their domestic league duties and their domestic cup competition. That's a lot of games!
This is the largest (numerically) European tournament, starting with 101 teams in 1998. It features top teams from all the European leagues in a tournament. Again, the "top teams" are decided on the basis of last year's standings. This tournament is somewhat less prestigous than the Cup Winner's Cup, but again playing in Europe beats not playing in Europe.
UEFA ("you ay fuh") is the organization (subordinate to FIFA) who runs soccer for all of Europe and they assign a number of "places" to each league based league strength. For example, in 1998 Germany had four representatives and Turkey had one. The system for deciding how many places are available to each league and to whom they go is pretty complex but in simple terms it involves skimming the cream off each domestic league and adding a few other teams based on their European level performance.
Yes, as you would expect this tournament is in addition to a team's normal duties but a team in general can be in only one European competition, so a team in the Cup Winner's Cup does not play in the UEFA cup and this can free up spots for teams that might otherwise not qualify.
Inter Milan beat Lazio (Rome) for the 1998 UEFA Cup in Paris.
This is the big prize. The team that wins the Champion's League is considered to be the best club team in Europe and almost every game has two excellent teams on the field. The qualification for the Champion's League is easy: Win your domestic league the previous year. A few countries have sufficiently powerful leagues that they get two representatives: England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Turkey. This development of allowing some countries to have two representatives is relatively new and by no means universally liked.
Like the others, this is played in addition to a club's normal schedule but the format is more like a "league." There is a round robin section with the teams in four-team groups. Each group winner (six of them) plus the two best second place teams then play a tournament using the home-and-home format. The final is huge event and takes place a nuetral site. This year's final pitted perennial power Juventus of Turin against Real Madrid at Amsterdam stadium. Real Madrid won in an upset 1-0. "That's why they play the games."
People don't call themselves "fans" of a particular club like they do in the U.S. They call themselves "supporters" and they also use it as a verb, "I support Manchester United." Like in the U.S. there is every type of clothing and object with the logo of any team you support on it. However, particularly popular-- and strange to the U.S. fan-- in Europe is the scarf. Scarves with a team logo/name on it are quite popular; watch the games on TV and check out the crowds for these.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that some clubs in Europe have gangs of thugs ("soccer hooligans" if you watch Saturday Night Live) that support them, or at least cause mayhem in the clubs' name. These fools are absolutely beyond my comprehension. Apparently, they travel around to matches getting drunk and starting fights with opposing bands of thugs (the hooligans supporting the opposing team I suppose) and sometimes just innocent passers-by. According to all reports this trend is fading out now, although it was fairly common in the 70's and early 80's. None too soon in my opinion.
The players in Europe's more powerful leagues make big money, like the professional athletes do in the U.S. The football players in Europe don't do as well as the top players in basketball or baseball, but they are not exactly broke either. Top players make perhaps $2M/yr and lots of players are making $1M/yr. However, the endorsement opportuntities are more limited in Europe, for reasons that I fail to understand. This means that the total compensation of players-- especially top players-- in the United States is probably far greater.
The biggest difference in the way player's move around in Europe is that player's are almost never "traded" for other players as they so frequently are in the U.S. They are simply bought and sold, similarly to the way things worked in the old days of baseball. So, when a club wants to get rid of a player, they will simply put out the word that they will accept X amount for the player. If another club puts up the money, the player is then able to negotiate a new contract with the purchasing club. This negotiation is call the "personal terms" and doesn't generally involve the club selling the player.
Generally speaking, the player gets little if anything of the "transfer fee" that the buying club pays. A typical value is 10%. Some very skilled players are able to negotiate clauses into their contracts which allow them a bigger cut if they get sold. Major clubs think nothing of multi-million dollar transfer fees, so this can really be big chunk of change.
As you would expect, this is a great way for teams to make money developing young talent. A second or third division team takes a shot on a 17 year old, helps him grow, and then sells him for a huge fee to a major club. For example, Southampton (England) developed Alan Shearer themselves and then sold him for $6M to Blackburn. (The joke might be on Southampton because only a few years later he was sold for a world record $25M.)
If you read the web pages or news reports in the summer time (the "close season") of what's going on in European football, all the reports will be about the transfer market. Teams constantly try to buy and sell players both to improve their own team as well as to make a profit. If you end up with a young player that you think can replace a solid veteran, maybe you can sell the veteran keep the cash and keep the same quality team on the field.
Until very recently, teams that owned a player could keep a player from signing a contract with any other team -- even if the player wasn't on the roster or being paid. This was the same setup as the reserve clause as baseball. Under the new European Union, this was ruled to be illegal and players whose contracts expire are allowed to change to the team of their choice. The court ruling was in favor of a player named "Bosman" so the "Bosman ruling" represents free agency to European players.
Of course, the owners of clubs don't like this arrangement so more and more big-name players are being signed to long term contracts (5+ years) and then after three or four years sold off to avoid being lost for free under the Bosman ruling.
Another legal ruling that came down from the European Union was that leagues couldn't restrict the number of "foreign born" players on their rosters. It used to be that many (if not all) leagues had a rule that the nume of foreign born players couldn't exceed some number. The EU courts upheld the idea that anyone from any EU country should be allowed to work in any other EU country and thus this restriction on players was illegal with respect to EU players. This has led to teams being composed of a great many foreign players, particularly when clubs have the money to buy good players from other countries.
This restriction still applies to non-EU citizens and because of the foreign influx (or outflux?) from the EU, many countries and making it even more difficult for non-EU citizens to play. This was a huge problem for the terrific U.S. goalkeeper Brad Friedel when he sought to move the Liverpool last year.
Some useful words and phrases to print out in 6 point font and tape to the back of your remote: