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I for one wish the EPL was more like the Bundesliga.
1. Bundesliga
2. Serie A
3. EPL
The only La Liga games I watch are either Real Madrid or Barcelona matches, and those tend to be blowouts.
Serie A is always good if you want to take a nap.
Some of the most exciting games I've seen this year have involved Napoli, Udinese, Juve, AC Milan, & Roma. I haven't caught many of the mid-level teams (Catania, Chievo, etc.) so maybe that's where the boredom lies.
FWIW, I think my favorite match of this year came from France, when Bordeaux beat Lille 5-4. Lots of fun to watch.
My point is that it's a great league that hardly anybody outside of Germany pays attention to. The SPL, which is dreadful, has a higher profile abroad.
Germany has one of the best teams in the world, the league has plenty of stars. It has an eminently hateable villain, yet it also has unparalleled parity among the big four European leagues. Its games have bags of atmosphere and the league generally plays a fast-paced yet technically proficient style of play. It should be massive.
You don't need the baying idiocy of Andy Gray and Richard Keys slagging off foreign clubs, you just need your games on better TV channels and an overall commitment to trying to increase its profile instead of being content with what it is now.
1. They are on GolTV. I get both GolTV and Fox Soccer in SD(can't get either in HD), yet the Fox Soccer feeds are infinitely higher quality than the GolTV ones. Some of this is due to the cameras at the actual stadiums, but not all of it.
2. I don't give a #### about any team in Germany. I have no real rooting interests in La Liga or Serie A, yet I can almost always find a team to root for or against in those games. For whatever reason, I can't find any reason to root for or against any team in Germany.
To be honest, I feel this well as well. Other than Bayern - duh.
Looks like you guys both need to pick a club. May I recommend this highly scientific method?
Just enjoy the game then. I don't have any team I actively root for.* I find it pretty nice to just watch a game and just enjoy it regardless of outcome.
*Well, there's the USMNT, but that's different.
Well that was easy. Bayern.
They definitely need a better TV contract, but the Bundesliga is the only league set up for the long haul right now, though the others collapsing into a super-league will probably drag it down with them.
Hmmmm...Borussia Dortmund. How are we doing?
YES!!!! For once not being hip and alternative delivers for me!
Plus they have the coolest nickname.
Yeah, this was posted here before. It says I should follow Borussia Dortmund.
*raises hand*
The chart can get me there too, but I have had a soft spot for Der Hamburger for about five years because that's where Papa Bear went after he got run out of Tottenham.
This has been reinforced by the fact that it's also Rafa van der Vaart's former club. I love Rafa.
I ended up at Werder Bremen. I remember there were quite a few fans of fascist architecture out there, too.
Why would you root for a club elsewhere! Dortmund forever!!! (hmmm...note to self, find out if we have a slogan that I can mock McOA with).
They were one hour condensed matches broadcast at a time (the late 70s/early 80s) when there was next to no other European soccer with English commentary available on television.
The Bundesliga is a terrific league, and a match in Germany is a great spectating experience, but the fact of the matter is that football is nowhere near the all encompassing cultural powerhouse in Germany that it is in England, Scotland, Italy or Spain. That leads to the league being thought of as less of a cultural export than those of other countries, and to there being less media hype to leverage interest off of. There simply isn't a German equivalent to the 24/7 nonsense of Sky Sports, la Gazzetta or Marca, AS, Mundo Deportivo and Sport.
They are growing but considering that half a decade ago the entire league was a basket-case with poor teams, not many starts (risign or otherwise) and with lots of financially shakey clubs they've come a long way in a saturated market and without the advantage of being an anglophone nation.
I can imagine that the next few years will be "challenging" for the Premier League considering only a small handful of clubs are able to generate operating profits and a good 12-14 clubs seem to be permanently tottering on the edge of being insolvency.
Just saw that. March has been a rough month if you don't care for bad news about footballers.
He'll fight, and fight hard. The guy is a gamer and a deserved captain. No way to know what hand he's been dealt with this cancer, but if it's a winnable battle, he'll win it.
EDIT: Shinji!
Ridiculously entertaining game, but that was some horrible ####### defending from Dortmund in the second half. Complete clown shoes.
Even the best teams are capable of performances that make you wonder if they are starting impostors at the back.
No, I remember it well, used to watch it Sundays on PBS back in the 1970s.
Hadn't watched a Bundesliga game for years, but I decided to watch the replay of the Borussia Dortmund/Stuttgart match on ESPN3 to see Shinji Kagawa (without knowing the score in advance). Wow, that was entertaining...
That is true. I work in a college and every year we do an exchange programme with some students from Spandau. We have a lunch at the end of it and I sat next to one of the kids who was a Hertha season ticket holder*. He was a big fan, but told us that only about half the students - mostly young men aged 18-22 - were football fans. One of his friends sitting next to him freely admitted he didn't care for football at all, but rather preferred boxing.
I suppose that explains two things: how the economic powerhouse of Europe has a league which doesn't quite match up to England/Spain/Italy (and this relative lack of obsession for football probably explains why Ligue 1 isn't up there too), and how Hertha aren't a powerhouse in Germany.
I've heard of it. That's really my image of the US Bundesliga fan - probably a product of Soccer Made in Germany. Just as Serie A fans are usually older and Latin or Italian, and PL/La Liga fans are often younger and more diverse.
In that same vein, somebody on YouTube has started putting up old episodes of Gazzetta Football Italia, which was a cultural phenomenon in England in the 1990s and is responsible for a whole generation of English Parma/Fiorentina/Samp/Roma fans. Check 'em out, they're great. Serie A was the undisputed liga di tutti leghe and English fans hadn't reached the point of self-satisfaction over the Premier League with English clubs doing nothing in Europe and only a handful of star foreign players in the league. That the programme was slick and gave the impression of Italy as a sunny, refined place where anything could happen only helped even more.
* His Hertha season ticket in the Suedtribune of the Olympiastadion? 100 euros. Including free train travel. I spend that much on one Arsenal game, the lucky bastard.
Shhh...don't tell anybody, but the Bayern Derby is going fairly well right now. Or whatever those Germans call Nurnberg/Bayern...
In much, MUCH bigger news Vicenza beats Albinoleffe late and my Cateaters scuff their way a bit closer to safety. Empoi and Livorno also win (Torino loses at Empoli?), so there's still much work to do. Naturally, the biggest news here is that I care even one whit what happens in Serie B.
Edit: Argh in Nurnberg...
EDIT: F U Bolton for making my post stupid nonsense rather than a stupid joke.
Just so we are clear: I AM BLAMING YOU!
Arsenal is always pissing me off. Always. Man City...huh?
And I take the blame for Nurnberg, FPH. Just don't carry on such a trial about it.
For a team that was 9 points ahead of the other and at home? That's nuts.
5th place in the league. Winner of the FA cup and league cup. If the winners are already qualified for Europe, it goes to the runner up. If the runner up is also already qualified, it goes to the highest placed team in the league who isn't. Plus potentially one Fair Play nonsense entry.
Sunderland looks like the best team in England right now.
EDIT: That may have come out wrong. I looked forward to it. The bad part lay in the fact that there was no other games on TV.
It's like he expected meaningful contact that would take away the chance to score so he decided to sell it.
Oh well, I'm a proud member of the "Divers Should Be Shot" club. I see it as poetic justice.
Oh, and Yoenis Cespedes is on pace for 81 home runs. The expectation is he'll get there with room to spare.
I see Giorgio Chinaglia died. He's got to be the slam dunk choice for best soccer player to ply his trade in the US of all time, no? I don't mean he's better than Pele or Beckenbauer or Best or Cruyff, but that he spent a great deal of his prime in the States and he tore the NASL up for years.
edit: Oh, yeah, one of the US youth teams was on my flight home from South Africa. I would say we're rapidly closing the gap on the Euro and South American powers in overworked hairstyles if not soccer talent. One of the kids was a dead ringer for Jermaine Jenas which I took as an omen the plane was going to crash. There were also a few Manchester United women's team players on the flight.
Wow. Crouch does like scoring big goals against Man City. Did he celebrate with the robot?
PS
New thread coming soon
Away to Chelsea was an improvement, although the entertainment value in the first half was dire. That was a candidate for the worst 45 minutes of football I've seen all season. By both sides. The second half was much better, and Spurs should have won it given they created three or four golden scoring chances to Chelsea's one or two. The woodwork saved both teams multiple times. I murdered some couch pillows in frustration.
Spurs then shellacked Bolton in an emotional FA Cup do-over. Muamba seems to be improving slowly but steadily, which is amazing.
I did not see much of yesterday's game with Swansea, but the consensus appears to be both sides played quite well. The difference was Adebayor's advantage in the air (reinforced by the absence of Caulker) and Spurs being a bit more creative and clinical in the final third than their opponents.
8 seasons
213 games
193 goals (1st all time, Alan Wiley in 2d with 129)
81 assists (6th all time)
I got home in time for the Swansea game. It was entertaining but Spurs were a little open at the back.
Ajax 58
AZ 57
Twente 55
PSV 54
Feyenoord 54
Heerenveen 54
With AZ drawing with Vitesse and ceding top spot to Ajax, the gap from first to sixth actually shrunk by a point this week.
With so many teams still in it, there's a HUUUUGE game virtually every week. Sometimes two! Next Tuesday AZ host Twente while Heerenveen hosts Ajax. The smart money's on Ajax right now - they've rounded into the best form. But there's no reason Heerenveen can't prolong their chance at a title with a win, especially since if they lose that would be them dead and buried I suspect.
Sack a legend who has won a title this year? It's all FA's fault anyway*.
*) The best bit about Liverpool's skid is that it makes it harder to build a myth that the Suarez thing cost them the Champions League spot/title/ten years of utter dominance. Not that the hard cases will refrain from trying to make that case.
I wonder if Dalglish will make it easy for them and just resign. And where does Andy Carroll play next year? The first thing a new manager will have to do is ship off the big fella. Maybe Charlie Adam, too. And definitely Stuart Downing.
I read somewhere that Daglish has more points than Benitez and I think Houllier had at this point in their tenures FWIW.
Also, welcome back Shooty.
The result kept Lecce up and was immediately considered suspect by many observers.
Four other Bari matches from last season are under investigation, and Massiello has been arrested.
Sven wishes to make it known that many of the ladies find him appealing, and that he thinks LFC is a team with great potential.
I believe Rafa still owns a house in Liverpool...
The first genuine breakthrough in the latest match fixing investigation as ex-Bari defender Massiello admits that his own goal against Lecce last spring was deliberate.
What's the feeling how pervasive match fixing is in Italy?
Unfortunately, most football people just find him appalling.
Damn, I missed the discussion of this here. Loved that book- it's responsible for large parts of my obsessions with both Italy and soccer.
You will feel shame.
692, it is a terrific book, and as someone who lived in Italy for five plus years, very accurate.
I bet they could get Hodgson. I hear he's pretty good.
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