What is the Least Competitive League in world football?
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Is France's Ligue 1 truly football's "Farmers League"?
Paris Saint-Germain's dominance over the last decade has certainly earned the French top flight this nickname, but is it deserved? Why does Ligue 1 always catch so much flak? Why not the Bundesliga? Or the Scottish Premier League?
Join us as we tackle this head on, and dive deep into football leagues big and small from around the world, to find the most and least competitive football leagues on the planet.
In this video, we start by exploring the origins of the "Farmers League" term and why Ligue 1 is often labeled as such. With PSG winning 10 of the last 12 league titles, it’s easy to see why many fans think of France’s top division as uncompetitive. But what does "Farmers League" really mean? We break down the term to uncover its full implications, including how one team's dominance over a league can lead to the perception of a lack of competition.
To determine if Ligue 1 is truly the least competitive league, we introduce the Farmers League Index (FLI), a formula designed to measure league competitiveness. The FLI considers various factors such as the ratio of title wins by the most successful team, the average margin of victory, and the average goal difference of the winning team.
I've analysed dozens of top flight leagues from around the globe, so you don't have to, and put them through the GCSE-level maths formula, to reveal to you, the audience, just what are the least (and most) competitive leagues on the planet.
If you want more useless football analytics, make sure to check out my previous video; "Where is the toughest place to play on a Cold, Wet Tuesday night?" • Where is the toughest ...
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Harry Kane has the chance to do the funniest thing ever in Tajikistan
He could also go to Ludogorets and make them fail to win the Bulgarian league for the first time.
I was wondering how far I’d have to scroll down to see Harry Kane mentioned in the comments. Turns out, not very far.
They said "winning trophies" ... So no 😂
His curse is so strong that he made Neverlusen win a League title in the biggest farmers League from the Top5
Watch him go to Dinamo Zagreb and somehow lose the HNL
papers please reference didn't go unnoticed
loved it
GLORY TO ARTSTOZKA!
GLORYYYY GREATEST
thank you!!!
ARTSTOZKA NUMBER 1!
Imagine Harry Kane moves to Tajikistan and still manages to bottle the title 😂
In all seriousness though, the quality of the video is insane and honestly you're really underrated.
Harry Kane moves to FC Istikol and they suddenly drop
This is such a random channel. It's nicely crafted.
I've always thought that the Brasileirão, Brazilian top division, was the most competitive of all, but i must say that being in third place is not bad at all. Just for reference to everyone, in the last 15 years, 7 clubs became champion in Brazil, and only two times a club won twice in a row.
And since the league started to use the format it used nowadays (20 teams in a point system, just like the Premier League basically) in 2003, the most a team won the league in a row was 3 times, and only one team managed to do it until now, being São Paulo in 2006, 2007 and 2008
is not that good to have a winner every year, means that every team is equally bad... just see the other leagues that match with brazilian league
@@stoned8034 Brazilian clubs have won the last FIVE Libertadores. They are bad compared to the European leagues, but not to other South American clubs.
@@stoned8034not really. Most league that have new winner every year sometimes must sold their own players just to stay financially healthy. Brazilian league are ranked 3rd on transfer income from 2000-now, with most of the expensive players are under 22.
@@nolawnoorder384 brazilian league sell amazing players, but cannot buy no one...
Problems:
1) number of round-robins: a league where each team plays each other four times is going to naturally have larger point spreads, than a league where they play each other only twice (or less than twice on average, as per MLS). The Scottish league is uncompetitive, but it is even more so because you only have 12 teams to spread over the length of the table -- and the 12th best team doesn't spend 2/5th of its games able to take points off teams 13-20, hence keeping pace better with higher teams. (The top-6 bottom-6 split reduces the spread between 1st and 12th, but increases the spread between 1st and 6th, or 1st and 2nd).
2) Duopolies. While the Spanish league is potentially quite competitive for first, it can be highly uncompetitive between 1st/2nd and the rest. This hasn't happened every year, but it is likely that the competitiveness of the league is overstated by only looking at the first-second margin. Conversely, Germany scores very poorly when you consider Bayern's dominance at the top, but the rest of the table can be quite competitive.
I would give consideration to, for example, the ratio of points scored by the team 1/4 down the table versus 3/4 down the table), or perhaps even find some really bespoke measure like, points per game difference when teams 1-3 play teams 4-6, if you want to focus on the top half of the table.
Comment:
How does football compare to other sports? Rugby, American major league sports. the County Championship...? How would the regularity of draws affect the spread and how would you fairly account for this? Can we look at constructing some sort of ELO ratings for different sports?
Would have to imagine football is pretty low in terms of competitiveness across sports. Some sports are purposely set up for balance most football leagues domt care to much about that haha
Yeah, I was going to make the point about duopolies. Scotland (as was), Spain, and Portugal are the ones that come immediately to mind, but there's bound to be more of them.
@@leaguesmanoframsgateisn’t Portugal more of a 3 team league
@@lorenzosegolonithe Portuguese league only gets really competitive from around 7th place down nearly every team is only a couple point away from eachother
The second issue can be addressed by comparing with lower teams like you said, but could also be fixed by adding the number of different clubs that have won to the equation. This would be less work for a similar result
In Scotland only two teams have won the league title since 1985, Rangers and Celtic. They share 109 league titles between them compared with 19 for the rest of Scotland. I don't know how any league can beat that for lack of competitiveness.
Because Scotland has a tiny population. So two winners with a population of 5 million. Does England, with 12x the population have, 24 winners in the same time period? Absolutely not.
@@Alan_Mac ... that's not how that works.
@@gaiusjuliuspleaser Eh? The size of population has no bearing on the number of competitive teams you can produce? Says who?
Wrong, Rangers have only one 1 league title
If the last couple of years, right up to Sunday, is anything to go by, it's going to be just Celtic pretty damn soon unless someone pulls off a miracle, and I say this as a Celtic fan. Of course I love Celtic, but the vanishing lack of competition is really beginning to hinder my interest.
That formula doesn't analyse LEAGUE competitiveness, it analyses the competition between the top two teams only.
It analyses league title competitiveness
Would be interesting to see an analysis of actual league competitiveness (due to time reasons i'd be happy with a top 5 league comparison). I think some people would be surprised how stale the Prem is compared to Ligue 1 for example.
@@reinrassigerStuhlthe "big 6" doesn't exist for nothing, really
Compared to the brazil league, there is a reason we have a "big 12", and even crazier 10 of the 12 teams in the big 12 were relegated at least once.
@@Malam_NightYoru It's actually a "big 15" historically
@@Malam_NightYoruMay I ask you who are the teams that have never been relegated. I know about Sao Paulo, but the other one? Is it Flamengo?
The quality of your videos while still maintaining that down-to-earth, non-corporate-feeling humour, I love it. Underrated as fuck. GLORY TO ARTSTOZKA!
Go Arskickers!!!
French Ligue 1 before Qatar arrived in Paris used to be an interesting league. A part from the supremacy of Olympique Lyon in the 2000's which won 7 Ligue 1 in a row (2002-2008), the champion changed every year and it wasn't easy to predict who will win the league at the beginning of a season. Notice that between 2008 and 2013, every champion changed every year (Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille, Lille, Montpellier and then Paris won the league during this period)
Farming is a term in gaming, similar to grinding. It means doing the same thing over and over again to gain experience or loot.
For my Portuguese friends
FLI for Primeira Liga
X=(38/38)(7/15)√(5.87+³√58.47)
X=1.46
This makes Primeira Liga more competitive than the top 4 leagues, edging out Premier League by 0.3.
My only criticism is the cube root of the champion's GD. Should be cube root of Champions GD minus last placed team's GD. This would benefit the leagues whose last placed teams play half decent.
Sporting's resurgence and Benfica and Porto's recent fumblings have allowed for the league to look a lot more competitive, at least according to this arbitrary metric.
Still, a league where the the top 3 + Braga finish 20 points ahead, then Guimarães and an occasional great 6/7th placer finish 10 points ahead of the whole rest of the competition, who are essentially playing a relegation battle until March/April. It's rough.
@@Firescizor Sporting's resurgence has little do do with it, as Porto and Benfica splitting championship would mean that the winningest team would still be 8/15. But I agree with you in that the rest of the league falls off dramatically, which is why I suggested changing the cube root of the champion's GD and make it cube root of champion's GD minus the last placed team's GD, which would naturally lower the FLI of the more competitive leagues.
Well, we can't deny despite Sporting is one of the big 3 this is like their 4th league titles in this century.. Even team like Braga only can finished runner up once let alone Guimaraes. But, Benfica and Porto split domination doing it better than city's dominating.
Here in the netherlands we have an X=(38/38)(7/15)v(6+v59.2)= 1.468, around the same as Portugal, but so are the budgets, 3 big main clubs with braga and az sometimes flighing higher, and in europe we prestige around the same. I think Portugal is now Better in Europe though, we just farmed coefficients in the UECL. Although i still admire ucl 2019
I believe the phrase Farmers' League originally started in Germany as Bauernliga, a play on words with the team name "Bayern" being similar to the German word "Bauern", which means "farmers".
this is incorrect
Barcelona’s women’s team is worth a look. I remember one season they could have started every game giving the other team a 3 goal head start and still won the league title.
We're talking about football and not players who are below U15 men's teams.
Yeah, we're talking professional football here, not amateur
@@GRMNCVSwe're talking about the Kosovo league in the video though
@matthewczech2631This is a great idea - would love to dive into this further.
Also poor form on my part for not specifying 'men's leagues' in this video. I should have made that clearer. I'd like to do something similar for women's football, but want to give it it's own angle
@@RouteNone All good. I just thought that since that season was the most dominant I've ever seen by any team in history it would be part of an incredibly noncompetitive league. After looking through the data though, turns out I was wrong-about ten years ago the La Liga Femenil had a few dominant teams instead of one, so their score was 2.417. (I only went back 13 years since before that the format got weird.)
For what it's worth, if you only take the last five years after Barca professionalized their women's team more, the score is 6.09. But of course you can get any result you want if you play with the data enough.
The problem in France is that everyone except PSG is broke, we are obliged to sell our talents pretty quickly, in terms of pure talent and level, Ligue 1 isn't that bad fr
Mais non clé, le PSG est certes gavé de thunes, mais le reste est pas à jeter. Faut juste arrêter de choke en Coupe d'Europe contre des clubs chypriotes ou azerbaïdjanais par exemple.
donc le problème n’est pas le psg mais les institutions des autres clubs 🤷♂️
Yes Ligue 1 has Africa in their players so they have a lot to choose from
@@Zhou_Yu what ?
trop de taxes et impôts tout simplement
on a des équipes avec des budgets digne du top4 pour des effectifs dignes des Pays-bas/Portugal. Ça rend aussi les C3/C4 absolument pas rentables à jouer sérieusement (le GAGNANT de la C3 touche 8m, rien qu'une équipe comme Lens c'est 110m de budget...)
Forcément qu'on peut pas lutter, les dès sont pipés dès le départ
2:54 I can’t be the only one to realise this papers please reference. 😂
What is paper please??
@@frogish5977 it’s a game
Such a cool easter egg! 😅 it made me smile :)
Can you drop the complete list?
If he did, one might adjust the arbitrary time frame of 15 years down to 7. Which pushes the prems FLI all the way to 3. 😅
@@Darilon12it would be good to do the average of 5, 15 and 59 yrs. (Or something like that)
@eduardochavezbarreto8140 in my opinion anything beyond 5 years is irrelevant if you want to know which league IS competitive. Going beyond is in the realm of history and does not represent the here and now.
@Darilon12 I see that point but nevertheless still interesting. Example, people carrying on about how good city are historically, okay cool put their run up against uniteds back in the day, the Madrid's, barca etc compare say a 3-5 year or however much time block so city from 2019-2024 and let's say united from 04-09. It'd be interesting to see actual FLI or a legit equation for it all. On top of that, I wonder what are some of the most competitive league SEASONS in history? That'd be an awesome one.
All these MUST include top to bottom of the table
“This is football heritage.”
Speaking of leagues that have weird formats like the leagues in the Americas, you should totally make a video covering those various formats. It would be interesting to see how they vary compared to the traditional structure of leagues like the PL. Maybe try to find the wackiest format? Keep up the good work, your work is really underrated!
Thank you for commenting! That sounds like a great idea for a future video ...
I bet the Argentinian league could win that trophy
@@uninternauta4663For sure. 28 teams in our first division is insane
@@LechuKawaiiup to 56 matches just in league in a year is fun
Liga MX is pretty fun too
I’m just going to comment, so that when this channel does blow up, I can say that I’ve witnessed the birth of a major chanel
Really appreciate that, thank you!
Me too.
love the video, definitely very high quality, but I have a couple arguments against your particular criteria for what makes a farmer's league:
1. how teams perform in Europe relative to their domestic competition should affect these standings
- for example, in Germany, any given team in Europe can go far (see Frankfurt winning the UEL, Dortmund reaching multiple UCL finals, or the fact that it's just generally incredibly rare for a German team to get knocked out in a group stage), therefore although Bayern dominates domestically, all the teams that participate in Europe tend to have similar results
- whereas, a French team not named PSG doing well in Europe is much rarer, showing that there is much more of an extreme gulf in competitiveness
- now I'm not saying that a league like Germany having more teams do well in Europe means its domestically more competitive, I'm just saying that the relative evenness of German teams playing outside Germany should affect their standing, similar to the gulf of quality in French teams going abroad
2. variation in placements should affect how much a league is a "farmer's league"
- in England, though there have been more champions in recent memory, there is still little variation in where teams place compared to other leagues, with the same clubs occupying European spots, the same clubs finishing mid table, and newly promoted teams (especially recently), looking to immediately head straight back down
- in Germany or Italy comparatively, teams can go from doing well to being within threat of relegation in a very short amount of time, or vice versa (see Schalke, Koln, Union Berlin, Sassuolo, Monza etc.)
great papers please and FM references btw, glory to arstotska and death to working with directors of football
Yeah the methodology was definitely misguided
I disagree with the first thing. While that may be important for measuring league quality, especially in relation to others in europe, its completely irrelevant for league competitiveness. A league can be high quality and completely uncompetitive, it can also be low quality and extremely competitive.
@@adrian225 There are also questions of whether the competitiveness of the league has an impact on European performance. I remember Spurs under Pochettino sacrificing a Europa League run to keep pushing for CL qualification by playing a bunch of kid in I think it was the quarter final
The EPL has had 3 UCL finalists (two of them winners) which ticks part of box 1, in the last 6 seasons, who have also failed to qualify for the UCL on at least one occasion in the same period, (more than one for Spurs and Chelsea) which shows the volatility and competitiveness you claim doesn’t exist in point 2.
Not to mention the EPL has a title winner in that period that has been relegated.
It isn’t surprising given the EPL has the most equal distribution of income of the big 5 leagues.
For polish fans:
Since Ekstraklasa was brutally eliminated, due to (in)famous ESA37, I've adjusted this formula just a bit, to use it for our Ekstraklasa anyway. I've calculated last 15 seasons separately using this formula, so it's adjusted for game played every year (09/10 to 12/13 and 20/21 seasons with 30 games, 13/14 to 19/20 with 37 games - even though it doesn't quite use normal round robin, and 21/22 to 23/24 with 34 games), and multiplied each separate season by 1/15, then added it all together to get the overall result.
And I've got FLI of 1.42, which makes Ekstraklasa better than Premier League. We all knew it even before, but okay, we have another confirmation.
Most competitive seasons: 2023/24, Jagiellonia won by 0 points (!) ahead of Śląsk, it was decided down to their H2H matches (Jagiellonia won 3-1 in Białystok, while Śląsk won 2-1 in Wrocław).
Second most competitive season: 2014/15, Lech won by 2 points (1 point after dividing due to ESA37) ahead of Legia.
Third was 16/17 (in reality this should be the most competitive, but formula doesn't care about 3rd and 4th places), when Legia won by 2 points ahead of Jagiellonia. In reality, there were 4 teams fighting for the title at the last matchday, and 4th Lechia Gdańsk was just 1 goal away from jumping up to the championship title!
Least competitive seasons: no surprises there, 13/14 with Legia dominating the league and winning by 15 points (adjusted again, due to ESA37 dividing points by half after completing round robin in 30 rounds), and Raków in 22/23 winning by 9 points in 34 matches.
I'm British in Poland. Ekstraklase is much better than the plastic corporate premier league
@@wavell14 Yeah, "everyone can with anyone" is simultaneously the biggest strength of Premier League, and the weakest point of Ekstraklasa. Sure.
Enjoy tomorrow games, kicking off in Gdańsk!
@@wavell14 I think you mean 'more enjoyable' - if it was better than the Premier League the Ekstraklase would have a 5 billion Euro TV contract.
@Veaseify I mean better from a fan perspective
@Veaseify fans not plastic customers
Seeing MLS's FLI score would be interesting, but it has a championship final as the 'winner'. Still, they've had 11/15 different champions and 11/15 different league winners (17 unique teams in total).
Just use the Supporter’s Shield for MLS.
@@ryanfraley7113 That's what I just said too.
MLS would be interesting to figure out the FLI score comparing the most recent 15 years to its initial 15 years of existence… maybe then you can see if MLS (or other leagues around the world) have become more or less competitive over time.
Ironically Latvia was pretty much a farmers league in first 15 years due to Skonto winning the first 14 seasons from 1992
Skonto? 😂
latvia mentioned
Great video! I was expecting the Liga MX or Brasileirão to be the most competitive, the Kosovar league being that was quite a surprise for me. Brasileirão gotta have some props for being both one of the best leagues in the world and one of the most competitive too, makes it very fun to keep up with
This is why Football in the Americas is better than in Europe (from the perspective of Competition parity)
@@jacobfeldman364MLS and LIGA MX having playoffs is underrated
In case anyone's wondering about what's happening in Croatia to make Dinamo Zagreb so dominant, it's mostly a combination of good luck and good management. Until around 20 years ago, there was a very tight rivalry between Dinamo and Hajduk Split (which remains as fierce, especially as Hajduk are once more ascendent), but Hajduk dropped off in quality quite badly and stopped challenging for titles. Meanwhile, Dinamo (technically a state-run club due to its set-up in Yugoslavia, though there's no actual favouritism involved) were de facto taken over by Mamić, who is currently living in exile in Bosnia for a variety of frauds. Mamić, however, had an incredible eye for talent and with the club having been from the beginning one of the best youth training clubs anywhere in the world they quickly gained dominance when it comes to young talent, basically attracting all the best talent in Croatia, with the rest either getting secondary talent or loaning very young players. With Croatia mainly being an exporting league, no teams have really been able to build a competent resistance to Dinamo, though Rijeka (who did win one championship and sometimes win the Cup), Osijek and Hajduk have all come close in recent years.
On the other hand, with the club being state-run there has been no chance of meaningful investment, Mamić stole a lot of money from the club and involved himself in all sorts of contracts, attendance was for a long time hampered by boycotts against Mamić and after the earthquake in 2020 the East (I believe) stand has been forced to shut down with no repairs in sight. Add to that the fact that the land surrounding the stadium is owned by the church, who currently refuse to let it be used for expansion or renovation, and it becomes clear that Dinamo Zagreb have the very unusual situation of having the capability to become a club at Ajax's level in a league even worse than the Dutch league while being held back by red tape, fraud and a setup that makes investment impossible.
How could you forget the main reason why Dinamo became so dominant in the first place? Dinamo (then for several years renamed FC "Croatia") was heavily favored by the first Croatian president Tudjman. He was obsessed with making it an European powerhouse, while at the same time stating that Croatia is too small a country to have even two big clubs. While he was still alive the project of rebuilding the stadium into the 60000 closed arena (like Ajax arena, but bigger) started. The project turned to be too ambitious, and was soon stalled and continued to hamper any realistic idea for the stadium renovation, also making it by far the ugliest national stadium in the world, in this unfinished state it is still today.
I’m a Rijeka supporter but my eyes glazed over the rest of your reply after “combination of good luck and management”. Take it you don’t follow the HNL closely… 😂
Are you living under the rock? Yes, most of the stuff you said are correct, but papers with the church property were resolved. Zagreb government wanted DInamo to get rid of Mamić supporters in the club and that's why the club went through a dire period last season when elections in the club were boycotted. Eventually Dinamo got a new management and the government confirmed the deal was done. They are going to tear down the stadium stand by stand and just build a new one on the same spot. Also, they will build a new complex around the stadium.
no one is wondering but thanks
Most underrated football channel on RUclips!! 🔥🔥
Much appreciated! Glad you're enjoying the content
Farmers league was just made by epl fans who were afraid psg would dominate the cl
No one was afraid of PSG and they clearly haven’t dominated the UCL…
@@TY-sx3jb yes they were when the sjeiks first took over. Epl teams fans and barca/rm fans were crying how unfair it was.
@@Dennis-gr8ex How did they dominate? Tell me how many cl cup does psg have in the last 10 years 😂?
@@gordongekko9742 do you speak English? The words 'were' and 'would' are the most important here.
EPL also have city so what's the different basically? in fact City need like 2-3 seasons to start their debut in UCL while PSG only 1 season after the takeover (finished as runner-up behind the miracle Montpellier). And they need 15 years even lost to PSG rivals like Lyon and Monaco. But PSG if you said rm, Barca, and EPL fans crying well as we can see in the last decade PSG keep getting knocked out by them including EPL teams like not so great man Utd, city, Chelsea (Liverpool and Arsenal already met PSG but in group stages. And PSG never knocked out in group stages since 12/13) but in KO stage they show super squad isn't the only way to win UCL. Heck even in last back to back 2 season they got knocked out by Bayern and Dortmund. Dortmund's squad value are just half of PSG though. Dominate is a pretty strong words. Not even Barca or Bayern in like the last 4 decades did.
It's clear that the Brasileirão is the best league. It's the 6th most valuable league in the world, ranks 3rd in competitiveness and completely dominates it's continent. However, the time zone makes it difficult for it to be appreciated properly in Europe (or maybe they just don't want to do that).
It's also growing like never before.
The level of play is poor tho talents leave earlier every year
@@Dennis-gr8ex why you’d say it’s poor? You have no idea lol it dominates very easily the continent. The best Brazilian teams are better then almost any European team, but they only have the chance to play a game against the best European each year, and of course the best European is way better than the best Brazilian.
@@tostv8668 talk is cheap lots of players from Brazil league struggle in europe
@@tostv8668 you have no idea many players stuggle coming from the brazilian league. Those players even admit it but I guess you know better than someone who actually played in both
German Teams consistantly finish high in the UCL (Semi-Finals and better). Calling the Bundesliga a Farmers League would be an Overstatement. Also im not sure how you worked out your FL-Index, but 4 out of the 5 Leagues you showed on Screen have 20 Teams in their League so dividing 38/38 in the first Equation of your Index makes them comparable... The Bundesliga however only has 18 Teams (overall 34 Game Days per Season) -> dividing 38/34 and you get a higher Number in the first Equation to start with. It feels like your FL-Index is flawed in that way.
No, that is exactly the reason this 38/a factor is in there. The intuition behind this goes like this: if a league champion manages the same point difference in fewer games, that means they have been more dominant. This kind of factor is called "normalization factor" and aims to make differently sized leagues comparable at all.
@@henningg.1687 Wouldn't the normalization factor be a N value which would be the number of games per season in each league? thus giving it the value "per game", thus making it comparable across all leagues? as in, keep same formula, divide all by N. Thats usually how its done in various stats when we want create a uniformity metric.
the Bundesliga is a Farmers League..🤣
@@danielpardejo3350 Yes, we want a value per game, that is why the 'a' is in the denominator. The 38 in the numerator does not change the ranking at all, we could use 1/a instead of 38/a just as well (or anything, really, as long as we divide by 'a'). Using 38 just makes the scaling factor exactly 1 for the common case of 38 games per season.
@@henningg.1687 well. if let's say Bayern won Bundesliga by 1 point ahead of Dortmund and City won Prem by 1 point ahead of Arsenal for example is that mean Bayern is still more dominant of what? except the points are like comparing 13/14 Bundesliga and 17/18 Prem that both Bayern and City have 19 points gap ahead of man Utd and Dortmund which is make sense. But 17/18 Prem are also damn dominant
Ekstraklasa would rank high if it was included. It has had 7 different winners since 2010 The past two champions, Jagiallonia and Rakow, were first first time winners. The MLS would rank #1 if it was included. The salary cap ensures teams can never horde trophies. The fact 9 teams have won a MLS Cup since 2010 speaks for itself. Its great for fans because any team can achieve greatness through great management, coaching, and hardwork. Argentine Premier Division, Brasileiro, and A-League are other great leagues with incredible parity.
What's interesting is that I remember Latvian league being dominated by Sconto Riga back in the 90s-early 2000s. I think they won like 10 titles in a row or something. And now Latvian league is the second most competitive in Europe 😅
It's lovely being a regular at a channel before it blows up, you can be one of the OGs when there'll be millions here, because that's definitely what's happening
And I really appreciate you coming along for the ride, thanks for the support!
@@RouteNone You're welcome mate, keep on giving us great videos!
One minus about just focusing on the title is that it ignores how strong teams in a competition are compared to others. Take the average Bundesliga team and put it against the average League 1 team, and many would say the Bundesliga team wins. In Europe, since 2000 French clubs have been in European finals 4 times while German teams have been 11 times, winning 3 trophies.
The problem with Bundesliga is that bayern managed to create a big money difference between them and the rest of the league, but if you take the whole league ignoring them , it's extremely fun and competitive, as you can see this season where every them got a bit more equal
I did the math for the Austrian Bundesliga (which is extremely lopsided in favor of RB Salzburg). For the seasons in which there were multiple stages, I simply looked at the points that would have been there without the split/reduction.
The result was a 3.34, not quite enough to crack the top 5. Though had you done that assessment a year ago, the league would have landed at 3.63.
Which shows the major flaw here. 15 years is absolutely arbitrary. Draw the line at 10 years and it would have been at 4.77 - much higher than even the Tajik League. (RBS won all 10 titles in a row, at times with well over 70 GD and even with 24 extra points at one point)
This leads me to my actual comment: If you want something more robust, you would want to have past events be faded out instead of cut off arbitrarily. Something like the past 5 seasons at full value, and everything further in the past at 90%, 80%, etc. weight.
There is a strong confirmation bias. That 15 year period and only considering the winner help making some leagues look better. For example La Liga having two dominant clubs look quite competitive. But that does not actually make the whole league more competitive. Or the EPL. Is a league (the whole league) competitive if it's next to impossible for a mid-table club to get in the top 5?
@@Darilon12 What I'd love to see is if the CL money has a negative impact. Hypothetically, if a team gets say £20m a season over their rival clubs, they're more likely to get that payoff again. In theory, you'd have to test that over a much longer period, and I don't know if it would account for the increasing CL money, particularly in more recent years
@@DrZaius3141 by the way if you adjust the time frame the result for the PL is 2.71 over the last 5 years and 3.01 over the last 7 years.
1:16 bro really said "merde" like we wouldn't notice 😂😂😂😂
On a vu 😂✋🏻
I predict this channel getting big, the quality is top notch
6:08 that sigh of disappointment because of the unincluded leagues 😭
Me as a Romanian hearing that:”NOOOOOO!” A playoff system allows for more 6 pointers between first and second but the whole point of it is to increase the excitement, would be interesting to see it included but I guess it wouldn’t be a straight comparison
it's a shame that only the Brasileirão is rated here just because their league formats aren't like the ones in Europe, here it's really common to have two league championship in one year that are statistically combined into only one when the year ends to come up with which teams can play on continental cups and also there is a similar system for relegation that takes into account the points you've made on the last 3 or 4 seasons that is really common too
it's a little messy I know but it's nothing like the last Argentinian league on the last decade that has changed a lot from season to season
Dude, please don’t compare our state championships with the brazilian league. It’s nonsense
Fun Fact: Only considering the last 5 years the PL has an FLI of 2.71
That’s interesting, what was the score for the rest of the top 5 leagues
Can you tell me what's the score of the Turkish Super League?
@@desktoleaf6042
Germany 3.36 (Eventhough Leverkusen won last season, they also did it with one of the highest point margins ever, so no that big of a change there, but if they win again it (or any team that isnt bayern) would drop to ~2.5)
Spain 2.05
Italy 1.48
France 2.91 (but this is not "exact" and to low, because 19/20 they didnt finish the season due to corana and last season they made the ligue smaller from 20 to 18 teams, but I just stick to formula and said they played 38 games each season to minimize effort)
Babe, wake up, new Route None vid just dropped
Ffs John im asleep and we are divorced go back to your house your scaring the kids 😂
I am from Bulgaria. Happy to see our league finally being in the top 5 of something. 😂 Also I am a fan of the always winning team of Ludogorets, which is about to break the record for the most wins in a row of any national football league.
While I appreciate this a lot, I do want to raise an extra point:
Winning margin is one thing, but it doesn't necessarily reflect upon the competitiveness of yhe whole league. You can have a duopoly like La Liga where the top 2 are close in contention but the other teams fall somewhat short. And you can have a league like the Russian Premier Liga that though often won by pretty significant margins, has a very healthy battle right below, with 2nd to 12th all battling it out closely. If a more careful index is to be developed, considerations should be given to the kevel of competitiveness over the whole league.
It’s ironic that Latvia’s league is now so competitive considering how dominant Skonto was through the 90s.
Kane wouldn't still win a trophy with FC Istiklol.
As an Albanian from Kosovo, I didn't expect our league to be the most competitive in the world but I am pleasantly surprised!
We don't have very good facilities by any means, but our honest passion for the game is very strong
That's because the league in Kosovo is very new, and a truly dominant team hasn't formed so every team has a chance at the moment
@@VladimirTukhugov you are right, before the war Kosovo used to have their own independent league and Prishtina FC were the dominant force more often than not, safe to say the dynamics have changed a lot
3:36 Doesn't especially the 38 bit in the formula paint a skewered picture for leagues that do not play 38 games per season?
The German Bundesliga or Dutch Eredivisie only play 34 games per season, I believe the Portuguese Primeira Liga played just 30 games per season in a not too distant past, and I'm sure there are other leagues that have been taken in the equation that don't play 38 games per season either (Belgium, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Austria come to mind...)
Sure but, finishing first with an advance of 10 points is more impressive with only 34 games than with 38.
It's trying to normalise for it. The value of 38/a changes from 1 for the PL to about 1.28 for Portugal for that season you mentioned so the winning margin would change to being 28% bigger in the formula. I doubt it's that linear though - if there are more teams in a league, I suspect they'd be around the level of the bottom teams so would be much more likely to give a dominant team a win. I would guess that this formula would underestimate the margin in a bigger league, but I can't really test that theory
It's a shame u binned most of the leagues that has "nonsense" formats, most especially MLS in the USA and the A-league in Australia. Cuz they're pretty competitive, especially due to the salary cap systems, which means every team can only spend more or less the same amount of money on players. Furthermore, both MLS and the A-league has a regular season that is exactly the same as a regular round robin season in Europe. It's just that they hv a post-season knockout competition / playoffs. If u look at the A-league regular season league tables, th FLI would be 1.12. A top ten most competitive perhaps.
16 teams playing each other twice a season I'd say is best format, (as long as it's not a really small country). 30 league games a season. Also helps with formulating knockout cup competitions
I wonder where the Welsh Premier League would stand if the four biggest clubs in Wales didn't play in the English Leagues?
"This is great content, it really is"
Ally McCoist, later this year (probably)
I tell ye what, Fletch
I’d say our Eredivisie is also sort of a ‘farmers league’, as since 1965 only five different teams have won it. And of these five, AZ (2) en FC Twente (1) only took three titels away from the so called Big Three; Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord.
Same thing with the Portuguese League which is dominated by the so-called BIg 3 (Benfica, FC Porto, Sporting CP) and as incredible as it may seem throughout the history of our league, only 2 clubs were champions that were not part of the Big 3, Belenenses in 1945/1946 and Boavista FC in 2000/2001.
Currently SC Braga, which is basically the equivalent of AZ Alkmaar in the Portuguese league, is the club that is most trying to break this hegemony.
I was pretty sad when Polish league was thrown out of calculations due to 5 different winners in a last 6 years.
Probably due to ESA 37 system, which was used in 2013-2020.
But you know? It's only additional 7 games and spanned only half the period. Similar to Belgium, but didn't last that long. If you won't calculate it, I'm gonna do it myself and post in this comment
Edit: Ok, as we had that ESA 37 system and in 2021 the league was expanded from 16 to 18 teams, I took the average amount of league matches from the last 15 years...which turned out be the exact same as today in Ekstraklasa (34,06...). Legia won 7/15 times.
The FLI index I got for Polish Ekstraklasa is 1,43.
Yep, we like to say we are the most competitive league in the world and even if it's exaggeration, it's proven in data compared to other top 5 European leagues
Senegal’s most dominant team’s overall trophy haul invalidates their claim of being a competitive league. They lead the way on league titles while totally dominate on cups.
Meanwhile Ghana’s landscape is even less competitive. Their most dominant team has obviously won the most leagues, and won recent leagues at that.
(They’re not fallen giants like Skonto or Everton.)
While after their nearest natural rivals, the 3rd club with the most league wins is miles off with only 4 (compared to 25 and 21).
Furthermore even the two most recent league winners have only won their 1st league titles each.
If Ghana counts then Scotland has to. Given their 3rd-5th biggest clubs outside the Big Two are all tied on 4 league titles.
As most people are saying, we have to discount countries where there’s 2 dominant teams.
The perfect scenario is one where several clubs all win leagues and have a decent (but not comfortable) chance of doing so, every season.
"I think sometimes in the life I'm too competitive you know, it's good to be competitive"
😂😂😂😂😂😂
😂😂😂😂🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷
Top flight football the EPL is by far the most competitive, as long as they play against each other and dont venture outside their island. Do this video with European competitions and tell us which league truly has the most competitive teams.
Whats the Eredivisies FLI?
Interestingly Ludogorets Razgrad (13IAR) are only 2 more league titles away from being the most dominant European team in their domestic league outright.
It’s notoriously hard to pull off as typically those with the money bankrolling the domination tend to lose interest when we’re talking over a decade here. Or even the players and staff themselves. Complacency is hard to keep at bay.
The current holders are:
- Lincoln Red Imps of Gibraltar. Whose whole league plays at the same stadium.
And
-Skonto of Latvia. Who’ve long since dissolved. They literally no longer exist.
The Bulgarian league is obviously comfortably harder, and better, than both of those current title holders.
How is Ludogorets so good? Where do they get money? Its just a small town i think.
You should sum the squares of the number of titles each team has won. Eg. Premier league:
Man City = 8 titles
Chelsea = 3 titles
Man United = 2 titles
Liverpool = 1 title
Leicester = 1 title
Total = 8²+3²+2²+1²+1² = 79
La Liga:
Barcelona = 8 titles
Real Madrid = 5 titles
Atletico Madrid = 2 titles
Total = 8²+5²+2² = 93
This method differentiates between leagues who had maybe 2 dominant teams who shared the titles equally compared with a league who had 1 team who won half and multiple teams who spread their titles out between them. The Premier League should get more credit than La Liga for having 5 different winners in the last 15 years whereas La Liga only had 3. It still punishes leagues who were dominated by 1 team but the number of teams able to challenge should also be a factor.
Surely it should be square root. The way you’re doing it rewards having LESS winners. Indeed it rewards leagues where one team usually wins the most.
@@daviebananas1735 But the method used in the video also rewards the ones with less winners that’s why the “farmer leagues” would be on top, the video is more about them than the competitive leagues
Another interesting angle would be the trophy haul spread.
Any league that lacks a so-called super-club or superpower, always able to use or even rely on their continents competitions to keep their coffers comfortably ahead of any domestic rivals.
Either nations whose top domestic leagues are so insignificant that they legally can’t qualify for continental competition, or they all reliably fail to ever succeed in progressing through all the qualifiers.
Essentially all domestic rivals are evenly matched.
But granted this’ll take some serious research because they’ll be laboursome to source, as:
A) It’s only possible in those markets who can’t attain continental competition participation.
B) Any rankings of trophy hauls have to be automatically excluded. If all or many clubs are winning silverware at a fairly even rate, their trophy hauls will be collectively held back.
Firstly, amazing and well researched vid. I hope to see you explode and be like Tifo of old. Secondly, I'd like to know the FLI of Malaysia. I am shocked at Malaysia doesn't even cracked the top 5 considering how 1 sided it has been dominated by Johor DT for a decade now.
Thanks! It finished just outside the top 5 on 3.35, between the SPL (3.34) and the Bulgarian A-league (3.48)
@@RouteNone Wow😅, Malaysian Super League in 6th place? Well, very shocking too😅
The term Farmers league isnt originally about how competitive it is in terms of results. Its about semi professionals leagues where players tend to work full time as other occupations. Farmers can often be replaced by Plumbers or any other profession of the sort.
A good example is saying Pele was overrated because he was playing against farmers and plumbers since alot of brazillians teams in the 60s were semi professional.
Nowadays semi professional football is only seen in lower divisions or non football countries. National League in England is an actually Farmers league, but the term has been twisted to just mean a league in which a team dominates.
Farmers league also refers to leagues where players play at a lower competitive level to be “farmed” to play in the bigger elite leagues.
If anyone cares, here in America we have the term "church league" because once upon a time churches had informal (casual) sports leagues for their members, especially baseball\softball and basketball. While you can use it as an insult for a team, it's actually usually directed at basketball and American football referees. "Go back to the church league" says the referees aren't good enough to be working minor college or high school games, much less major college or pro games.
I've never heard this. Either this is a southern thing or you're a European doing a hilarious impression of an American
Curious to know the Portuguese league's FLI and overall position in your study, if you don't mind posting.
Great video, very interesting to see an objective take on the competitiveness of all leagues.
If I did the math right, I think for Primeira Liga its a FLI of 2,66.
Since 2010/11 Welsh Premier league/Cymru Premier has had 2 phrase and The New Saints are the only professional side so unlike Croatia, Germany or Scotland where you argue all teams are more equal footing, only Connah's Quays can mainly challenge TNS, they are the second best team in Europe from Wales by coefficant points.
Our league was exclusively amateur until 1992 also. Meaning clubs have had far less time to grow than every other league in Europe. So as long as you pump a bit of money into a club you could dominate the league easily.
@@isaacjones5687 There was no national league in Wales since 1992/93
i think competitiveness of a league should always consider ALL teams, not only the first few spots
just a matter of time till you're big mate, fantastic video as always! loved the fm and papers please references although i think it's west grestin not gretin
Thanks again for stopping by and watching! Wouldn't be a Route None video without a spelling error ...
The only reason Ludogorets is not first is because they joined Bulgaria's first league 13 years ago after winning the third and second leagues consecutively. They've been champions ever since and they will remain champions for at least 20 years.
How is Portugal and Norway at the ranking?
If I did the math right, I think for Primeira Liga its a FLI of 2,66.
@@danielpardejo3350 I did the math for Portugal and got 1.779. Which for me makes sense because we often have small point differences and rotating winners (between 3 teams) but we have very big goal differences because the top teams are so much better than the smaller teams.
@@brunoalves-pg9eo well... 2,66 made since for me cause we only have 3 winners in 15 years... but mostly only 2 actually. And even then both porto and benfica, when they win, its usually 2 or more in a row. But what values you have for c and d= to check the difference we got.
Brasileirão in third place, being a country with ~250 mi people, and ALOT of good teams just show how fun it is.
Compared to european clubs they aren't really good clubs, there is a lot of competitiveness in Brazil but the teams aren't good internationally anymore
@@Creeny_ I mean, if you are talking about the big clubs, for sure. Premier league, La Liga, Serie A all are no match for Brasileirão. But if I wanna be honest, if you take the top 4 teams on Brasileirão right now, and put they to play any other league in Europe that arent these 3 I said above, they gonna finish AT minimum in 4th place.
@@OctavioMagnus maybe in french Ligue 1 or smaller first division like Ireland or eastern countries you are right but there is no way they can get 4th place in Bundesliga or Liga Portugal and the ones you said (PL, Liga, Serie A)
Most of the brazilian teams are mid the only interesting ones are Palmeiras, Flamengo or Fluminense and they will struggle a lot to beat high-mid tier teams like Sporting CP or Eintracht Frankfurt for me there is no way they can become good in Europe except in small divisions like Eredivisie or smth
@@Creeny_ Nah, compared to the Portuguese league, Brazilian teams are equal or better than most of then.
@@OctavioMagnus you're really saying brazilian teams are better than Benfica, Porto, Braga or Vitoria?
1:36 probably helps that Rangers got themselves relegated to the bottom of Scottish football and still haven't sorted out their finances, despite reaching a Europa League final
Probably didn’t help that Rangers were spending over a hundred million they didn’t have in the decade before that just to keep up with Celtic. They went bust and had to start again. If you’re relegated you don’t need to apply for a new league membership. They got what they deserved for industrial level cheating rather than trying to grow their club like Celtic have and still to this day would rather spend money they don’t have just to give the illusion of competition to Celtic who as a club have outgrew Rangers and probably did long before 2012.
interesting video, thanks for sharing!
your ranking mechanism takes its proud place in a long line of heuristic rankings - you figured out which things you care about, and then started smooshing them together into a formula that prioritised them in a way that reflected your own priorities. you even added a scaling factor for the number of games to account for how a longer season could give dominant teams more chance to dominate! this is a totally valid way of creating a ranking. you're right that it might not be the most scientific approach, but it will highlight the extreme cases you were looking for (like kosovo and kazakhstan) perfectly well!
as long as we don't have a clear definition of what a "famers league" actually is, we're going to be injecting some kind of biases or assumptions into the model. i think your definition that includes how much the teams win the league by is pretty good.
one more thing to think about - when you were figuring out your equation for the farmers league index, did you decide on what equation you were going to use first, and then accept whatever it spat out, or did you look at what it created, and then adjust it until it produced rankings that you thought made sense?
bro how do you only have 6k subs this is sohigh quality
It's actually in Ligue 1 slogan the League of talents which hints teams develop players in their academy's and sell them on except PSG of course if anything the other four major leagues do most of their shopping in that league hence farmers League
Nah PSG don't sell them... They leave for free 😂
i would say the dutch eredivisie is relativly on the competitive side but where is it?
Not by the measurements they take. They just look at the champion and there the Eredivise is not really competitive. PSV/Ajax pretty much steamroll the division scoring 80+ points each time in just 34 games (sometimes even if they are "just" 2and place) and its rarely close at the top either.
With the messurement they take Netherlands is much closer to the non-competitive ones.
PSV/Ajax are too good for the league - otherwise I agree that its competitive. Similar to Switzerland where apart of the very dominant Champion at the start of a season nobody really knows if they will qualify for europe or fight against relegation.
I’d say it’s getting more competitive mainly because Ajax completely fucked themselves over, giving Feyenoord and PSV a real chance to catch up. It looks almost identical to the portuguese competition.
@@pingu6028 still 5 different Eredivisie Champions in the last 15 years, that's not too bad
You completely missed the point that while Bayern dominates the Bundesliga, they've also won the Champions League a decent amount of times as well-something that PSG never accomplished.
PSG exists for a much shorter time than Bayern, give them the same amount of time and maybe they will do smt like that
@@adosmon6177 Bayern won it in 2013 and 2020-PSG has been around since then, and has had more money than them in that time period.
@@baller84milw PSG was created in the 70's, bayern is 70 years older. give psg 120 years too and maybe they will win it
@@adosmon6177 You don't need that long because all of those years accumulated aren't what made them win 🤣
keep making this content!
I think the most interesting way to measure this would be to look for the biggest % differences in xPts between two consecutive league positions, excluding relegated teams, to find out where the bigger differences in performance are
how competitive is the Gibraltarian league? im pretty sure lincoln red imps have won a lot of leagues
I think serie A should be higher for two reasons:
-While the first spot is basically a competition between only 3 teams and other occasional teams,the rest of the teams are just as competitive to get to the 6 top places since they give them access to european cups.
-Even though one could argue that Juventus is a very consistent team when it comes to the league (winning 10 titles in the last 15 years) it could also be argued that there have been numerous instances of corruption,and in the past Juventus had been relegated and even lost 2 league titles because of this. And these continued even after. In my opinion corruption has nothing to do with the competitiveness of a leauge and the points difference is very close in general.
great video, the thing when we say about a farmers league is about the quality of the teams. leagues like portugal, eredivise or ligue 1 usually have 3-5 good teams, but the rest of the teams are trash so a lot of players and teams get very high stadistics that doesnt translate to european football or other leagues when the players are sign by better teams.
I mean… most leagues have 4-5 teams that are of relatively « european » level all the time and the rest are usually never to be seen, the problem with ligue 1 is that we struggle to have a constant big 6, like the premier league have
@@paulsimonin6465 but if u compare teams in premier, laliga from 6-12 are usually way way better teams that the 4 of eredivise or the 5 of league 1. Most of these "farmers league" like they dont really focus on winnig the game, their defense is really bad and they tend to get 2-3 good players and sell them to bigger teams.
Part of the concept of "Farmer's League" that I sense you're overlooking, is that aside from the elite team (or teams) at the top, the rest of the league is vastly less supported. And that mid level, bottom level clubs in the league exist essentially to serve as punching bags and occasionally sell off a promising young player to achieve real glory when they make it to the media/oil mogul elite team.
While Bundesliga certainly has aspects of it, I feel it evades a lot of the criticism because even the worse off teams enjoy heavy fan support and have good attendance support, and are often teams that at least used to have a long history and tradition worth being proud of, even if it is in the distant past. Lots of very popular teams aren't even playing at the top flight anymore, after having down periods and being relegated. But there's still a sense that these are established and respected clubs just going through it now, but aren't necessarily facing an existential crisis.
Compare that to something like French football, where Bordeaux, a club Zidane played for when he was young, recently declared it was folding and terminating contracts
Thats not a very good arguement considering the fact PSG certainly aren’t the best supported club in France. Maybe the best supported french club, internationally, but certainly not in France. Olympique Lyon, Olympique Marseille, Bastia, Bordeaux, Saint Ettiene, Strasbourg, Rennes, Guingamp, Nantes, Lens, etc. have massive fanbases
Am I the only one that understands something different under the term "Farmer's League"? I always thought this referred to leagues that "farm" players for the good ones. So for example a player spent their teens in Holland, then Germany, before it is good enough for England or Spain.
Ligue 1 is a good league. Underrated by a lot.
not really, 20 years ago they were kinda close to the big 4. Now you see a very clear gap and they are even arguably worse than Eredivise and the Belgium League.
And probably worse than the Russian League (pre ban).
I'm not sure about that definition of a "farmer's league". The conventional understanding of the term for generations has been a lower quality league that grows and produces talent, which is then taken/ "farmed" by bigger and more prosperous leagues with more money to spend on high quality players.
E.g.; the Dutch Eredivisie was known for generations as a "Farmers League". Not for anything having to do with any one team dominating the league, but because many emerging talents were developed and first blossomed there, which were then routinely snatched/ "farmed" by teams in richer leagues.
In other words, farmers league has long been synonymous with a feeder league.
Can you provide any references where it's been used in that way in the more distant past? Farmers league is a relatively modern term. I doubt that anyone used it for "generations". Except in the literal meaning of a local rural league.
"Farming" is a terminology used in gaming describing repeating an easy objective in order to slowly but without risk accumulate said objectives reward. So a farmers league is a league where one team dominates with relatively little effort and wins all or most trophys.
Like you correctly pointed out - what you described is a feeder league.
@@Darilon12 I didn't get it from any online reference - just from the fact that since I was a kid way back in the 1980s, I heard and read references to the Dutch league as a farmers league, because it developed talents that got snatched/ farmed by bigger leagues
Funny enough in the Ukrainian Premier League three clubs are financed by literal farmers: Inhulets (the president has a village, Toyota land cruiser, and AK47), LNZ (N is Nasinnya which means grain), Kolos Kovalivka (Kolos is a spike with grain).
As a french : The prononciation of "Un" in "LIgue 1" is similar to "Uh". It's pretty funny
Thanks to Kane, Bundesliga stopped to be Bayern Munich farmers league.
I started the video thinking I'd probably watch the last few seconds to have some sort of an answer but was captivated from the start to finish.
Really well done 👏
Great Video! Really like how you calculated the competitivness of Leagues. But i think you still didnt quite understand what a farmers league is. Its not abaout farming titles, but about farming talented players. So basically a league where one team can buy all the players from the competitors, as soon as they get good enough. The other teams cant afford to do anything about it and are left without talented players/ star players. Typical criteria to look for are for example: How much money the top team has in comparison to the rest of the league. And how competitiv the 2nd, 3rd, 4th team from the league are in international comptitions. You can see, why the Ligue 1 is often considered the "most farmy" in the big 5. Maybe you could develop a formula to calculate a farmer score. I would be very interested in seeing that! Thx again for the great video!
As an American familiar with Major League Baseball and their "Farm System" (Each Major League team has minor league teams that they can pull players from as they progress), I interpreted this expression in soccer to mean that France is a lower-tier league compared to the others in the top-5 (Spain, England, Germany, and Italy). PSG with their funding is of course an exception, so it's like taking the New York Yankees and having them play in "farm league"/minor league. Of course they'll be dominant.
And when another team like Monaco or Lille has a few great players come through at the same time, you can just buy all their best players (or they'll be bought by big teams in other leagues), so their talent is "farmed"/harvested, and they don't stick around for long as legitimate competitors. This happens to a degree in all leagues, France is just the most lopsided of the top leagues.
I disagree with bundesliga being least competitive, sure Bayern won it but the rest of the league is competitive, you get tes nearly being relegated 1 year and the next year in the top 6
I agree that many of the matches are competitive, but the title is not (but maybe Leverkusen has finally broken the trend...).
Brazilian league is balanced to the point that in 2022, Série B (2nd tier) teams had 14 Série A trophies combined (Cruzeiro 4, Vasco da Gama 4, Gremio 2, Bahia 2, Sport Recife 1, Guarani 1). This means 22,2% of all trophies in Serie A's history.
There is the Big 12 (Atlético-MG, Botafogo, Corinthians, Cruzeiro, Flamengo, Fluminense, Grêmio, Internacional, Palmeiras, Santos (currently playing Série B football), São Paulo and Vasco da Gama.
And this year in the top flight you also have:
- Athletico-PR (won 3 major trophies in 5 years)
- Bahia (two times Brazilian champions, now part of the City Football Group).
- Red Bull-powered Bragantino, Copa Sudamericana finalists in 2021.
- Fortaleza: the Brazilian Leicester, currently league leaders against all the odds.
- Vitória is also a very traditional team, used to fight for trophies in the 90s.
The only real minnows there are Criciúma, Cuiabá, Juventude and Atlético-GO, but even those teams put a lot of fight against everyone.
It's a beautiful competition to watch, a team in the relegation zone can easily win against the league leaders.
0:41 HEY! OLLY’S MY NAME!!!
I do think that this will change now. Dortmund and Leverkusen are doing well. And in the prem. it just seems like city are getting started with a streak similar to psg…
You know this is made by a city slicker when he still pictures farmers as they were doing business a century ago. These days they are either doing paperwork, driving farm equipment or fucking around with IT. Maybe some farm hands still do some labour but farmers rarely do physical labour in the West anymore.
The data you discover is impressive enough, but your graphics are the cherry on top mate!
i mean.. its really not about who won though. for example in bundesliga dortmund puts up a good fight against bayern every season. turkish super league you got fenerbahce going the whole season without losing getting 99 points and still didnt win the silverware. i think a much much better way to index is the points difference between the leader and the 10th team(not per se, maybe top 6 7 produces more accurate results would have to analyse). that way you see the competition between the top teams instead of only who won which in football its really often not about.
This is beautifully animated, congratulations
Say Real Madrid and Barcelona joined my sunday league. 24 teams, everyone plays each other twice. Say that by (possible) coincidence, Barcelona and Madrid tie their matches, and they also tie in points, only winning the league by 1 GD every time. Also, as it turns out, each one of them wins half the titles. The FLI of this league would be of 0.41, and both Bellingham and I are playing in it! Talk about dominance!
I think a more accurate FLI somethig like by how much did the winning team beat the runners-up (which this FLI does), but also by how much did they beat the 3rd, 4th, etc. place. How far is the winner from the average of points earned, stuff like this.
P.S: I don't mean to shit on your video! It is a very interesting idea to talk about, and the video is great. I am just interested in why this particular formula.
It always used to annoy me when people spoke about Man City’s dominance as if they forgot that Arsenal bottled last season, winning by a point in the 18/19 and 21/22 seasons, comfortably beaten by Liverpool in 19/20, 5 points clear in 22/23, 2 points clear in 23/24. It’s hardly domination.
It’s about how Man city closes seasons literally putting pressure on other teams to win every match that’s when both reds and Gunnar’s blinked! 19/20 seadon was injury riddled season they still put 83 points on board which has been worst about since 2016/17 from that point city has averaged 91.5 points per season. Why it was called dominance Arsenal scored that many once during invincible season they hit 90. Ifcyou cant put 90 points on board and literally win 12 straight to close a season hard to hold off city. Which does exactly that they finish strong, literally apply pressure to necks on teams near them. Reds had a special season in 19/20 except for running into athletico in champions.
This was beautiful and very entertaining thank you
Such a nice analysis! Bayern farming titles here in Germany is really sad when you look at how competitive the league was 20 years ago :(