Hector A. Ruiz

Now let’s talk about South American football soccer, and International Club football soccer.

Despite having considerably less resources than almost every single European league, South American football pretty much has the same level of tradition as Europe -if not more. The difference is that South American football has been historically dominated by three countries which I am quite sure you can easily name: Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, both on a club level and from a national team perspective as well.

As I mentioned on a previous entry, the equivalent of the UEFA Champions League is called the Copa Libertadores, and pretty much follows the exact same format of the Champions: the top clubs get pooled in groups, and the top two qualify for a knockout phase with home and away rounds. The difference is that up until 2018, the finals was also played in two matches, home and away. Starting in 2019, they adopted the Champions format of a single match played on neutral ground.

In terms of historical legacy, while still dominated by a small group of 26 teams, the pool of Copa Libertadores winners is a little more even than the Champions. Moreover, there isn’t a “Real Madrid” equivalent. The biggest winner is Argentina’s Independiente with seven titles, followed by Boca Juniors with six. The South American equivalent of the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona rivalry is Boca Juniors vs. River Plate, with River having won four Libertadores titles, and their splitting their domestic local league titles 38 to 35 in River’s favor. A fourth Argentinian club -Estudiantes- has also won four Libertadores titles, while Uruguay’s top clubs Penarol and Nacional have won five and three respectively.

Brazilian clubs have won twenty-five titles in total, distributed among Flamengo (4), Palmeiras (3), Sao Paolo (3), Pele’s Santos (3), Gremio (3), Cruzeiro (2), Internacional (1), Ronaldinho’s Atletico Mineiro (1), Fluminense (1), Vasco de Gama (1), Botafogo (1) and Corinthians (1).

The remaining champions are Paraguay’s Olimpia with three titles, Colombia’s Atletico Nacional (2) and Once Caldas (1), Chile’s Colo-Colo (1), Argentina’s Racing, Juniors, San Lorenzo and Velez Sarsfield (1 each), and Ecuador’s Liga de Quito with one.

The Copa Libertadores importance is mainly due to the players either winning the trophy or making it to the final rounds of the tournament, hence becoming top candidates to be signed by an European club, where they will make significantly way more money than playing in South America, apart from becoming worldwide-known superstars. This is why worldwide speaking, Copa Libertadores has mostly been categorized second to the UEFA Champions League, even though technically speaking they both share the same skill level.

This discussion became the initiator of the debate to determine which continent was the true best of the best, hence why in 1960 the Intercontinental Cup was created. The match to decide which club was the real world champion, in which the winner of the Champions League faced the winner of the Copa Libertadores. The tournament was held for forty three years, in which believe it or not the South American clubs won the title 22 times, versus 21 times a European club did. The competition was last held in 2004, when it was decided that the FIFA Club World cup would replace it. As you can imagine, the FIFA Club World cup would now feature not only Europe’s and South America’s champions, but also the champion clubs from all the regional football federations across the world. The FIFA World Cup has been moderately successful compared to the Intercontinental Cup. There are many reasons for this – let’s explore them.

The are two main reasons why the FIFA Club World Cup has not been able to succeed. The first is the schedule. The Intercontinental Cup was a competition that worked perfectly thanks to how simple it format was: a single match to determine who was the best among the two best clubs in the world, after each club had won their corresponding continental championship (the UEFA Champions or the Libertadores); it was successful because generally speaking, South America and Europe pretty much the same schedule on both their local domestic leagues and their continental competitions: they start around the same time, and end around the same time.

The FIFA Club World Cup instead has to deal with multiple leagues running at different start and end times, which creates a mess for the local and continental leagues themselves. This is why one year it was played on December when the South American and European leagues were half-way through, and then the next year it was played in July when all leagues were on vacation, then the following year in September at the same time the leagues were starting, then the following year in August. It’s a mess.

The second reason why it has been struggling is the format. Since the schedule is completely messed up, it is hard to get all the teams to commit to the same dates every year, which results in an odd format for the tournament: some years they add clubs, other years they subtract clubs, other years they allow the European clubs to play only the final match, and more recently, they started to allow clubs to compete in the tournament despite them having not won anything at either continental or domestic level. For instance, last year’s 2025 edition was won by Chelsea who defeated 2025 UEFA Champions League winners PSG. This is because FIFA wanted to expand the pool of clubs and for the first time ever, allowed the tournament to be played featuring 32 clubs. That’s a long way from the Intercontinental Cup.

The other issue is that with the schedule and format so messed up, there have been occasions in which the club’s key players leave the team -mostly for contractual reasons-. So Player A who won the Champions League playing for Club X in May, but whose contract expired in June, signed for Club Y in July, which means he can no longer play for Club X FIFA Club World Cup in September.

Finally, there’s the tiring factor. Some players are simply exhausted after their regular season, which means they end up underperforming in the FIFA Club World Cup. Honestly, this tournament is a boring / going through the motions experience for some players, that is used as an excuse to add another trophy for South American or European clubs. I do appreciate that they are trying to include the Arab, Chinese, Korean and New Zealand leagues, but the reality is that those leagues are not on the same level as European and South American football, and the numbers clearly back this up. Out of the 21 editions of the FIFA Club World Cup, European clubs have been on the finals every single year, winning 17 and losing only 4, to… guess who? South American clubs, who have also ended up eleven times as runner ups; and the reason why they haven’t been able to win more most of the times is because of what I mentioned above of their players being unable to compete, hence qualifying for a tournament with a weakened team.

Overall, I think FIFA is still trying to figure out to do with the clubs, by coming up with a mix that blends the old Intercontinental Cup format, with the FIFA World Cup format, with both the Copa Libertadores and UEFA Champions league format, all of this while making a considerable amount of money in the process at the expense of a good quality efficiently run tournament.

This concludes my analysis of football soccer leagues around the world. In my next entry I will go back to try to answer the original question of which one is better between the NFL and European / South American Soccer.

HR

In our past entries I have discussed how the NFL works, as well as how each European Domestic league equivalent to the NFL in each country, works. Today we are going to talk about arguably the most prestigious club tournament in the world: UEFA Champions League, which for the sake of convenience I am going to abbreviate to UCL or simply “The Champions”.

After having explained how European clubs qualify for the UCL, it should be clear by now for the reader that generally speaking, it’s pretty much the same clubs the ones competing on the tournament year. You can either read my previous entry (if you missed it), or go by the below list:

• From Spain: Real Madrid, Barcelona, occasionally joined by either Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Villareal, Coruna or Bilbao.
• From England: Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, Newcastle.
• From Italy: AC Milan, Juventus, Inter, occasionally joined by Roma, Lazio, Napoli, Florentina.
• From Germany: Bayern Munich, followed by Dortmund, Leverkusen, Shalke 04, Stuggart or Hamburg.
• From the Netherlands: Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord.
• From Portugal: Benfica and Oporto.
• From France: PSG, Lyon, Marseille, Monaco.
• From Scotland: Celtic and Rangers.
• From Turkiye / Turkey: Fenerbace, Galatasaray, Besiktas.
• From Russia: CSKA, Spartak, Lokomotiv, Zenit.
• From Ukraine: Dynamo Kiev and Shaktar.
• …and other consistently featured clubs include: Club Brugge and Anderlecht (Belgium), AEK Athens and Olympiakos (Greece), Red Star Belgrade (Serbia), FC Copenhagen (Denmark), Rosenborg (Norway).

I apologize if I left your particular club out, but like I said, generally speaking, the Champions League traditionally consists of the same 32 teams every year, with a few variations give or take. The 32 teams are split into eight groups of four clubs each, with wins and ties counting for three and one point respectively. The top two finishers qualify for a knockout bracket phase that goes Round of 16, Quarterfinals and Semifinals. Each tie consists of a two matches, a home and an away. The team who either wins both matches or ends up with the higher goal scores average, advances. If the goal score count is tied with different scores, away goals scored count double. If the goal average is completely tied from both matches, they go to penalties. Let’s look at a few examples:

• Let’s say Real Madrid play PSG, first as home in Madrid and then as visitors in Paris. The first match ended 1-1 and the second match ended 3-3. Even though the total goal count is 4-4 for both teams, Madrid would advance on a higher goal average of 7-4, based on having scored three goals as visitors, which each goal counting for two.
• If Madrid and PSG play each other and the matches end 1-1 and 1-1, the goal average is completely tied at 2-2, so they have to play penalties and the winner will advance.
• If Madrid defeated PSG in Madrid 3-1, but PSG beat Madrid 2-0 in Paris, PSG advances because of the higher 4-3 goal average due to the goal they scored as visitors.
• If Madrid defeated PSG in Madrid 3-0, and tied 3-3 in Paris, Madrid advances because they won and tied.
• …and if course if Madrid defeats PSG on both the home and away, they advance.

The finals however consists of a single deciding match that is typically played on a neutral ground. This is because similarly to the Superbowl, the host venue is decided at least two years in advance. Neither team has any goal scoring advantage as home or away.

With that out of the way, let’s now discuss the implications of competing -and winning the Champions.

There are many reasons Real Madrid is the most prestigious football soccer club in the world. Not only it has won the most number of domestic local leagues (36), but more importantly, it is the club that has always led the tally of UCL trophies. Since its inception in 1956, Real Madrid quickly rose to fame by winning the first five editions led by their great striker Alfredo Di Stefano, cementing the initial bricks that built a legacy that stands to this day and most likely will continue to do so for decades to come. A legacy that as I have stated in my previous entries, is based on defeating the best of the best football soccer clubs all across Europe.

After winning a sixth Champions title in 1966, a few new competitors emerged as worthy challengers to Real Madrid: Inter Milan won two titles, AC Milan won two; Benfica won two -led by the great Eusebio, which is why Eusebio is hailed as one of the greats-; Nottingham Forest won two; Ajax won three titles consecutively led by the great Johan Cruyff -this is why Cruyff is one of the all-time greats-; Liverpool won four and Bayern Munich who also won three also consecutively led by Franz Beckenbauer -which is why he is considered one of the all-time greats. Then in 1989 the UEFA decided to rise the stakes and promote the Champions as the ultimate best club tournament in the world, only second to the FIFA World Cup. To support this, they made three key decisions:

The first decision was about branding – Up until that year the tournament used to be known as the European Championship Cup. To push for more prestige, they renamed the tournament allowing for a complete re-branding to its current name “The Champions League”, which allowed for the emergence of the well-known anthem, logos and other audiovisual resources.

The second change was that they modified the qualification format. I am not going to get into this because it’s an incredibly convoluted story. The main key is that it gave more opportunity to the top clubs to qualify.

The third key decision was the institution of major rewards for the best teams. It was instated that any club who won four or more trophies would be awarded a lifetime Blue shield logo to be worn on their uniform, which categorizes their club as the best of the best. Real Madrid and Liverpool were automatically awarded the first Blue shields having won the six and four titles I mentioned. So the race began to determine which club was going to join the extremely exclusive group of Blue Shield winners and become the best of the best. AC Milan struck first, winning their third and fourth titles back-to-back in 1989 and 1990, and consolidated themselves as the second best European club surpassing Liverpool’s four titles, after winning their fifth Champions league in 1994. This Milan dominance era is known as the “Sacchi” era, after their head coach Arigo Sacchi, mastermind and leader of a superb squad made up by defenders Frank Rikjaard, Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini, Midfielders Ruud Gullit and Roberto Donadoni, and one of the best strikers of all time, Marco van Basten.

Ajax also joined the prestigious Blue Shield group when they won their fourth title in 1995 defeating the almighty AC Milan in the finals -who were seeking their sixth Champions overall-. Ajax also repeated in the finals the following year in 1996 and came very close to winning their fifth title, but lost in penalties to Juventus on a very controversial match that I will discuss a few paragraphs below.

In 1998, after a 30-year drought, Real Madrid returned to the finals of the Champions. As you can notice, up until that point the exclusive Blue Shield teams were Madrid with six Champions, AC Milan with five, and Ajax and Liverpool with four. This is the moment when Real Madrid started the campaign to distance themselves from the rest of the European clubs and build their legacy as the best club in the world. They defeated Juventus in the finals for their seventh title, and won an eight two years later in 2000. In 2001 Bayern Munich joined the Blue Shield group when they won their fourth Champions, but in 2002 Madrid were again in the finals, where Zidane’s masterful goal gave them their ninth title. At this point the Real Madrid’s leadership began what is called the quest to become the only European club with double digits Champions league titles: the tenth Champions, commonly known among footballs fans as “La Decima” (meaning “The Tenth One”).

Real Madrid’s President Florentino Perez designed an elaborate plan to build a club that could be both undefeatable on the pitch, as well as extremely profitable on their financial ventures. By signing Ronaldo (the original Ronaldo) and David Beckham, who joined a squad that featured Zidane, Luis Figo, Raul, Iker Casillas and Roberto Carlos, the club became known as “Los Galacticos” (meaning, “The Galactics”, which is as play of words to mean “The Galactic Superstars”). Their goal: to sell as much merchandise as possible to bring the maximum amount of revenue, and to win La Decima. So every year from 2003 onwards, the Champions League became a vehicle to follow Real Madrid’s campaign of the desired tenth title, or to see who would dare mightily oppose and defeat them. And so many clubs rose up to the challenge.

After losing in the 2003 semifinals to Juventus -who would lose to AC Milan in the finals-, Florentino Perez began spending more and more millions of Euros to bring more star players to fulfill both his goals. This is how Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka were signed to join Real Madrid. However, while turning the club into the highest net-worth club in the world, La Decima kept eluding them. This is when their domestic archrivals FC Barcelona emerged as a new powerful force in European football. They had sent a first notice when they won their first ever Champions in 1992, but after going back to being Madrid’s follower, a new era led by a new head coach Frank Rijkaard (the same former AC Milan player), and superstars Ronaldinho and Messi, unleashed a new dominance period that allowed them to win the Champions in 2006, 2009 and 2011. The interim years would be won by Porto (2004), Liverpool (2005), AC Milan (2007), Manchester United (1999 and 2008), Inter Milan (2010), Chelsea (2012) and Bayern Munich (2013). In 2014, after having spent around one billion Euros in transfers and signed players, Real Madrid finally won La Decima. Real Madrid was now by far the most prestigious club in the world. Never happy with being conformists, they have added five more titles since (2016, 2017, 2018, 2022 and 2024). No club comes even close to Real Madrid’s achievements. None.

This is why when it comes to the Champions League and listing the most prestigious clubs in the world, you can ask any fan around the world and their answer will be: Real Madrid, AC Milan, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Ajax and Barcelona. These clubs are the ones with the most tradition in European football soccer and are widely recognized as the best of the best.

A special mention should be made about six other clubs:

Italy’s Juventus: historically speaking, Juventus (also known as La Juve, or La Vecchia Signora), are by far the most successful club in Italy’s Serie A. Unfortunately they have never been able to translate that success on to Champions league, where they are more better known as a loser team, or a team that chokes in the Champions. Why? Well, they have been to nine finals overall, and have lost seven times. More over and what’s more sour, their two wins have large looming shadows that stain the achievement. Their first title came in 1985, and it was won on a final match that was preceded by a tragedy, when fans of the teams playing -Juventus and Liverpool- clashed and made a stadium wall collapse, killing 39 and injuring hundreds. Many -including the players- called for the match to be suspended, but it was played and Juventus won 1-0 on a penalty goal, in a very lackluster performance by both teams -understandably so given the sad event that happened, although they themselves weren’t directly responsible for the tragedy. Then Juventus’ second title as I mentioned came in 1996, where they defeated Ajax in penalties. However controversy once again surrounded their victory when it was discovered that some of the players failed anti-doping tests, yet the title was not taken away from the club despite plenty of pressure from many key football figures. So in short, when it comes to the Champions league, Juventus sucks.

Italy’s Internazionale (aka Inter Milan, or simply Inter): another incredibly successful club at local domestic league, who has also not been able to achieve the same degree of triumph in the Champions. They won two titles in 1964 and 65, then went through a 35 year dry-spell, and won a third in 2010 led by head coach and master strategist Jose Mourinho . They have lost four finals.

Manchester United: ManU is the equivalent of Juventus on the Premiere league. Despite all their grandiose performances and achievements at local level, they have only been to the UCL Finals five times, winning three Champions in 1968, 1999 (led by David Beckham), and 2008, and losing twice. To be fair, it should be mentioned that the two times they lost in the finals, their opponents were the Messi-led FC Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, and honestly speaking not only they stood zero chance in those matches, but I feel very confident when I say that no team in the world would have stood a chance against Barcelona those in those two finals.

Portugal’s usual representatives have won a combined four titles: Benfica in 1961 and 62 and Porto in 1987 and 2004 -also led by Jose Mourinho.

I already mentioned the Abramovic effect in my previous entries, which resulted in Chelsea winning two titles in 2012 and 2021.

Nottingham Forest won two consecutive titles in 1979 and 1980. They haven’t done anything major not even domestically ever since.

Borussia Dortmund has been to three finals, each time featuring three incredibly inspired and top performing teams made up of relatively unknown players who have gone on to become legends in their own right. They won in 1997 defeating Juventus -and dominating the entire tournament overall-, and lost two very close matches in the 2013 and 2024 finals, to teams that -simply put- played better than them on that championship deciding match.

The other teams who own maiden Champions titles are Celtic Glasgow, Hamburg, Steaua Bucarest, Marseille, Feyenoord, Aston Villa, PSV Eindhoven, Red Star Belgrade, and as I mentioned following the Abramovic effect, Manchester City and PSG.

That’s it. So out of approximately 700 teams that play football soccer in Europe, only 23 have won the Champions League. Out of those 23, six hold the complete dominance of the tournament with 43 titles out of the 70th editions the UCL has been played. That is, only six teams out of 700, have won 60% of the Champions League tournament. That is what I don’t like about European football soccer: every year it’s almost always the same teams. This however, it what makes the Champions league so great.

HR

In Part III we looked at the NFL’s championship structure. Now, it’s time to understand how European football soccer works. Remember on my Part II entry how I mentioned something about the “traditional” clubs? Well, it’s finally time to explain what I meant with “tradition”. Let’s keep using Spain as an example to begin.

Every year Spain’s La Liga kicks-off, the main question of all fans is not “Who will win?”, but rather “Who will win this time: Real Madrid or Barcelona?” Since its foundation in 1929, La Liga has played almost one hundred seasons. Out of those 100, Real Madrid and Barcelona have won 64 (36 and 28 respectively) -almost two thirds. Atletico Madrid have won 11, Athletic Bilbao 8, Valencia 6, and Real Sociedad 2. Coruna, Sevilla and Real Betis once each. That’s it. Out approximately sixty teams that play in competitive professional football soccer, only two completely have completely dominated the existence of the league for much of its history. This is one of the reasons the drives their intense rivalry, which I will discuss further on the next entry.

In Spain there is a general acceptance that a mid-level table team (as in, a team that generally speaking finishes 10th or 14th every season), will always be a mid-level table team. There is also a general acceptance that there’s a group of six or eight teams that are always bouncing back and forth between the bottom of the table for relegation and the top of a lower division table for a promotion. There is also a general acceptance that a Second division team will always be a second division team. You get the picture. I have always found this completely stupid. Why does it work this way? Well, it’s very complicated to explain because as I mentioned in my previous entry, the reasons transcend the sport and dive deep into sociological, economical and even political affairs.

The same reasoning applies to England’s Premiere, although the Premiere is a bit more diverse when looked at it from an individual club perspective. However, England is not very big, so while at first glance the club winners range seems wider, in reality it is not. You see England looks at its club from many perspectives: the club itself, the region, the county and the town. Let’s look at some of these perspectives starting with the “town”. Let’s take London, Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester, and Birmingham for example.

There is no “London” club. No “Real London”, “FC London”, or “London Patriots” (that would be hilarious though). Instead there are three teams whose home stadium is located in the London metro area: Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham. Then you have Liverpool. There is a Liverpool club, and there is Everton -also based in Liverpool. Then you have Sheffield and Manchester: they both have clubs named for their towns: Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, and Manchester United and Manchester City. Then you have Birmingham, who doesn’t have a Birmingham club, but has Aston Villa. I know, it’s confusing as fuck, and it gets worse.

Now when we go to the region / county, generally speaking you have the same clubs concentrated in a territory, just under a different label. For instance: the North West region includes Man United and City, Liverpool, Everton, Blackburn Rovers, Preston North End and Bumley. This region coincides with Lancashire county. London town is also London region, and coincides with Middlesex county, and it’s made up by Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham. So in short, a city equals the town, equals the region, equals the county. But then the West Midlands region that includes Aston Villa, Wolverhampton and West Bromwich, is divided into Warwickshire county (which only includes Aston Villa) and Staffordshire county (which includes Wolverhampton and West Bromwich). You know how you always hear about the English hooligans always being pissed off and territorial about their clubs? It’s because of this whole town / county / region mess. This club belongs to this town, so it has to be loyal to this region, but no it is not, it pledged its allegiance to the other county and bla, bla, bla… what a mess!

Anyway, back to the monopoly of the winners. The Premiere has been playing since 1888. Through the course of about 140 seasons, Manchester United and Liverpool have been the most dominant teams winning the league 20 times each. They could be considered the somewhat equivalent of Real Madrid and Barcelona in terms of league dominance, although they are not technically rivals, nor there is a rivalry per se between them comparable to Madrid vs. Barcelona (more on this on the next entry). Then you have these clubs from the “Internationalization Era” also winning a bunch of leagues I have to elaborate on.

Now before I do, you may say “Oh well, that’s not bad. Two teams winning 40 out of 140? It’s not as monopolized as Madrid and Barcelona winning two thirds of all the played leagues.” Well, the thing is that English football soccer has been through many eras, mostly separated by world events. The two world wars, the dissolution of the League of Nations, the end of the cold-war, and so on; and the most recent era, which some fans refer to as the “Internationalization Era”. Allow me to explain.

Generally speaking, Manchester United and Liverpool have been the two most consistent and dominant clubs. But at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, something interesting happened in the Premiere. One day, a Russian billionaire oligarch by the name of Roman Abramovich, came out of nowhere and bought Chelsea FC, which had been a historically underperforming, middle-table team, that additionally was losing more money than an ice selling store on the north pole, and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Abramovich -a well-known investor who made most of his fortune by acquiring bankrupt businesses at a very cheap price, to revitalize them operationally and financially- bought the club for an incredibly ridiculously low price of 60 million pounds. He was also very outspoken and public when he stated he had two goals for Chelsea: the secondary goal was to make the club financially profitable, and the primary goal was to win the champions league. He started handing blank checks left and right to sign the best possible players to play for Chelsea. He succeeded with some, and failed with others. Just to give an idea to my non-European football soccer fans readers, Abramovich tried to sign Ronaldinho, Beckham, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Junhinho, and many other top level players to Chelsea. He literally met with Messi’s father and handed him a blank check for him to fill.

Anyway, while Abramovic couldn’t conquer some of the top players of the world, he did succeed with signing up many and the investment quickly started to paid off. From having won a single league back in 1955 during the post-war years, Chelsea became a dominant force in the Premiere, winning five Premiere titles between 2004 and 2017, finishing runner up five more times, and finishing among the top four (hence qualifying for the UEFA Champions League) every year. The cherry on the cake: in 2012 Chelsea won the Champions League in an unbelievable run that saw them defeat defending champions FC Barcelona who arguably were at their absolute peak, led by Messi, Iniesta and Xavi. Chelsea also won the Champions again in 2021. These achievements -simply put- would have been impossible without Abramovic pouring billions of pounds into the club’s balance sheet.

The Abramovic era started the domino effect of the “Internationalization Era”, which meant that foreign billionaire investors began purchasing clubs in England, pouring millions -in some cases billions- of pounds to get the best players to play for them and make the clubs profitable and competitively successful, turning them into products. Manchester City is another of these products: City used to be a former mid-level table finisher, until it got bought by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Emirati billionaire with the same goals as Abramovic. After decades of living under the shadow of Manchester United, in the past ten years City has won eight leagues, as well as the UEFA Champions League. In short, in recent years there has been an effort to break the tradition and push for different teams to win their domestic local leagues.

So going over the whole continent, this is how the breakdown of the clubs looks like:

Spain: Real Madrid and Barcelona are the top teams, hence their strong tradition. Every now and then, if both of them are going through a slump, it’s typically Atletico Madrid, Valencia or Athletic Bilbao win.

Italy’s Serie A which has been playing since 1898, has been traditionally dominated by Juventus (36 titles), Internazionale (20 titles) and Milan (19 titles). Napoli -a historically small mid-table club-, had a brief tremendous success stunt in the 80s when it was led by Diego Maradona, winning two seasons; when Maradona left the club, they sank again even achieving relegation to Second Division and spending many years there, but they recently experienced a resurgence and in the past five years they have become a top contender club, winning two seasons in 2022-23 and 2024-25. Roma and Lazio have won the league once, but other than that they have always been 5th-7th place finishers, same as Bologna, Genoa and Torino, who used to be top clubs in the pre-war years, winning seven seasons each. The rest of the clubs almost always end up 12th – 20th.

Germany’s Bundesliga has been traditionally dominated by Bayern Munich, winning 34 titles. Out of those 34, 33 have come since 1969, which means that they win pretty much every other year. When they don’t win, Borussia Dortmund (8 titles) is the next contender. 3rd – 5th place finishers typically include Schalke 04, Hamburg, Stuggart, Werner Bremen, and Bayer Leverkusen -more famously known as the takers of Zidane’s famous 2002 UEFA Champions League goal.

The Dutch Eredivisie is traditionally dominated by Ajax (36 titles), PSV Eindhoven (26 titles) and Feyenoord (16 titles). With the exception of AZ Alkmaar (a typical 3rd-6th place finisher), no team other than the aforementioned three have won the Eredivisie since 1964.

Portugal’s domestic league is even more traditionally monopolized than Netherland’s. Out of all the 78 teams who play across the multiple divisions, three have won every single season since the league’s inception in 1922: Benfica (38 titles), Porto (30 titles) and Sporting (21 titles). Only two teams have broken their spell… twice: Beleneses (won the league in 1946) and Boavista (won in 2001). As you can imagine, it’s typically Benfica and Porto the ones who qualify for the UEFA Champions League. This is why Portugal does not have four spots.

France’s La Ligue is a bit more open. The league has been traditionally typically won by Marseille, Saint-Etienne, AS Monaco, Nantes, Lyon, Bordeaux or Lille. Up until 2011, Paris Saint-Germain was the equivalent of Manchester City, living in the shadow of the previously mentioned clubs, having won just two isolated league titles since 1893, being a mid-table performer who nobody cared about. Then came the Abramovic effect. Nasser bin Ghanim Al-Khelaifi -a Qatari billionaire- bought the club in 2011 and like Abramovic before him with Chelsea, he became very outspoken on sharing that his goal was to make PSG a top club not only in France, but around the world. Under his leadership (and backed by billions of Euros), PSG have won 11 domestic titles out of the last 14 seasons, and most recently, the UEFA Champions League. They have also become a top ten most valuable club, worth around $5 billion.

Scotland (yes, I know what you’re thinking) is more like Portugal: since the beginning of their professional league in 1898, the league has been won either by Celtic Glasgow or Rangers (both have won 55 titles each). Only eight teams have been even to break their monopoly.

Turkey / Turkiye is like Italy: Fenerbace (28 titles), Galatasaray (26), Besiktas (21) and Trabzonspor (7) are the traditional winners.

Five teams typically dominate Russia’s league: Spartak Moscow (22 titles), CSKA Moskow (13), Dynamo Moskow (13), Lokomotiv Moskow (3), Torpedo Moskow (3), and Zenit Saint Petersburg (11). Dynamo Kiev also used to be a top club (13 titles), back when it was the Soviet Union, but now they dominate Ukraine’s league, winning 17 titles since 1993, and finishing 2nd on 13 seasons.

So now that you understand how European domestic leagues work, in my next entry I will discuss the UEFA Champions League.

HR

Now let’s talk about comparing the NFL with Football soccer. I sat through almost three hours of great arguments between the American Sam, and the European descent South American migrant Jose, with each of them providing valuable arguments to claim their parent sport as the best. Me born and raised in the US, but also having lived in Europe and in South America for many years, and having integrated myself into their football culture, I believe I have a good barometer to evaluate and judge both.

The NFL is a product and does not attempt to hide it.

Let’s start with comparing durations. My friend Sam furiously told my friend Jose that he couldn’t stand watching a football soccer game, because “the games take too long and nothing happens“. I have to be fair here: a typical American football game in theory should only take 60 minutes. In reality, games take three and a half, sometimes four hours. Why? The clock basically stops for about anything, which gives the chance for television to sell ads. I have to say I really admire someone who can sit through an entire football game without moving away from the TV at least once. I think I have only been able to do it once, and it was because I was recovering from knee surgery.

Remember how I asked to keep the money thought on the back of your head? This is when I will close the loop on that idea. To me, the NFL is a commercial product -perhaps the largest invented in entertainment. The viewership is just insane, with regular game numbers averaging twenty million and the Super Bowl over eighty million. I previously sort of left unanswered the question of who comes up with the NFL schedule, simply stating “money”. The more elaborate answer is that there is a committee of executives who decide the schedule based on viability factors that can be quickly summarized in viable and efficient profitability for the league and all its stakeholders.

So in short NFL games have to be long so they can generate more revenue. Money is more important than the sport. There is so much direct and indirect money generated by the NFL, it can probably be its own country with its own GDP. Imagine if an NFL game would last an hour -as it should-, or an hour and a half the most. Or picture the opposite. Imagine if the NFL would advertise their games lasting three or four hours.

European Football / Soccer used to be a sport and recently has been turning into a product (but at least it is not as blatantly obvious as the NFL).

A football soccer game lasts two hours top. Two 45-minute halves, plus stoppage time, plus a 15-minute half-time. That’s it, it’s done. I can guarantee you it is impossible and unviable to stretch a football soccer match to three and half hours, even if it’s the UEFA Champions League Final or the Copa Libertadores Final, which are the equivalent of the Super Bowl.

I don’t have exact numbers, but I am going to go out on a limb and state that the NFL completely eclipses all domestic European leagues in terms of revenue. In fact, I am going to go one step further and say that maybe if you combine all the European leagues figures, they may be able to match up the NFL. The point here is that while money is a big factor, at its core, European football soccer still has some of its interests slightly driven by the nature of the sport, rather than the viability of maximizing profitability.

Competitiveness vs. Tradition – What I like about the NFL vs. What I don’t like about European football

Generally speaking it is not easy to predict who will play on the Super Bowl, let alone who will win. Off the thirty-two teams that make up the NFL, twenty have won the Super Bowl: the New England Patriots and Pittsburg Steelers six times; the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers five times; the Green Back Packers, Kansas City Chiefs and New York Giants four times; the Denver Broncos, the Oakland / Las Vegas Raiders and the Washington Commanders/Redskins three times; the Baltimore Ravens, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers twice; and the Chicago Bears, New Orleans Saints, New Jersey Jets and Seattle Seahawks once. Eleven teams have never won: Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions (duh…), Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, LA Chargers, Minnesota Vikings and the Tennessee Titans. Out of these eleven, only four -the Browns, Lions, Texans and Jaguars, have never ever been to the Super Bowl. I like that sense of competitiveness and unpredictability.

In my next entry we will look at Europe’s domestic league and championship structure.

HR

In my previous entry I discussed how does the NFL work so that my non-NFL readers can have a good understanding of the importance of (American) football in the US. Today I will venture into European / South American football soccer. During my explanation of college football and its connection to the NFL, I mentioned the importance of tradition in the sport. This is when I will tie it to European / South American soccer.

Despite tremendous efforts by fans, media entertainment moguls, and even the players themselves, in all my life watching competitive American sports, I have never seen a true, sincere, passionate, relentless rivalry between any American teams. I am sorry, but it is not there, and I do not think it ever will be. The closest I have seen is the Lakers vs the Celtics in the NBA, specifically the 80s era: Magic vs Bird, Worthy vs. McHale, Kareem vs. Parrish. It was special. Any other example you can come up with may have a certain element on it, but it will always fall so short compared to football soccer rivalries that not only date from centuries ago, they transcend the sports aspect of it, and incorporate sociological, economical and political elements into them.

Any decent football soccer fan with even the slightest minimal knowledge, regardless of what country they are from, how old they are, or what social status they have, will tell you that Real Madrid vs. FC Barcelona is the biggest sports rivalry (not only football) in the world, only comparable to Boca Juniors vs. River Plate. You see that is the thing about football soccer. It is a sport of tradition, and tradition outlasts anything in life. Keep this thought on the back of your head, as I will go deeper into it later.

How do European / South American football soccer leagues work?

In order to understand football soccer leagues, we must first understand two things: the first thing is simple biology, and the second is the meaning of the word “tradition”. Unlike the NFL / NCAA college football explanation, I believe you will end up with a sharp understanding at the end of this discussion. I will have to make a few notes and bring up some special considerations here and there, but overall you will be ready to become the next supporter of a UCL team, so buckle up!

When I was a little kid playing American football at the school playground, I don’t remember any of my classmates picturing themselves as playing for the Lions, the Patriots, the 49ers, or the Packers, and if any of us did, we would switch teams the next time we played. This does not happen in Europe or in South America. When you are a little kid learning to play football soccer, in your mind you imagine you are part of one of the legendary traditional teams: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Ajax, Bayern, etc. This thought becomes recurring and turns into a passion, and becomes exacerbated when you become a hardcore supporter of a player from that team. And then you are hooked for life as a supporter.

Typically people from the town, support their town’s club even from a very young age. This is where the biological element comes into play. Unlike American football, where there is a major physical growth aspect that contributes in determining whether someone has the capabilities to play professional football, and that requires a certain minimum age for both physical and mental evolution, football soccer does not necessarily have this element. A 14-year-old kid can be recruited by the academic system of a traditional club, and be sponsored so that one day -the sooner the better- they play for the professional team. Let’s take a look at how that works by discussing Spain’s football soccer system.

Imagine John is a 14-year-old kid with massive football soccer talent. A scout from a Spain domestic league team located him and signed him up to the team’s youth system. The team’s youth academy plays on the third division of Spain’s domestic league, along with nineteen other teams all in the same division. The teams play each other twice throughout the course of a single thirty-eight week season, once as home, once as visitor. Thirty-eight games in total. At the end of the season, the top four teams get promoted to the Second Division of Spain’s domestic league. Due to John’ contributions, his team was among the promoted, and will now play on Second Division the next season that will play next year.

The season goes pretty well. John’s team competed against nineteen other teams in the same format – twice, one as home one as visitor, across thirty eight weeks, all in the same division. The teams who end at the bottom four spots get relegated and will play on the Third Division the next season, allowing for four new teams coming from Third (as John’s team did). The teams that end up on the top four spots of the standings are promoted to Spain’s First Division. Thanks to John’s contributions, his team is one of the promoted ones.

John -now 16-years-old, is now a player from a team playing on Spain’s elite level First Division league, more commonly known as La Liga. This is the division where the legendary great teams Real Madrid and FC Barcelona play. John needs to level up because now he is up against tradition. John’s team, Real Madrid, Barcelona, and seventeen other teams make up La Liga. They play each other twice -one as home, one as visitor- throughout the course of thirty-eight weeks. The teams who end at the bottom four spots get relegated and will play on the Second Division the next season. So overall, give or take each country has three tiered divisions with about twenty clubs each, for a total of sixty clubs. You may now wonder what happens to the teams who end up in the top spots on the First Division league. This is where it gets slightly complicated, but not that much – I promise. As I previously mentioned, the key word to understand the whole thing is “tradition”.

My best friend -like me- is a history nerd. He is particularly obsessed with European history, specifically European wars. He always says “Europe is a living proof that humanity is doomed to kill ourselves. Europe has been at war throughout its entire existence. 10,000 years! 10,000 years of this tribe trying to prove it’s better than the other, or this empire better than the other, or this kingdom, or this country.” I laugh every time he says that.

As you know Europe is a small place with a lot of countries in it, and all of them play football soccer. Each country has a domestic league system that “generally speaking”, works almost exactly as the one I described, and each their top divisions have well-known names:

• Spain’s top division -as I mentioned- is La Liga, featuring the aforementioned Real Madrid, Barcelona, as well as Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Athletic Bilbao, and others.
• Italy’s is Serie A (also known as Calcio), which features Juventus, AC Milan, Internazionale (more simply known as Inter or Inter Milan), as well as Napoli, Roma, Lazio, Fiorentina, and others.
• Netherlands‘ is Eredivisie, which features Amsterdam Ajax, Feyenoord, PSV Eindhoven, AZ Alkmaar, and others.
• England’s is the Premier League, with Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, as well as Tottenham, Aston Villa, and others.
• Germany’s is the Bundesliga, with Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Dortmund, as well as Hamburg, and others.

If you are a cautious reader you will notice in my list, I named a few clubs, followed with “as well as”, and listed one or many other clubs. There is a reason for this. The clubs I listed first are known as the “traditional clubs” in Europe. They are the clubs with most history, prestige and tradition in Europe. Other clubs with sort of the same level include Portugal’s Benfica, Oporto; Scotland’s Celtic, Rangers; France’s Marseille, PSG and Lyon.

So what happens with the teams that end up on the top spots of their First Division leagues? Well, let’s keep using Spain to illustrate. The teams who end up fifth and sixth on the standings, qualify to play a continental tournament called Europe Cup, where they will compete the next year against the teams who also finished fifth and sixth from all the other local domestic leagues from the other countries. The teams who finish in the top four spots qualify for next year’s highest continental tournament in Europe: the UEFA Champions League, where they will compete against the other top four finishing clubs from the other domestic leagues.

A small note regarding the UEFA Champions League slots (and also the slots to qualify for the Europe Cup). Countries with the biggest football soccer tradition -as well as the clubs with biggest tradition- get more spots. For instance: Spain, England, Germany and Italy -these normally get four, which means the first four from La Liga, Premiere, Bundesliga and Serie A qualify directly for the Champions League. Then you have France, Netherlands and Portugal, who typically get two or three slots. Countries with less tradition, such as Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, get one or two, depending on many factors -mostly, on how well have their clubs been performing historically on both their domestic leagues, as well as European competition (UEFA Champions League and Europe Cup). Then countries with even less tradition -or weaker clubs- like Iceland, Finland, Macedonia, Albania and others, go through a qualifying round in which they compete against other similar clubs.

The UEFA Champions league is by far the most sought out trophy in European club competition, and probably the most prestigious in the world only rivaled by the Copa Libertadores, which is the South American equivalent of the UEFA Champions League. The Copa Libertadores pretty much uses the same format to qualify teams from various South American domestic local leagues in order to compete on the tournament. If you are wondering how do South America leagues work, well… they work almost the same way as I described in Europe, including the multiple divisions, two rounds of playing each team, and the bottom four relegation and top four promotion / qualifying for the Copa Libertadores continental tournament.

Let’s look at some of the clubs with the greatest tradition, hence more prestige:

• Argentina’s top league features Boca Juniors, River Plate, Racing, Independiente, as well as other teams.
• Brazil’s top clubs feature Santos, Sao Paolo, Fluminense, Flamengo, Palmeiras, and others.
• Colombia’s feature National de Medellin, Atletico Cali, Once Caldas and others.
• Uruguay’s feature Nacional, Penarol, Liverpool, Rentistas.
• Other teams worth mentioning include Atletico Mineiro (Brazil), Gremio (Brazil), Independiente del Valle (Ecuador), Colo Colo (Chile), Nacional (Paraguay).

On my next entry I will go over some of the pros, cons, differences and similarities of both the NFL and Football soccer.

HR

With the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup getting closer, the eyes of the world are pointing their attention to the United States in hopes of witnessing the best football championship fans have ever seen. However as the stakes rise -as much as the prices for the games tickets- the comparisons on whether football (soccer) will be able to dethrone the other sports forms of entertainment, is a question that looms on all sports pundits in general.

This last weekend I witnessed one of these debates at a dinner I was invited to. The debaters were as polarizing as you could have asked for: a classic American representative of the core American values instituted in the country’s roots -including a die-hard wholehearted passion for football (NFL); and an immigrant from South America, first generation son of an European immigrant who moved to Colombia after WW2, embodying the principles laid down by the old-continent on the new world -including a die-hard wholehearted passion for football (soccer).

So this series is going to try to not only capture the best part of the debate I witnessed, but will also attempt to answer a series of questions fans of one sport may have about the other, and whether if one is actually “better”, or not. Let’s start at the beginning: how do they work.

How does the NFL work?

To understand the NFL, we must first understand college football, which ironically will help understand how European soccer works. Before we do so, I must say that you might end up more confused at the end of the explanation, especially since some of the governing rules that should be either black or white, are instead very subjective, or prone to variations such as “generally”, “probably”, “could be”, “claim”, “maybe” and “give or take”. But don’t feel bad. Every time I look and listen at my coworkers talk about college football, I always quietly laugh, since I don’t even think they understand how the system works! Anyway, let’s begin.

College football in the US is -simply put- gigantic. There are probably somewhere around 700 teams in total. Needless to say, running a competitive league of this magnitude is impossible, so the system runs on different divisions. The organization that regulates all college sports in the US is called the National Collegiate Athletic Association (famously known as the “NCAA”). This includes basketball, tennis and of course football. In order to accommodate the many teams, the NCAA has many divisions. The division called NCAA FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision), is generally considered the strongest, although maybe a case can be made that there are other teams from other divisions that are equally strong, or stronger. Other divisions include the FCS (Football Championship Subdivision), the NAIA, NJCAA, Division II and Division III.

If there is a sport that embodies the traditional values of competitive sports in the US, I would say it is college football. How much pride can one feel when the team of the school you are going to is playing some other random school? Fuck them! We are the champions! Tailgating, Saturday televised, cheerleaders, it is all part of the tradition. Now let’s talk about the teams and the players.

So how does one become a college football player? Well, typically high-school players get recruited into college via scholarships. A team generally consists of around 80 to 100 players, give or take. So as you can see, at any given time there are probably about 70,000 people playing college football in the US -enough to build your own town. I am quite sure that given these absurdly extremely high numbers, there is probably a clear well-defined route to determine who gets all the glory and triumph… better said, who fulfills the anthem of “We are the champions!” Well, not exactly.

The NCAA does not actually award a season championship. In fact, the majority of the teams who have “claimed” their championships, have done so merely by doing exactly that: “claiming”. There have been theoretical and even some practical efforts to determine a true champion, such as the CFB polls, the CFPNC game (just recently created in 2014), or the Heisman trophy for individual efforts, but nothing comparable to the UEFA Champions League -which we’ll discuss in the next entry-, the FIFA world cup, the World series, Wimbledon or even the Kentucky Derby.

With all that said, we can now move on to the NFL.

Due to a variety of factors, mostly physical and mental development, maturity and experience, there is a tremendous gap level difference between an NCAA football player, and an NFL player. The NFL is made up of two “leagues” or “conferences”: the American and National conferences. I am not going to go into their historical explanation, so I’ll just keep it simple and state that the NFL consists of 32 professional teams, which are “generally speaking” split into two separate leagues of 16 teams that average the same level “give or take”, pretty much as it happens in Major League Baseball with the American and National leagues. Each conference is subdivided into four subconferences: north, east, west and south, each subdivision with four teams. Four times four equals 16, times 2, totals to 32 teams. At this point you can imagine how hard it is to get into the NFL, when from 70,000 players in the NCAA, were down roughly 1,000 in the NFL.

A regular NFL season consists of sixteen weeks (one game per week). Each team plays the other three team in their subdivision twice -one as home, one as away; plus all four teams from another subdivision within their own conference, plus four teams from another subdivision from the other conference, plus two intraconference games. Six (2 times 3) plus four, plus four, plus three, equals sixteen games. Now this next part is extremely important: wouldn’t it make more sense -or at least isn’t it easier- to have all sixteen teams from each conference play each other? Who determines who plays against who? The answer: money. Keep this thought on the back of your head, as I will analyze this deeper in the next entries.

So where does the famous Super Bowl come into all of this -my non-football readers may be wondering by now-. Well, unlike the NCAA, the NFL does have the ability to figure out a season champion. After the 16-week season is over -typically last week of December-, all subdivision winners qualify for a playoff bracket, along with the three teams with the best overall records that did not win their subdivision. All seven teams are seeded based on their record, from one (best) to seven (worst). The top seed gets a bye. From there on, the teams play a single elimination game bracket that culminates with the two final teams playing a single deciding game to determine the season’s champion.

This single deciding game -in my experience- has been pretty much anti-climatic, compared to the dozens of regular season and even playoff games. This single deciding game also serves as a vehicle to announce the release or launching of new products, in what probably is one of the most financially lucrative entertainment television / streaming slots in the world. This single deciding game also allows for -generally speaking- some mediocre live musical performances by either fading artists past their prime, or seeking to resuscitate their careers. This single deciding game also serves as a compelling socializing event at pretty much every American household, in which hosts boast dozens of pounds of food and gallons of liquor. This single deciding game is the topic of conversation at every American office the next day, in which people spend most of their day at work talking about how boring the game was, how innovative the ads were, how terrible the musical act went, and how much they food they ate and beer they drank that eventually prevented them from watching the game. This single deciding game is known as the Super Bowl.

Rinse and repeat the following year, and now you understand how the NFL works. Next entry, how European and South American football soccer works.

HR