European Football 101

European football 101
Follow basics and you'll love the sport as much as I do
By Arash Markazi

It's a conversation I endure regularly this time of year. Friends and co-workers are a) bewildered that I watch European soccer almost as much as any U.S. sport and b) confused by the number of leagues and tournaments that will culminate in the coming weeks.

The notion that there could be more than one "major league" in a particular sport and about half a dozen trophies just as prestigious as the Vince Lombardi is as foreign to them as the grounds that these matches are played on. So for them and for you, readers who might also be confused by the wide word of European football, here's a crash course on the subject.

For viewing convenience, we will highlight the five "top tier" soccer leagues in Europe: the English Premier League, Spanish Primera Division ("La Liga"), Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1 and the German Bundesliga, with apologies to the Portugal SuperLiga and the Dutch Eredivisie. These five leagues are very similar in structure. Each is comprised of the top 20 teams in their respective countries (the Bundesliga only has 18 teams), with each team competing against each other twice, once at home and once away, for a total of 38 matches per season (34 for the Bundesliga). At the end of the season, the team with the most points (three points for a win, one point for a tie) wins the league championship. There are no playoffs, tournaments or BCS computers involved. Much like college football, the season is the playoff and every game means something.

In addition to league play, which runs from about mid-August through mid-May, there are also several other tournaments that teams compete in that have nothing to do with league standings. The most prominent is the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League, an 11-month competition in which 74 teams from 52 countries compete to determine the top football club in Europe. You've probably stumbled upon a few of these games on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon on ESPN. Another is the UEFA Cup, a similar competition for top European clubs that fail to qualify for the Champions League and those that are knocked out of the Champions League before the 32-team group stage. Think of it as the NIT to the Champions League's NCAA basketball tournament.

At the end of each season, the top two teams in each of the top five leagues automatically advance to the group stage of the Champions League, while the third- and fourth-place finishers advance to the third qualifying round of the Champions League. (The Bundesliga and Ligue 1 only send their third-place teams.) The teams ranked fifth and sixth in the leagues (fourth and fifth in France and Germany) advance to the UEFA Cup, as does the winner of each country's annual domestic cup competition, the FA Cup (England), Copa del Rey (Spain), Coppa Italia, Coupe de France and German Cup. Also, the bottom three teams in each league are relegated to the country's second division -- the Football League Championship (England), Segunda Division (Spain), Serie B (Italy), Ligue 2 (France) and Second Bundesliga (Germany) -- while three of the top teams in that lower division are promoted.

Can you imagine if this was the case with American sports leagues? Take, for example, the NBA last season. The Detroit Pistons would have been awarded the league championship at the end of the season, the San Antonio Spurs would have likely won the domestic tournament and the New York Knicks, Portland Trailblazers and Charlotte Bobcats would have been relegated to the D-League while the Fort Worth Flyers, Albuquerque Thunderbirds and Florida Flame would have been promoted to the NBA, finally setting up that dream interstate matchup between the Heat and the Flame we've all been waiting for.

For fans in the States, who are used to watching one top league to which the best players in the world come to compete, and where every team has one singular goal -- winning the league title that is often referred to as a "world championship" -- European soccer, or international soccer in general, is not the easiest sport to follow or understand, since most clubs begin the year with dreams of holding two ("the double") or three ("the treble") trophies at season's end. There aren't many casual fans who have the time to follow the hundreds of teams that play in the dozens of leagues and tournaments abroad. And of the top six or seven leagues, no one league can truly say it's better than another and no team can claim to be the "world champion." Simply look at the Champions League for confirmation -- five different teams from five different countries have won the competition the past five years.

For soccer fans, however, there's nothing quite like it. There's never an offseason. Most leagues and competitions run for about 10 months. International tournaments, such as the World Cup and the European Football Championship, along with friendlies and preseason matches, take place during the short time leagues aren't in place. For most soccer fans abroad, the sport isn't so much followed as it is lived, with every match dictating the lives of its supporters. As legendary football manager Bill Shankly once said, "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

(Originally posted on SI.com on April 14, 2006)