Why football failed to catch on in certain countries

[DonFerrari]

Ka-pi96 said:

mZuzek said:

Not as far as I know, the calendar is probably too full for that given every team plays state tournaments at the start of the year, and most first division teams play continental football too. For those teams, they're guaranteed at least 60 or 70 matches yearly if I'm not mistaken, so, yeah. State tournaments are a load of bullshit too, ideally they should only be played at lower divisions with the higher divisions being all national (as is the case in any decent country), but unfortunately it's rooted in Brazilian football tradition and it's hard to change people's minds on it.

I actually think the state tournaments are a pretty cool idea. My knowledge of them is limited to what I know from Football Manager, but still.

Wouldn't mind them in Europe actually. Although aside from there already being a load of games to play, European regions aren't really big enough for a regional competition to be worthwhile. It would even make sense in some countries, like a Catalan championship for Spain, but that would effectively just be giving Barcelona a free trophy every year so there's no point to actually doing it.

State championships give opportunity to teams from about 20-22 states to have a leveled play field.. because on the national level championship only teams from the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro have good representation, then you have 2 from Minas Gerais, 2 from Rio Grande do Sul, 1 Paraná and 1 Santa Catarina...

mZuzek said:

DonFerrari said:

That guy is totally not understanding the point. I didn't say Brasileirão is better or stronger, I said it is much more competitive because of the amount of teams that have real chance to the title and because of that you'll have more good games since watching Real Madrid destroying half of the teams in it's league isn't that high level, and the matches between the weak teams also wouldn't be that strong.

For all your insistence on Real Madrid, you'd find it hard to believe they finished 3rd place in Spain last season.

Yes, I get your point, but it doesn't mean watching a league is more interesting just because it's more competitive. To put it in crude terms, it's like trying to decide which out of 20 piles of shit smells better, versus trying to decide between 18 piles of shit and 2 flowers - yeah, the first one sure is harder to decide, but the second one at least offers some pleasure. I say crude terms because I'm not trying to say Brazilian football is a pile of shit, but, you get my point.

Regardless, the Spanish league isn't as one-sided as it's made out to be. Yes, the title itself will go to either Barcelona or Real Madrid 90% of the time, but there are many other good teams that can put up a fight too, if not for the title, at least for continental qualification, and occasionally (such as this year) finish ahead of one of those two. Of course, Atlético Madrid has been doing it consistently in recent years, but we've had other teams show up such as Valencia, Villareal, Málaga (UCL quarter-finalists a few years ago), and even Sevilla who won the Europa League 3 times in a row.

Of course, the English league isn't one-sided at all either. Besides Leicester City of all things winning the title a couple years ago, it is true there's been only 3 teams winning it in recent memory (Chelsea, Manchester United and City), but again, the title isn't everything. You can still appreciate the competitive football even if the stakes aren't the title itself (though for teams like Tottenham and Liverpool it often is), such as Champions League qualification (Arsenal), Europa League qualification (the likes of Southampton, Everton, Leicester, Watford, and more... these change quite often), top half of the table or avoiding relegation. The Premier League is usually filled with close battles throughout the table, so it's crazy to say it isn't very competitive. Yes, the Brazilian league is even crazier and more unpredictable, but it is so at the expense of high quality football, this has always been my point.

As for the other three big leagues, well, yeah. They're Bayern-land, Juventus-land and PSG-land respectively. No excusing those.

No I don't find that hard to believe, Spain have usually 2 or 3 teams with chance to win a championship. Brazil championship it is easy to not know which among 10-15 teams at the start of a season will win the championship.

I get your point, but that was if the teams were bad. They aren't. The best 5 teams on the season have a good play among CONMEBOL and several times they can also win the world. So it isn't really 20 shitties in one example versus 18 shitty and 2 pretty flowers... would be more like 10 thurds, 5 grass and 5 flowers versus 17 shitty and 3 very pretty flowers.

Well I wouldn't say that one should watch for the mid-level championship competitiviness forgeting only 3 teams will likely get a chance to win, but if that is how you appreciate soccer I have no problem with it =]

I wouldn't say we don't have high quality soccer in Brazil league, but I can surely conceed that the best team in europe would be very high level compared to our high level. But my point in that was that you wouldn't see very high level when a very strong team like Barcelona plays a very weak team.

And from what I know I started this trend in the thread saying to the guy asking which league he should watch and pointing Brazilian would give him a lot of fun because of the competition =]

Brazilian nowadays are focussed a lot on Spanish, British and Italian leagues. And UEFA is making a lot of success over here as well.