Search: ' La Liga'

Small isn't beautiful in the Champions League: the cash from qualification can permanently skew the domestic game in some countries, explains Steve Menary

Has the Champions League become the European super league that the G-14 group of top clubs is pressuring UEFA for? The popular perception is that the same clubs from each country compete every year as cash from the Champions League fuels greater domination of domestic European competitions by a handful of clubs. Yet research shows this is not the case in Switzerland, Sweden, France or even Germany, where a variety of different clubs regularly enter and are competitive in the Champions League. The study ranks nations in terms of domestic variety from the least to the most, with a rating produced by dividing a country’s total amount of Champions League appearances by the number of clubs to appear.

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In WSC 208 we asked you all sorts of questions, such as who would win Euro 2004 and your feelings about a range of clubs. Roger Titford crunches the numbers

Results from the WSC 2004 survey show that readers totally disgraced themselves as prediction pundits. The top three picks to win the tournament – France 44 per cent, Italy 17 per cent and Spain 12 per cent – were all out before the semi-finals. Only three per cent had Greece even as quarter-finalists. In defence of our readership, it must be said that 50 per cent never bet on football and we can see why.

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Clubs must stop chasing glamorous players and remember they have a duty to their youngsters, warns Jon Spurling

The prize for this summer’s most revealing soundbite must surely be awarded to Dutch defender Michael Reiziger. Shortly before the 31-year-old completed his transfer to Mid­dlesbrough, he commented: “I’m getting to the end of my career and I want to be able to say that I have played in the Premiership.” Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s views on moving to Tee­sside also spoke volumes: “This move will make my family financially secure.” Avoiding any mention of future challenges – much less the possibility of actually winning trophies – the pair neatly encapsulated the prevailing attitude that exists at the top level in English football. Many Premiership chairmen, ever-conscious of season-ticket and replica-shirt sales, would rather spend large sums of money on a seasoned continental star, than invest time and patience in nurturing young British talent.

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Dear WSC
In his article Mind the Gap (WSC 209), which celebrated a rise in attendances in what used to be Division Two, Ed Park­inson did confess that as a fan of promoted Hartlepool he might be viewing the league with rose-tinted spectacles. Having read the article, I feel he must have gone the whole hog and had a full rose-tinted laser eye operation. Having witnessed many games in this division last season and having seen all the teams play at least once, I can honestly say that the standard of football nev­er exceeded mediocre. Plymouth were the only good footballing side and they didn’t look anywhere near as good once Paul Sturrock swapped addresses on the south coast. As well as attributing the rise in attendances to what he considered to be “fine football”, Ed also noted that the struggles of “a few self-styled big clubs” such as Sheffield Wednesday provided pleasure for many. However, average attendances in Division Two were only up 6.5 per cent on the previous year and, with an average home attendance of 22,000 (almost twice that of any other team in the Div­ision and four times more than Hart­lepool), is it not more likely that it was  the presence of “self-styled big club” Sheffield Wednesday that caused the upsurge in attendances rather than the alleged quality of the football?
Stuart Thorpe, via email 

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Another tournament, another predictable failure. Phil Ball looks at what went wrong for the Spanish this time and wonders whether they will ever find a winning formula

Spain rest in peace, in memoriam. ¡Lo de siempre! (The same as always!) screamed the sports tabloid Marca after the defeat to Portugal condemned them to another early exit. The squad usually packs its bags after the quarter-finals of a major tournament and, being slightly less accustomed to such early exits, the press – reasonably tolerant towards the affable Iñaki Saez for the preparatory weeks – finally showed their true feelings towards the manager the day after the defeat. Spain’s national paranoia traditionally centres on its team’s nervous collapse when the going gets tougher, so no one had really expected them to fail at the first hurdle, particularly in such a comfortable-looking group. 

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