League Football - It's Time To Move On

Chris Willaims over on Goal.com has written a great editorial about how soccer’s biggest clubs have outgrown the domestic game, and it is time for a European Super League. The thing about the article that got my attention though was a little bit about the Big Four in England.

Since the beginning of the 2004/2005 season, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester United combinded have played 236 league games at home to sides not in the Big Four. Out of those 236 games, they’ve lost just five! And of the five defeats, three of them were at the hands of West Ham!

Below is a little snippet of the editorial, be sure to read the full editorial.

The time has come for a European Super League. It may be the only solution to make football interesting again. I remember ten years ago hearing a radio presenter scoff at such a notion, commenting “I just can’t imagine people standing on the Kop at Anfield and shouting ‘are you watching Sparta Prague?’” He was right about that. But what we’ve witnessed domestically confirms that regular leagues aren’t the answer.

My suggestion is loosely based around the current Champions League model, only with larger groups (maybe six divisions of six teams). Instead of keeping clubs from the same country apart as we do now, wouldn’t it be more interesting putting them together? Imagine a group comprising Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, United, Celtic and Rangers. Or another with Real, Barcelona, Sevilla, Valencia, Porto and Benfica.

Fans would love it. We all know the big teams virtually play in a league of their own, so lets give them exactly that, a competition where they can play each other more often (maybe four times, rather than two) instead of boring us against Bolton and Reading.

When each mini-league is done, divisional champions can be crowned, the bottom team relegated back to its national league and the top 8 or 16 teams across the whole competition continuing to the elimination stages. The beauty of knock-out football is that by definition things have to go right down to the wire – you can’t run away with things.

The absence of the English giants in the Premiership might actually benefit everyone else. Other teams could actually aspire to something beyond the 'dream' of a top six finish, including of course promotion to the European league itself.

Read the full article on Goal.com