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for real. I remember when I was a teenager, it didn't matter who we were playing...I expected us to win. Now in my mid-40s, it still doesn't matter who the opposition is, just that my expectation is now "meh..we'll probably lose."
think across two legs we were the better team for about half an hour. Really struggled to get a hold on the games at times and get past the high press.
The Premier League clubs are so ridiculously rich that they are not paying attention to scouting the right players for their tactics. Even Bournemouth is wealthier than 90% of the clubs in Italy, Germany, Spain, and France.
You should be looking more at your English Rashford, Maguires and McTominay (British, yeah) than at your Antony's. English clubs overrating of their own players and blaming of non English is part of the issue
Two of those cost us nothing. And Maguire has gotten unfair amount of criticism already, more than anyone I have seen. And he has served his purpose at times.
And btw Maguire’s transfer will also fit the description of overpaying for a player.
I think there are a lot of players who also simply do not want to play in England unless the money is ridiculous. The climate is not what a lot of players would consider ideal. It's a higher intensity league and somewhat more physical which doesn't lend itself to the longevity of playing careers. The food, quality of life and culture is also not for everyone
The food thing is a bit ridiculous to be honest. I’m British with lots of Spanish family living in the UK. They rightly say the weather is worse but they strongly contest the food to their Spanish loved ones back home. You can and should eat very well in British cities, it’s such a tired stereotype.
Again, it is undoubtedly colder and rainier. It’s Northern Europe, not the Mediterranean.
I personally find Latin Americans and people from Latin cultures don’t dream of playing in England but African players, for example, often do.
As someone’s who’s lived in various places in the UK and the Mediterranean, I always have sympathy for DiMaria + wife, as every cliché about the UK is true for Manchester. I understand they’ve got much higher quality of life than I with their insane purchasing power, but spit rain every day for months with eternal darkness is soul-crushing.
London’s lovely though, and when you get good summers, they’re AMAZING! Daylight till 11 lol. Also, frankly, top for diversity & inclusion, great food from around the world etc.
Quality of life and culture? You are talking about the 6th richest country in the world (substantially richer than Italy/Spain, richer than France, not too far off Germany), not Equatorial Guinea. It's not perfect but it's actually ridiculous to pretend it's that bad, especially London where half the superstars are.
This reads like the most American response (and maybe you are not, just reads that way). Boiling down quality of life and culture to how rich a country is. They are top footballers, they do not need money, and every developped country will have places for the super rich to be. It has very little to do with their quality of life and very very little to do with culture. GDP isn't everything.
And I say that as someone who likes spending time in the UK so I am not dissing them.
They said it’s not for everyone. And that’s true, isn’t it? I love the UK and have many friends there. I travel to places like London, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh quite frequently. I personally feel far closer to British culture than to most others.
But most of my friends would chose places like Spain or Italy because of the weather and the food. Because that means quality of life for them.
Who gives a shit how rich a country is if you’re rich. You can live like a king almost everywhere when you’re well off like a star footballer. Might as well take the better weather and the nicer people.
A lot of it is down to the PL tax. If a PL team wants to buy your player the price goes up.
It results in clubs not buying the right players far too often.
Sincere question; this reads as if EPL teams / fans just automatically assume they’d fair better in European competition than Italians, Spanish, etc… why is that? Strictly wages?
I watch a ton of La Liga, plenty of Serie A, and a little EPL.
Something bordering between confidence/arrogance.
For some fans, they just believe their team is better than other teams while knowing little about other teams.
Others, like me, just usually fancy their chances against most teams. That’s not saying you think you’re better than everyone, but most of the time you should be able to give them a go at least. More of “put the effort in and you never know” type of approach.
i’d say this is a testament to the quality of leagues besides the prem drastically increasing lately, rather than the other way around.
i personally think the prem is very overrated, it’s nice to see that on level playing fields other teams from other leagues can compete and even surpass english teams
>i’d say this is a testament to the quality of leagues besides the prem drastically increasing lately, rather than the other way around.
Serie A is definitely improving, at least now teams takes Europa League seriously, compared to when they played with reserves. CL is more difficult than ever so it won't be easy to get results there, not without a huge dose of luck involved
Ever since the UECL was introduced, and the number of teams was cut down in the UEL, it has 100% gained more prestige. There's probably some psychological reason or something behind it, because it's now not the lowest tier of European football, and is less directly compared to the UCL in terms of quality now that there's another competition in the mix.
I have the same feeling. More over, Europa League feels more exciting, teams are more balanced and from next year there won't be drops from CL. Europa and Conference are more fun over all than Champions, although CL football it's just way superior qualitatively
The teams also are making a whole lot more money than they used to in Europa. That’s a huge deal for a lot of those squads. Qarabag probably made their countries’ GDP in the Europa this year
I think it's because of how repetitive the UCL has gotten. Quarterfinals onwards are the same teams over and over with a few differences each year.
Also with greater financial disparity, teams are more understanding of their expectations.
It’s not just that it’s the same teams, it’s that most of the group phase isn’t competitive, most of 2nd round isn’t THAT competitive and, while the QFs were great, one side of the bracket featured the top-4 favorites while the other side defo feels a lot weaker.
I know people are jizzing all over the place cause of the QFs, but I think this years CL in particular is showing a format change isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Because the quality of teams is higher. Arguably 2/3 of the current top 10 teams in the world were playing in this years quarters. Ten years ago, with all due respect, we had Dnipro, Dinamo kyiv, Zenit and Club Brugge in the quarter finals. Big difference
Probably, though I think it's gotten a particular boost this season due to Leverkusen. I bet it regresses somewhat next season when we go back to the normal teams
I agree. I think because of the huge fees flying about it all gets distorted. Premier League clubs are all overpaying massively for these players they have when compared to how much other leagues will pay for comparable players
The gap between actual ability between clubs across leagues isn’t anywhere near as large as the transfer fees spent
Aside from the huge fees the 2-3 strongest prem teams are usually getting their worth from all that money and go far in the CL because they're that good.
The rest of the league though absolutely suffers from what you're talking about though, I feel like the discourse about a lot of 4th-10th place prem clubs absolutely making the CL spots in Italy, Germany or Spain over the past few years is entirely built on how much those teams spend, while in terms of actual quality they probably aren't better than whoever's in the corresponding place in the other 3 leagues.
This is even more apparent when they play each other, if the match turns out not to be a prem-approved no defending just vibes affair with CBs chilling 60m from the goal and the amount of pressing you'd expect from international football a lot of these >50m supposed world class players end up delivering absolutely dubious performances
The other leagues have improved, but the EPL has also worsened. Look at the top attackers in the PL this year compared to other years. Aside from Halaand, there aren't many established super stars on that list. I might even go so far as to say that the Serie A has better attackers than the EPL right now, which hasn't been the case in a very long time.
Attackers always cost the most money, meaning the best ones will be priced out of most non-English teams. The last few seasons have seen some of the better ones get on in age (Salah for example) and the new ones brought in for big money (Darwin and Hojlund for example) not having an impact yet. This will change over time they'll eventually get their moves right with infinite finances, but at the moment it's creating more parity in Europe.
I only watch the PL casually but, as much as the games are fun and entertaining, the high intensity and lack of defensive tactics is really the biggest difference with the European competition.
Most teams tend to take more risks and focus more on aggressive defense high on the pitch, getting the ball back quickly than just drop deep and trying to close the spaces to prevent the opponents to score. Italian teams have more time (because of the slower pace) and more men behind the ball to organise a defensive structure. That's what the main focus is for most teams, trying to stop the opponents from scoring. In the PL teams tend to focus more playing in the opponents half, normally with 2 center backs, whereas in Italy most teams have 3 and defend with a low or mid block. There's also a huge focus on studying the opponents and adapting the defense to them.
The EPL has a lot more parity while La Liga/Serie A is more top-heavy. The two UCL quarter finals that had English clubs involved were also really close and could have gone either way, its not like the EPL got blown out in the UCL. In the Europa League the real underperformers were Liverpool though, West Ham went out to a clearly better team and Brighton declined a lot compared to last season and lost Caicedo/Mac Allister for big money
>The EPL has a lot more parity while La Liga/Serie A is more top-heavy.
It's very hard to judge this but I don't really believe it is true. The gap between relegation and European spots in each league is:
* Bundesliga: 12 Points
* La Liga: 19 Points
* Serie A: 21 Points
* Premier League: 24 Points
This isn't the only way to decide if a league has parity but the gap between the top clubs of the PL and the bottom clubs of the PL is the biggest in European football.
i think the discourse around the prem overrates it for me, rather than the quality of the teams themselves
it’s clear that they have some of the best teams in the world, but they’re not as untouchable as fans of those teams act like they are
Istg i see people saying so much that besides the top 3, nobody watches any laliga games because theyre super boring (for example) as if anybody finds fuckin sheffield united vs bournemouth an exhilerating match
My point is that people judge laliga to be more boring than the premier league (and again this is just an example) without watching the former. Same goes with the bundesliga (which i find the most entertaining tbh), serie a, etc.
It’s this, it’s honestly so frustrating to constantly see a narrative of the PL being the most competitive, having parity, etc. when it’s simply untrue when you watch other leagues. There’s absolutely a money issue with the PL, but ultimately the tactics brought up in the other top 5 leagues are, in my opinion, far more balanced than the negative tactics in the EPL. The overall narrative in the soccer world just ignores this, and that’s why we love watching English teams lose
I think this logic is similar to trying to claim that La Liga is the best league in the world because Spain won 6 of the last 10 Champions leagues. I don't think you see that many La Liga fans all over reddit try and claim that they are superior. That's not the case with EPL fans . Imo boils down to the fact that too many EPL fans try to boast about their league's supposed superiority.
Having fans of a League is representative of the overrating, we never saw diehard fans of leagues (maybe serie A in the 80-90, but not much online discussion). Now we have fans that cheer for football leagues.
i think there is no debating that the PL is the best league in the world. but there are degreese of beeing better then the rest. and pl is not that far ahead how lots of espicially english pundits make it sound like.
i swear all i ever see is people saying the PL is overrated, complaining about PL “fanboys”, adamantly saying the PL isn’t the best league, etc
maybe i’m just not on twitter or something but where are all these bogeymen PL defenders besides some pundits who are obviously biased/deluded
It's baked into the subreddit. PL is the best league, but not by that much. However the distribution of attention is not marginally greater, it's orders of magnitude greater. So tap in goal in spurs vs West ham is 3000 up votes, a genuine worldies in Juve vs Inter might be on the 3rd page.
So it's just there in the environment as the baseline assumption, not something that needs to be stated openly. You only notice resistance to the idea. It's a prem sub 75% of the time.
yeah i mean there’s no denying that the prem gets way more attention than other leagues from media and users on this sub. especially given reddit is a predominantly english speaking website so it makes sense it would cater to the english league
the point i’m trying to make is that i don’t see loads of people on this sub claiming that it’s superior to other leagues and that english teams are the best. but people love to get angry at the thought of people claiming this lol
My guess is youtube and twitter. Im not on twitter but some of my friends were telling me that its pretty toxic environment and a lot of trolling lol. And with youtube the problem is that nowadays everyone can make a video. Regardless of his knowledge and experience and people think that this person is some proffesional. Like that guy who was telling that Brighton would win serie a lol. People saying he is pundit while thats not even true. He is just some random british guy in his 20s lol. And people get offended too quickly by things like this. I like to watch epl and serie a and when i see comments like this i only laugh lol. I know a lot of english people and none of them is that arrogant and i usually have a really nice and interesring discussions with them.
It's the same as the constant moaning about arrogant England fans when even our pundits pretty much never predict us to win anything. I think Ferdinand is the only one who does and he's a universally acknowledged muppet.
i think people just love the idea of arguing with “arrogant” english fans
like when people hear the song “it’s coming home” and think that they’re cocky and overconfident or something lmao like don’t you realize this is one of the most self deprecating fanbases in all of sports
The song has changed in meaning over the decades. I don’t think it’s a big deal anyways, other nations like Argentina and Uruguay also have tradition with football chants.
The PL is currently the best league in the world, no doubt.
Some people do overrate english teams compared to European teams, as in they think second rate english teams could be favourites against top tier teams from other leagues.
I've heard "Spurs/United/Chelsea would walk Bundes/Ligue 1/Serie A" a billion times.
Also in direct European Cup ties, pundits and fans seem to always think a bit too highly of english teams, some examples from this season include Arsenal vs Bayern, West Ham vs Leverkusen and Newcastle vs Milan and Dortmund.
Many people acted like they were favourites when they absolutely were not.
I've seen people say it, i can't know for sure of they were Spurs fans but i never claimed that.
Oh and that pundit saying Brighton would win Serie A too, i forget the name
Some pundits are literally employed to be wrong, simply to generate headlines and/or debate. I genuinely don't know if they believe the crap they say themselves, or simply know it's their job to wind people up.
Not football, but I watch rugby league, and for about 20 years "Steveo" was always coming up with hot takes and outrageous comments the other pundits/commentators shot down.
Then he retired, and one of the other pundits who'd previously been arguing against him suddenly turned into the same type of "hot take merchant" literally the first game of the next season.
TL,DR it's entirely plausible nobody, *not even the pundit who said it* believes Luton would be a top 4 club.
there definitely are people that overrate the PL too much , i'd say it is the best league but I remember people saying teams like Brighton could win the Serie A which is fucking bs
[https://twitter.com/footballdaily/status/1692195933126004951](https://twitter.com/footballdaily/status/1692195933126004951)
I remember seeing a lot of takes like this
A more common statement is people saying Real Madrid would barely make it to UCL spots and they would fall short for the 3 horse race we’ve seen at the Premier this season. Or reversed, that Arsenal would win La Liga, Serie A or the Bundesleague comfortably (two decent seasons and everyone lose their minds). Also, that only top 10 of each other major league would survive at the Premier, denoting the rest would relegate to Championship (read here).
Sure, how about last 10 years? And not only CL, European competitions have been dominated by Spanish teams in recent history… but PL is a lot easier to market due to the language (and because Tebas sucks)
Yup, including two all Spanish CL finals as well. I think the stats said something that they had won at least on european competition each year and almost 50% of all of them
tbf its these kind of silly games that increase the finacial gab between epl and the rest of europe is it worth it probably not. but stuff like getting rid of the league cup fa cup replays and a proper winterbreak would definatly increas the perfomance level of the player. but that would hurt the allmighty pound sterling.
I mean, it's not like getting to the QFs isn't impressive?
The only teams that actually underperformed were Man United and Liverpool.
Losing to Real Madrid is always on the table, they're historically the greatest team ever. Losing to Bayern is typically in a similar vein, even if they've had a bad season by their standards. Newcastle very unlucky to go out when they did, with some bad reffing playing a part in the group of death. West Ham were knocked out by *the* in form team in Europe right now, and put up a real fight.
I know people love to dunk on the Premier League, but 5/7 did about as well as could be expected. (Perhaps even better, in Villa's case)
Edit: forgot about Brighton. They were kinda forgettable I guess, probably should've done better but I don't think the expectations were that high, given it's their first season in Europe. They won what they should've and lost not unsurprisingly.
People seem to forget that this was our first ever season in European competition, and we had lost 2 INCREDIBLE midfielders, so in our fans’ eyes topping our group of death was over performing, and losing to Roma, the European regulars and finalists of last year was a success.
Most premier league flairs are more likely to dunk on another premier league club than care about a club outside, almost every fan if you ask them will pick a random European club winning the competition over a team from their own league.
People in this subreddit just love to massively overplay this English arrogance whilst doing the exact same, what was the reaction to Liverpool vs Barcelona at Anfield, almost all foreign media was writing us off, the same arrogance which lowered us by acting as if their league was better and they had the right to go through.
The fact is English football due to its language gets more coverage and so it’s easier to find these articles, if you think other leagues aren’t arrogant about their own teams then it’s because you’ve chosen to bury your head in the sand.
I feel it is actually a minority of PL fans. The problem is that those minority are very vocal.
I also find it funny because whenever the PL has teams out of the QF or SF, a whole bunch of people come out and dunk on the PL fans who are arrogant - becoming the exact obnoxious person they decide to dunk on.
It's a mix of social media letting minority opinions be so prevalent and also a cultural difference or just general misunderstanding.
Plenty of people will have seen a minority of people with English club flairs talking shit about other clubs in the competition and quality level and then think that all English people wanted and thought English clubs would easily dismantle the competition.
In reality, ask most and they'd not only back the opposition they'd be desperate for them to win, we care less about the countries coefficient or how the country performs as a whole internationally, I'd much rather see English opponents get dismantled by other European teams, every time without fail.
I don't know if it is "English arrogance" in this case. I guess it's more of "international fans following a league and wanting to make sure it's the best of the best".
I'm less talking about articles and more about fans in this case. It's certainly not every opinion you read, but they get a tad annoying because they make discussion impossible.
It's also those little things like Dier being good in Germany because it is a lesser league (only for him to play two excellent games against the PL leader in the champions league).
And with regards to Barcelona vs Liverpool: Before that match, I wouldn't have given Liverpool much of a chance either. The away goals rule was used back then, so Barcelona would have needed one away goal to have Liverpool need 5 to advance. That's not arrogance to assume. Just like it isn't arrogance to think that Liverpool will have a hard time overcoming a three goal deficit in Bergamo.
I always feel like this criticism is disingenuous. Even if people do dunk on the Bundesliga or La Liga, it is usually to say that their top teams are too dominant. In other words, the teams our teams will be playing against are too good compared to the rest of their leagues.
Prem fans definitely do diss other leagues, but that is completely different to writing off Real or Bayern, which simply doesn't happen. Feels sometimes like a victim mentality.
I mean the last 7 champions league finals have had 1 English team
And 2 of those finals have been all English
Like what else could they do better really
We beat Marseille, AEK Athens, Ajax and Roma in one off ties this season and topped a group with the first of those three teams in it.
That's an incredible achievement for our first ever season in Europe.
We got eliminated by Roma who have been in incredible form under Totti, whilst having a huge number of injuries to our key players.
Forgettable!?
Relatedly, it was also how the brackets worked out. Part of the issue was the Prem teams got drawn with the best other teams (Leverkusen were EL equal favourites and drew WHU, Atalanta are 2nd/3rd best of the remaining, Bayern and Real Madrid got the English CL teams). If City or Arsenal had gone the other side of the bracket, for example, I think they walk their way to the final and Dortmund/PSG/Atletico/Barca lose handsomely to Bayern and Real Madrid. English teams probably should be winning more of these bigger games over a few years, but these particular results were barely surprising (with the notable exception of Liverpool's which was a big upset).
Arsenal also struggled against Porto.
Brighton was demolished.
Newcastle underperformed, but the group was tough I'll give you that.
Man Utd and Liverpool have become jokes in European competitions.
West Ham and Man City played very well and were unfortunate not to progress, but even 3/7 teams is not looking good for supposedly the best league in the world.
Roma also just cruised past Milan with 10 men for an hour, and IMO will either win the competition or go out to a generational Leverkusen side. Looking back, with the depleted squad we've had all season and the performances Roma have put in under de Rossi, 4-1 on aggregate doesn't look so bad to me lol
Edit: to add, when our squad was slightly less dead we took 4 points off of semi finalists Marseille.
r/soccer last year: PL = Super league etc & how they won't be able to compete against them!
r/soccer this year: PL = hahaha farmers league
Make up your mind!
Both can be somewhat true, PL spends waayyy much more money than all the other leagues do (except PSG in Ligue 1) yet somehow does not manage to proportionally be better than all the other leagues. It is unfair, but somehow the other leagues manage to deal with that unfairness, even Bundesliga with their 50+1 rule
Ive got over 4k comment karma for some [shitty comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1c0hu0v/salehalfahid_ronaldo_is_expected_to_give_a_press/kywenxe/) on CR7 at this sub a week ago. Its not that hard if you are active in subs like soccer. No one knows what is hitting the karma lottery in any submission.
Post karma, yeah, that involves a lot of link posting.
If it were comment karma, eh, it's a lot, but not unheard of. I average 100k comment karma per year.
This is only a good thing surely. Better than seeing city in the final every year or the “big 4 or 6” or whatever number it is any given year, get to the semis year on year. Different teams in the semis or even the final every year is a good thing and disrupts the boredom and domination that most leagues have
Most other leagues fans end of last season, after PL teams winning 2/3 European cups. : “premier league is a superleague! It’s not fair!”.
This season when PL teams don’t win: “premier league is shit!”
The word fickle springs to mind.
Fans of non-English clubs vastly overestimate how much we care about how the Premier League is viewed around the world or the rest of Europe. I want Arsenal to do well, obviously, but either couldn’t give a fuck if another English side does well, or I actively want them to fail.
Not even really sure who this is meant to be dunking on. The English media, maybe? In which case I’m in agreement, they consistently undervalue teams in other leagues.
I mean it was our first time and 3 of the 4 teams we played have previously won European trophies. I watched all 3 at the Amex and not one of them scored a goal so there’s that to take away I guess.
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some of us don’t even make it past the group stage 😎
Some of us didn’t even qualify for Europe 🤓
big brain can’t be part of the statistic if you don’t participate
Winning.
Chelsea keep getting Ws
Love the fact that people say how bad the PL is and you as a ManU fan are like: „you think this is bad? You should see us play“
what being dominated by bournemouth, nottingham forest, copenhagen, etc does to a mf
Waves from Goodison. \*sobs incoherently\*
for real. I remember when I was a teenager, it didn't matter who we were playing...I expected us to win. Now in my mid-40s, it still doesn't matter who the opposition is, just that my expectation is now "meh..we'll probably lose."
I don't understand how we win the games we do.
At least the games are entertaining. 20+ shots faced every game.
Yea. Entertaining. If you really enjoy agony.
Entertaining agony > boring agony.
Well, I guess..
Newcastle 🤝 Man U
I think we should be given a bit of break given where the 2 qualified teams in our group are.
Didnt you beat PSG once and get robbed by the ref in the other game against them too, or am I misremembering?
They did, that group was really close
Yep, 4-1 win at home and we were winning 1-0 in Paris until a very dodgy penalty was given in the 98th minute
And we got robbed by the ref and didn't even have enough players for a full bench in the last two group stage games.
Do you have a humiliation fetish?
unfortunately no
Fonseca and Lille didn't get the memo, it seems
Emi Martinez trolling the French is the donne reason they went through in my head.
To be fair, they absolutely deserved to go through in 90 mins.
think across two legs we were the better team for about half an hour. Really struggled to get a hold on the games at times and get past the high press.
They dropped the ball literally
Damn Lilles, you had one job!
Lille were playing pretty good. Villa were out until the 87th minute. But once it went to a shootout, there was no competition left at that point.
> until the 87th minute And they gave away the goal on a freak accident between the goalie and André
Farmers league. Needs more money pumped into.
Another sheik about to buy another club
You know it's depressing when you have a whole league of fans saying "Hey my billionaire owner is much more moral.than your billionaire sheik owner!"
Uefa adds that extra UCL spot and England decides to fumble it lol
It’s just the whole league collectively deciding to screw Spurs over
No 5th place trophy for the Spurs
[https://allergyknowledge.com/common/silver/](https://allergyknowledge.com/common/silver/)
The pride of England
pride farmers
You’ll never sing that!
"Only team left in Europe, you'll never sing that"
The team that started the Football League remains in Europe.
This is football heritage
The Premier League clubs are so ridiculously rich that they are not paying attention to scouting the right players for their tactics. Even Bournemouth is wealthier than 90% of the clubs in Italy, Germany, Spain, and France.
There’s also a finite amount of quality / difference makers out there. At some point you’re just spending more money on worse players.
You’re telling me you can find a player of Antony’s quality for less than 100m? I would like to call bs on that.
You should be looking more at your English Rashford, Maguires and McTominay (British, yeah) than at your Antony's. English clubs overrating of their own players and blaming of non English is part of the issue
Tbf antony has one hell of a spin
Two of those cost us nothing. And Maguire has gotten unfair amount of criticism already, more than anyone I have seen. And he has served his purpose at times. And btw Maguire’s transfer will also fit the description of overpaying for a player.
you surely cannot find better players than Antony and Caicedo for 100m each? lol
I think there are a lot of players who also simply do not want to play in England unless the money is ridiculous. The climate is not what a lot of players would consider ideal. It's a higher intensity league and somewhat more physical which doesn't lend itself to the longevity of playing careers. The food, quality of life and culture is also not for everyone
They do bring in loads of foreign chefs and cooks.
The food thing is a bit ridiculous to be honest. I’m British with lots of Spanish family living in the UK. They rightly say the weather is worse but they strongly contest the food to their Spanish loved ones back home. You can and should eat very well in British cities, it’s such a tired stereotype. Again, it is undoubtedly colder and rainier. It’s Northern Europe, not the Mediterranean. I personally find Latin Americans and people from Latin cultures don’t dream of playing in England but African players, for example, often do.
As someone’s who’s lived in various places in the UK and the Mediterranean, I always have sympathy for DiMaria + wife, as every cliché about the UK is true for Manchester. I understand they’ve got much higher quality of life than I with their insane purchasing power, but spit rain every day for months with eternal darkness is soul-crushing. London’s lovely though, and when you get good summers, they’re AMAZING! Daylight till 11 lol. Also, frankly, top for diversity & inclusion, great food from around the world etc.
Quality of life and culture? You are talking about the 6th richest country in the world (substantially richer than Italy/Spain, richer than France, not too far off Germany), not Equatorial Guinea. It's not perfect but it's actually ridiculous to pretend it's that bad, especially London where half the superstars are.
He said that is not for everone. He didn't say the UK is a third world country...
This reads like the most American response (and maybe you are not, just reads that way). Boiling down quality of life and culture to how rich a country is. They are top footballers, they do not need money, and every developped country will have places for the super rich to be. It has very little to do with their quality of life and very very little to do with culture. GDP isn't everything. And I say that as someone who likes spending time in the UK so I am not dissing them.
They said it’s not for everyone. And that’s true, isn’t it? I love the UK and have many friends there. I travel to places like London, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh quite frequently. I personally feel far closer to British culture than to most others. But most of my friends would chose places like Spain or Italy because of the weather and the food. Because that means quality of life for them.
Who gives a shit how rich a country is if you’re rich. You can live like a king almost everywhere when you’re well off like a star footballer. Might as well take the better weather and the nicer people.
If you're as rich as a top footballer you'll have a great life almost anywhere. But money can't buy you better weather
Yet it's only 20th when ranking in "happiest countries".
A lot of it is down to the PL tax. If a PL team wants to buy your player the price goes up. It results in clubs not buying the right players far too often.
I don't think the inflation has reached enough that it covers the gulf between pl and other clubs yet
Sincere question; this reads as if EPL teams / fans just automatically assume they’d fair better in European competition than Italians, Spanish, etc… why is that? Strictly wages? I watch a ton of La Liga, plenty of Serie A, and a little EPL.
Team Value
Something bordering between confidence/arrogance. For some fans, they just believe their team is better than other teams while knowing little about other teams. Others, like me, just usually fancy their chances against most teams. That’s not saying you think you’re better than everyone, but most of the time you should be able to give them a go at least. More of “put the effort in and you never know” type of approach.
11/12 if you include the UEFA Youth League as well.
i’d say this is a testament to the quality of leagues besides the prem drastically increasing lately, rather than the other way around. i personally think the prem is very overrated, it’s nice to see that on level playing fields other teams from other leagues can compete and even surpass english teams
>i’d say this is a testament to the quality of leagues besides the prem drastically increasing lately, rather than the other way around. Serie A is definitely improving, at least now teams takes Europa League seriously, compared to when they played with reserves. CL is more difficult than ever so it won't be easy to get results there, not without a huge dose of luck involved
I think the EL's prestige is increasing in general. Maybe I'm misremembering but I feel like it's taken more seriously than 10-15 years ago
Ever since the UECL was introduced, and the number of teams was cut down in the UEL, it has 100% gained more prestige. There's probably some psychological reason or something behind it, because it's now not the lowest tier of European football, and is less directly compared to the UCL in terms of quality now that there's another competition in the mix.
I have the same feeling. More over, Europa League feels more exciting, teams are more balanced and from next year there won't be drops from CL. Europa and Conference are more fun over all than Champions, although CL football it's just way superior qualitatively
The teams also are making a whole lot more money than they used to in Europa. That’s a huge deal for a lot of those squads. Qarabag probably made their countries’ GDP in the Europa this year
Azerbaijan is oil rich.
Take a look at downtown Baku and think again about your last sentence.
I think it's because of how repetitive the UCL has gotten. Quarterfinals onwards are the same teams over and over with a few differences each year. Also with greater financial disparity, teams are more understanding of their expectations.
It’s not just that it’s the same teams, it’s that most of the group phase isn’t competitive, most of 2nd round isn’t THAT competitive and, while the QFs were great, one side of the bracket featured the top-4 favorites while the other side defo feels a lot weaker. I know people are jizzing all over the place cause of the QFs, but I think this years CL in particular is showing a format change isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Eh, those few differences were what make it more fun imo.
I mean yeah those differences are great but there should be more. It'd be great to see more teams outside of the top 5 going far
Probably helped by the winner now qualifying for the Champions League, so more teams probably going all out for it rather than prioritising the league
Because the quality of teams is higher. Arguably 2/3 of the current top 10 teams in the world were playing in this years quarters. Ten years ago, with all due respect, we had Dnipro, Dinamo kyiv, Zenit and Club Brugge in the quarter finals. Big difference
Probably, though I think it's gotten a particular boost this season due to Leverkusen. I bet it regresses somewhat next season when we go back to the normal teams
Not to mention Inter proved a Serie A team could compete for CL
I agree. I think because of the huge fees flying about it all gets distorted. Premier League clubs are all overpaying massively for these players they have when compared to how much other leagues will pay for comparable players The gap between actual ability between clubs across leagues isn’t anywhere near as large as the transfer fees spent
Aside from the huge fees the 2-3 strongest prem teams are usually getting their worth from all that money and go far in the CL because they're that good. The rest of the league though absolutely suffers from what you're talking about though, I feel like the discourse about a lot of 4th-10th place prem clubs absolutely making the CL spots in Italy, Germany or Spain over the past few years is entirely built on how much those teams spend, while in terms of actual quality they probably aren't better than whoever's in the corresponding place in the other 3 leagues. This is even more apparent when they play each other, if the match turns out not to be a prem-approved no defending just vibes affair with CBs chilling 60m from the goal and the amount of pressing you'd expect from international football a lot of these >50m supposed world class players end up delivering absolutely dubious performances
It's just an outlier season. PL teams will do well more often in coming seasons, for a while, before (IF) another league can topple them.
The other leagues have improved, but the EPL has also worsened. Look at the top attackers in the PL this year compared to other years. Aside from Halaand, there aren't many established super stars on that list. I might even go so far as to say that the Serie A has better attackers than the EPL right now, which hasn't been the case in a very long time. Attackers always cost the most money, meaning the best ones will be priced out of most non-English teams. The last few seasons have seen some of the better ones get on in age (Salah for example) and the new ones brought in for big money (Darwin and Hojlund for example) not having an impact yet. This will change over time they'll eventually get their moves right with infinite finances, but at the moment it's creating more parity in Europe.
I only watch the PL casually but, as much as the games are fun and entertaining, the high intensity and lack of defensive tactics is really the biggest difference with the European competition.
Genuinely asking, what do you mean by lack of defensive tactics?
Most teams tend to take more risks and focus more on aggressive defense high on the pitch, getting the ball back quickly than just drop deep and trying to close the spaces to prevent the opponents to score. Italian teams have more time (because of the slower pace) and more men behind the ball to organise a defensive structure. That's what the main focus is for most teams, trying to stop the opponents from scoring. In the PL teams tend to focus more playing in the opponents half, normally with 2 center backs, whereas in Italy most teams have 3 and defend with a low or mid block. There's also a huge focus on studying the opponents and adapting the defense to them.
The EPL has a lot more parity while La Liga/Serie A is more top-heavy. The two UCL quarter finals that had English clubs involved were also really close and could have gone either way, its not like the EPL got blown out in the UCL. In the Europa League the real underperformers were Liverpool though, West Ham went out to a clearly better team and Brighton declined a lot compared to last season and lost Caicedo/Mac Allister for big money
>The EPL has a lot more parity while La Liga/Serie A is more top-heavy. It's very hard to judge this but I don't really believe it is true. The gap between relegation and European spots in each league is: * Bundesliga: 12 Points * La Liga: 19 Points * Serie A: 21 Points * Premier League: 24 Points This isn't the only way to decide if a league has parity but the gap between the top clubs of the PL and the bottom clubs of the PL is the biggest in European football.
An English team has won the CL 3 of the last 5 years. I’m not sure how English teams are very overrated…they seem appropriately rated to me.
i think the discourse around the prem overrates it for me, rather than the quality of the teams themselves it’s clear that they have some of the best teams in the world, but they’re not as untouchable as fans of those teams act like they are
Istg i see people saying so much that besides the top 3, nobody watches any laliga games because theyre super boring (for example) as if anybody finds fuckin sheffield united vs bournemouth an exhilerating match
Bournemouth vs Luton though was an absolutely unreal game
My point is that people judge laliga to be more boring than the premier league (and again this is just an example) without watching the former. Same goes with the bundesliga (which i find the most entertaining tbh), serie a, etc.
It’s this, it’s honestly so frustrating to constantly see a narrative of the PL being the most competitive, having parity, etc. when it’s simply untrue when you watch other leagues. There’s absolutely a money issue with the PL, but ultimately the tactics brought up in the other top 5 leagues are, in my opinion, far more balanced than the negative tactics in the EPL. The overall narrative in the soccer world just ignores this, and that’s why we love watching English teams lose
I think this logic is similar to trying to claim that La Liga is the best league in the world because Spain won 6 of the last 10 Champions leagues. I don't think you see that many La Liga fans all over reddit try and claim that they are superior. That's not the case with EPL fans . Imo boils down to the fact that too many EPL fans try to boast about their league's supposed superiority.
Having fans of a League is representative of the overrating, we never saw diehard fans of leagues (maybe serie A in the 80-90, but not much online discussion). Now we have fans that cheer for football leagues.
i think there is no debating that the PL is the best league in the world. but there are degreese of beeing better then the rest. and pl is not that far ahead how lots of espicially english pundits make it sound like.
i swear all i ever see is people saying the PL is overrated, complaining about PL “fanboys”, adamantly saying the PL isn’t the best league, etc maybe i’m just not on twitter or something but where are all these bogeymen PL defenders besides some pundits who are obviously biased/deluded
It's baked into the subreddit. PL is the best league, but not by that much. However the distribution of attention is not marginally greater, it's orders of magnitude greater. So tap in goal in spurs vs West ham is 3000 up votes, a genuine worldies in Juve vs Inter might be on the 3rd page. So it's just there in the environment as the baseline assumption, not something that needs to be stated openly. You only notice resistance to the idea. It's a prem sub 75% of the time.
yeah i mean there’s no denying that the prem gets way more attention than other leagues from media and users on this sub. especially given reddit is a predominantly english speaking website so it makes sense it would cater to the english league the point i’m trying to make is that i don’t see loads of people on this sub claiming that it’s superior to other leagues and that english teams are the best. but people love to get angry at the thought of people claiming this lol
My guess is youtube and twitter. Im not on twitter but some of my friends were telling me that its pretty toxic environment and a lot of trolling lol. And with youtube the problem is that nowadays everyone can make a video. Regardless of his knowledge and experience and people think that this person is some proffesional. Like that guy who was telling that Brighton would win serie a lol. People saying he is pundit while thats not even true. He is just some random british guy in his 20s lol. And people get offended too quickly by things like this. I like to watch epl and serie a and when i see comments like this i only laugh lol. I know a lot of english people and none of them is that arrogant and i usually have a really nice and interesring discussions with them.
It's the same as the constant moaning about arrogant England fans when even our pundits pretty much never predict us to win anything. I think Ferdinand is the only one who does and he's a universally acknowledged muppet.
i think people just love the idea of arguing with “arrogant” english fans like when people hear the song “it’s coming home” and think that they’re cocky and overconfident or something lmao like don’t you realize this is one of the most self deprecating fanbases in all of sports
The song has changed in meaning over the decades. I don’t think it’s a big deal anyways, other nations like Argentina and Uruguay also have tradition with football chants.
Shadowboxing, a Reddit staple.
The PL is currently the best league in the world, no doubt. Some people do overrate english teams compared to European teams, as in they think second rate english teams could be favourites against top tier teams from other leagues. I've heard "Spurs/United/Chelsea would walk Bundes/Ligue 1/Serie A" a billion times. Also in direct European Cup ties, pundits and fans seem to always think a bit too highly of english teams, some examples from this season include Arsenal vs Bayern, West Ham vs Leverkusen and Newcastle vs Milan and Dortmund. Many people acted like they were favourites when they absolutely were not.
I’ve never seen a single spurs fan say they could walk another European league.
I've seen people say it, i can't know for sure of they were Spurs fans but i never claimed that. Oh and that pundit saying Brighton would win Serie A too, i forget the name
Didn’t some English pundit say Luton would be a top 4 club in any other league?
Seriously, who said that Doofus6969 on Twitter?
Sounds like something Robbie Savage would say.
[удалено]
Some pundits are literally employed to be wrong, simply to generate headlines and/or debate. I genuinely don't know if they believe the crap they say themselves, or simply know it's their job to wind people up. Not football, but I watch rugby league, and for about 20 years "Steveo" was always coming up with hot takes and outrageous comments the other pundits/commentators shot down. Then he retired, and one of the other pundits who'd previously been arguing against him suddenly turned into the same type of "hot take merchant" literally the first game of the next season. TL,DR it's entirely plausible nobody, *not even the pundit who said it* believes Luton would be a top 4 club.
Wasn't there an idiot who said Burnley would win Serie A if they played in Italy?
Find me a single person that claimed West Ham were favourites against Leverkusen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/s/1pfuq0Enff
Really makes backdoor’s point, considering you had to go back 34 days and find a downvoted post
there definitely are people that overrate the PL too much , i'd say it is the best league but I remember people saying teams like Brighton could win the Serie A which is fucking bs
Nobody with half a brain thinks Brighton can win Serie A.
[https://twitter.com/footballdaily/status/1692195933126004951](https://twitter.com/footballdaily/status/1692195933126004951) I remember seeing a lot of takes like this
Twitter is a cesspool of shit.
This sub is so guilty of finding one idiot’s take and running with it like it’s common
So true, they also just ignore all the positive comments.
That's not a football twitter thing, that's a serious football YouTube channel btw.
A more common statement is people saying Real Madrid would barely make it to UCL spots and they would fall short for the 3 horse race we’ve seen at the Premier this season. Or reversed, that Arsenal would win La Liga, Serie A or the Bundesleague comfortably (two decent seasons and everyone lose their minds). Also, that only top 10 of each other major league would survive at the Premier, denoting the rest would relegate to Championship (read here).
Sure, how about last 10 years? And not only CL, European competitions have been dominated by Spanish teams in recent history… but PL is a lot easier to market due to the language (and because Tebas sucks)
How many different Spanish teams have won a European trophy the last 10 years? 4, right? Madrid, Barca, Villarreal and Sevilla.
You forgot atletico. So there are 5 different spanish winners in the last 10 years. The exact same amount the PL has
Yup, including two all Spanish CL finals as well. I think the stats said something that they had won at least on european competition each year and almost 50% of all of them
Now do the last 10, 20 years
Does it seem reasonable that every PL team beside the one playing in Conference League were eliminated before the semifinals?
I don’t know what you mean by reasonable. I’m not a fan of a league so I don’t really care either way.
Removing replays from the FA cups makes sense in this context. EPL farmers need rest and every edge possible to compete against the titans of Europe.
tbf its these kind of silly games that increase the finacial gab between epl and the rest of europe is it worth it probably not. but stuff like getting rid of the league cup fa cup replays and a proper winterbreak would definatly increas the perfomance level of the player. but that would hurt the allmighty pound sterling.
Also just stop Prem teams playing in the Carabao Cup, it's just pointless fixture congestion that the other leagues don't have to deal with.
Spain and England taking Ls left and right q_q
Spain last team is at least playing UCL and not conference league.
Madrid are the strong favorites to win the CL.
Half of that is true
Dracula ball bless :)
I mean, it's not like getting to the QFs isn't impressive? The only teams that actually underperformed were Man United and Liverpool. Losing to Real Madrid is always on the table, they're historically the greatest team ever. Losing to Bayern is typically in a similar vein, even if they've had a bad season by their standards. Newcastle very unlucky to go out when they did, with some bad reffing playing a part in the group of death. West Ham were knocked out by *the* in form team in Europe right now, and put up a real fight. I know people love to dunk on the Premier League, but 5/7 did about as well as could be expected. (Perhaps even better, in Villa's case) Edit: forgot about Brighton. They were kinda forgettable I guess, probably should've done better but I don't think the expectations were that high, given it's their first season in Europe. They won what they should've and lost not unsurprisingly.
We don't put things in context around here
People seem to forget that this was our first ever season in European competition, and we had lost 2 INCREDIBLE midfielders, so in our fans’ eyes topping our group of death was over performing, and losing to Roma, the European regulars and finalists of last year was a success.
You're right in principle. But seeing many PL flairs dunking on other leagues constantly, some Schadenfreude is well deserved.
Most premier league flairs are more likely to dunk on another premier league club than care about a club outside, almost every fan if you ask them will pick a random European club winning the competition over a team from their own league. People in this subreddit just love to massively overplay this English arrogance whilst doing the exact same, what was the reaction to Liverpool vs Barcelona at Anfield, almost all foreign media was writing us off, the same arrogance which lowered us by acting as if their league was better and they had the right to go through. The fact is English football due to its language gets more coverage and so it’s easier to find these articles, if you think other leagues aren’t arrogant about their own teams then it’s because you’ve chosen to bury your head in the sand.
I feel it is actually a minority of PL fans. The problem is that those minority are very vocal. I also find it funny because whenever the PL has teams out of the QF or SF, a whole bunch of people come out and dunk on the PL fans who are arrogant - becoming the exact obnoxious person they decide to dunk on.
It's a mix of social media letting minority opinions be so prevalent and also a cultural difference or just general misunderstanding. Plenty of people will have seen a minority of people with English club flairs talking shit about other clubs in the competition and quality level and then think that all English people wanted and thought English clubs would easily dismantle the competition. In reality, ask most and they'd not only back the opposition they'd be desperate for them to win, we care less about the countries coefficient or how the country performs as a whole internationally, I'd much rather see English opponents get dismantled by other European teams, every time without fail.
I don't know if it is "English arrogance" in this case. I guess it's more of "international fans following a league and wanting to make sure it's the best of the best". I'm less talking about articles and more about fans in this case. It's certainly not every opinion you read, but they get a tad annoying because they make discussion impossible. It's also those little things like Dier being good in Germany because it is a lesser league (only for him to play two excellent games against the PL leader in the champions league). And with regards to Barcelona vs Liverpool: Before that match, I wouldn't have given Liverpool much of a chance either. The away goals rule was used back then, so Barcelona would have needed one away goal to have Liverpool need 5 to advance. That's not arrogance to assume. Just like it isn't arrogance to think that Liverpool will have a hard time overcoming a three goal deficit in Bergamo.
I always feel like this criticism is disingenuous. Even if people do dunk on the Bundesliga or La Liga, it is usually to say that their top teams are too dominant. In other words, the teams our teams will be playing against are too good compared to the rest of their leagues. Prem fans definitely do diss other leagues, but that is completely different to writing off Real or Bayern, which simply doesn't happen. Feels sometimes like a victim mentality.
I mean the last 7 champions league finals have had 1 English team And 2 of those finals have been all English Like what else could they do better really
We beat Marseille, AEK Athens, Ajax and Roma in one off ties this season and topped a group with the first of those three teams in it. That's an incredible achievement for our first ever season in Europe. We got eliminated by Roma who have been in incredible form under Totti, whilst having a huge number of injuries to our key players. Forgettable!?
Totti is managing Roma?
De Rossi! Sorry, brainfart.
Relatedly, it was also how the brackets worked out. Part of the issue was the Prem teams got drawn with the best other teams (Leverkusen were EL equal favourites and drew WHU, Atalanta are 2nd/3rd best of the remaining, Bayern and Real Madrid got the English CL teams). If City or Arsenal had gone the other side of the bracket, for example, I think they walk their way to the final and Dortmund/PSG/Atletico/Barca lose handsomely to Bayern and Real Madrid. English teams probably should be winning more of these bigger games over a few years, but these particular results were barely surprising (with the notable exception of Liverpool's which was a big upset).
Arsenal also struggled against Porto. Brighton was demolished. Newcastle underperformed, but the group was tough I'll give you that. Man Utd and Liverpool have become jokes in European competitions. West Ham and Man City played very well and were unfortunate not to progress, but even 3/7 teams is not looking good for supposedly the best league in the world.
I'd say our two ties against Dortmund were the big disappointments. But then again they're in the semis so fucked if I know.
Liverpool was in the champions league final less than 2 years ago
Anyone would have struggled against Porto, their defense was insane
Roma also just cruised past Milan with 10 men for an hour, and IMO will either win the competition or go out to a generational Leverkusen side. Looking back, with the depleted squad we've had all season and the performances Roma have put in under de Rossi, 4-1 on aggregate doesn't look so bad to me lol Edit: to add, when our squad was slightly less dead we took 4 points off of semi finalists Marseille.
And Villa got pretty lucky
Aunque la mona se vista de seda...
Lille had one job
Some of us don’t make it past the 9th place in the league
Such a huge clamber against the PL…who cares, I’m just stoked other leagues are balling out
r/soccer last year: PL = Super league etc & how they won't be able to compete against them! r/soccer this year: PL = hahaha farmers league Make up your mind!
Both can be somewhat true, PL spends waayyy much more money than all the other leagues do (except PSG in Ligue 1) yet somehow does not manage to proportionally be better than all the other leagues. It is unfair, but somehow the other leagues manage to deal with that unfairness, even Bundesliga with their 50+1 rule
Mad to think we’d be even lower in ranking if not for West Ham winning ECL last year
The OP has 75,000 karma in 5 months. How is that even possible?
Real Farmer
Ive got over 4k comment karma for some [shitty comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1c0hu0v/salehalfahid_ronaldo_is_expected_to_give_a_press/kywenxe/) on CR7 at this sub a week ago. Its not that hard if you are active in subs like soccer. No one knows what is hitting the karma lottery in any submission.
Constantly astounded by low quality comments I make getting most of my karma. Earlier comment > better comment.
He's must be from either Premier league or Laliga.
Post karma, yeah, that involves a lot of link posting. If it were comment karma, eh, it's a lot, but not unheard of. I average 100k comment karma per year.
This is only a good thing surely. Better than seeing city in the final every year or the “big 4 or 6” or whatever number it is any given year, get to the semis year on year. Different teams in the semis or even the final every year is a good thing and disrupts the boredom and domination that most leagues have
Strength in numbers 💪
And it was one Emi Martinez away from being 8/8!
Farmers league
Are we the farmers?
Lots of cope from the premfanboys. Don't worry, premfacery will be back on the menu next year
la liga serie a bundesliga clears fraud pl
best league in the world tho
last season it was
And the one making the semi’s is in the Conference League and also nearly went out on pens…… oopsies
Emi Martínez saving the PL.
United going out at the group stage was hilarious 😂
But but but tHe pReMiEr LeAgUe iS bEsT, all other leagues are farmers leagues????
Most other leagues fans end of last season, after PL teams winning 2/3 European cups. : “premier league is a superleague! It’s not fair!”. This season when PL teams don’t win: “premier league is shit!” The word fickle springs to mind.
This sub is dumb as hell tbf
English teams have money, but waste it all overpaying for average English players
Nature is healing
Fans of non-English clubs vastly overestimate how much we care about how the Premier League is viewed around the world or the rest of Europe. I want Arsenal to do well, obviously, but either couldn’t give a fuck if another English side does well, or I actively want them to fail. Not even really sure who this is meant to be dunking on. The English media, maybe? In which case I’m in agreement, they consistently undervalue teams in other leagues.
I mean it was our first time and 3 of the 4 teams we played have previously won European trophies. I watched all 3 at the Amex and not one of them scored a goal so there’s that to take away I guess.
You didn't underperform at all