Best league in the world?

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Genius.

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Most people in South Africa are quick to say that the EPL is the best in the world. this is normally the case, cos they were never given the opportunity to watch Serie A and La Liga over the years. This is also why u have so many Man United supporters - cos this is all they know.

On www.goal.com (the biggest footballing website in the world and on the internet they had a poll asking what is the best league in the world.

The results will be surprising to most living in tunnel vision SA.

Here are the results:
Serie A was the most popular league by the narrowest of narrow margins, picking up 35.64% of the vote.

Next came La Liga in Spain with 34.65% - im always posting about the depth in la liga and how the lower teams will dominate in other leagues. Something u wont see in the EPL.

Also the level of play is high in all the Spanish clubs - even the ones in 16th place. They don't do well in La Liga but put them in other leagues and they are one of the best. Not like in the EPL where there are the top 4 and then the ok teams and the rest who aren't great.

Finally the Premier League of England, for all its riches, was third. Still, it wasn't far behind as it gathered 29.70% of the vote
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Soccer is not my game but the way you shared those results were pretty interesting. You claim the South African public have "tunnel vision" and insinuating that they are unable to make up their own minds pretty much.

You then post results which clearly state that the EPL "wasn't far behind as it gathered 29.70% of the vote". So it appears that 30% of the goal readers concur with the tunnel visioned South Africans!

I think the language may affect the results too. I would rather watch a game with English commentary than a foreign language (and I realise you can probably get English commentary for Serie A games). But then again I would rather watch a South African game! :)
 
LancelotSA said:
Soccer is not my game but the way you shared those results were pretty interesting. You claim the South African public have "tunnel vision" and insinuating that they are unable to make up their own minds pretty much.

You then post results which clearly state that the EPL "wasn't far behind as it gathered 29.70% of the vote". So it appears that 30% of the goal readers concur with the tunnel visioned South Africans!

I think the language may affect the results too. I would rather watch a game with English commentary than a foreign language (and I realise you can probably get English commentary for Serie A games). But then again I would rather watch a South African game! :)
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Interesting. I refer to tunnel vision because one would expect the results to be very different. 29.70% is very low in my opinion.

If that survey was done here, it would probably be EPL = 95%. The EPL gets rammed down our throats at a very young age.

This results are interesting cos it shows that La Liga and Serie A are regarded as better leagues overall. Of course one cannot take these results as fact, just thought it was an interesting post.
 
Aha, miss understood you then...

If you read elsewhere on this forum you will see that I am with you with your views on the EPL. I cannot fathom why it has such a huge following in this country. People without the slightest link to Europe will be ardent supporters of Man U, Chelsea etc (strangely enough they are usually ardent followers of the more successful teams - wonder why that is :) ). And the argument often used for doing so is because these teams play in the best league in the world... so yes, your post is interesting.

But as you say lack of exposure to other football makes them assume that the EPL must be the best.
 
The Premier league is the most entertaining league in the world IMO. I'm interested to see the viewership numbers for each league.
 
alanf85 said:
The Premier league is the most entertaining league in the world IMO. I'm interested to see the viewership numbers for each league.
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Dont be confused between entertainment/quality and viewership.

The EPL is the richest league in Europe.The viewership numbers for the EPL is the highest, their money makes them have a better finished product.

The post is interesting cos everybody in SA seems to automatically put the EPL as the best league ever - yet the results of this poll prove otherwise.
 
if the EPL is so weak why have they dominated the CL the past few years?
yeah liverpool lost to AC in the finals the year before last, but AC were surrounded by 3 english teams in the semis
what happend to the rest of serie a and la liga?

and how many teams in the semi finals last year were english?

think that just goes to show that la liga/serie a teams are pretty poor when put in the same league as EPL ones
 
I'm one of the Serie A supporters. I'm not the biggest fan of the EPL. I think this is partly because I grew up in Europe (continental) where the EPL is not too popular. Strangely enough, the EPL is popular in other parts of the world, more than it is in Europe itself (this excluding England of course.)

I agree with what was said here, the EPL is forced down the throat of South African's. You actually have to make an effort to catch a Serie A game. I guess it's easy for English speaking South Africans to relate to the EPL...
 
nivek said:
if the EPL is so weak why have they dominated the CL the past few years?
yeah liverpool lost to AC in the finals the year before last, but AC were surrounded by 3 english teams in the semis
what happend to the rest of serie a and la liga?

and how many teams in the semi finals last year were english?

think that just goes to show that la liga/serie a teams are pretty poor when put in the same league as EPL ones
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I knew this was going to come up. Yes, the EPL has improved - they have dominated the Champions League for the past TWO years, which i regard as the best footballing competition next to the World Cup.

The EPL is ranked number one in the UEFA ranks at the moment. If you look at the rankings over the years, La Liga and Serie A have been on top of the rankings since it was invented.

The EPL is a great league, but i think La Liga is better. I know this is hard to understand :D cos of the brainwashing that was done to your mind when u were a youngster.

In fact when you were younger and thought that the EPL was the best, La Liga won 7 CL titles already.
 
Velenoso said:
I'm one of the Serie A supporters. I'm not the biggest fan of the EPL. I think this is partly because I grew up in Europe (continental) where the EPL is not too popular. Strangely enough, the EPL is popular in other parts of the world, more than it is in Europe itself (this excluding England of course.)

I agree with what was said here, the EPL is forced down the throat of South African's. You actually have to make an effort to catch a Serie A game. I guess it's easy for English speaking South Africans to relate to the EPL...
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True!

Strangely enough the EPL is more popular in South Africa than in other parts of the world. Its cos that its what was rammed down their throats as youngsters.

I see everyday how people are standing up and taking notice of La Liga teams and Serie A teams cos of Supersport. Even on this forum, people never used to post about anything other than the EPL teams, yet now - you have posts about all the different teams, which is nice.

I think its great to watch more than one league as well.
 
Interesting result. But seriously how many people even voted in that poll?
I didnt even know they were running that poll. Ive watched a few Serie-A matches this season and i can honestly say its boring as ****!
Even Mourinho has already said he wants to return to England as soon as his contract runs out. While k.a.k.a has also spoken of his desise to leave Serie-A for the EPL. Then you have the match fixing and crowd violence so how Serie-A can be voted the best league in the world is beyond me!
You cant beat the EPL for entertainment value and thats why so many people watch it. The PSL is currently being shown more (On SABC and Superport)than the EPL but has much much lower viewership which shows you that people watch what they find entertaining...not what is thrown at them Genius.
 
You do know that All english clubs were banned from playing in europe for 5 years Genius?
And prior to receiving this ban you do know that English clubs won 7 of the 8 CL trophys?(Between 1977 and 1984)
So were it not for that ban im pretty sure the English clubs whould have gone on to dominate the far superior La Liga and Serie-A teams for an even longer period.
Its also a well known fact that the rest of Europe has a thing against English clubs which probably explains the poll results.
 
I totally disagree with you. The mere fact that the EPL was the only European league shown on SA television is the reason why there are so much supporters of their clubs. Its not rocket science. Thats just how it is.

The rest of Europe always had a choice of which league to watch. Be it EPL, La Liga or Serie A.

It is a fact that the SErie A and La Liga dominated Europe over the decades. That is just fact. The best players in the world graced the football fields of Italy and Spain. In the 90's the world superstars merely went to the EPL to pick up their pensions.

If you are trying to make me believe that the EPL is a league of choice amongst South Africans and there is no relation to the fact that it was rammed down their throats over the past 4 decades, it will be impossible to make me believe that. South Africans watched the EPL cos that was what was thrown at them at a young age. That is just fact. If La Liga was shown here in place of the EPL, we will have 90% La Liga supporters.

The EPL is a great league, the poll was merely showing how different South Africans view the big leagues compared to the rest of Europe. Polls like these cannot be passed as fact, i just thought it was interesting. Cos it goes against what many South Africans believe.
 
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Genius. said:
I knew this was going to come up. Yes, the EPL has improved - they have dominated the Champions League for the past TWO years, which i regard as the best footballing competition next to the World Cup.

The EPL is ranked number one in the UEFA ranks at the moment. If you look at the rankings over the years, La Liga and Serie A have been on top of the rankings since it was invented.

The EPL is a great league, but i think La Liga is better. I know this is hard to understand :D cos of the brainwashing that was done to your mind when u were a youngster.

In fact when you were younger and thought that the EPL was the best, La Liga won 7 CL titles already.
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So im glad we agree that the EPL has been the better league over the past 2 years :)
 
It is true that the EPL is popular in SA because that is all that most people get to watch, so they have nothing to compare it to.

I have watched La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga matches over the years, in addition to a LOT of EPL. The EPL still comes out on top for me.

Whilst England may be dominated by the 'big four', you will rarely get a bad game entertainment and passion-wise no matter who is playing.

In contrast, below the big teams from La Liga and Serie A are a lot of really really weak teams which results in poor quality games.

The whole defensive style of Serie A and Italian football is not for me at all.

The Bundesliga is at least more entertaining and features a lot of goals and is usually quite hard to predict who is going to win it. But it is miles behing the EPL for me.

I'd say EPL > Bundesliga > La Liga > Serie A

Also, as mentioned above, a lot, this 'poll' on this 'biggest website in the world' of yours is somewhat suspect without some more stats as to who actually voted and where they were from. Furthermore, as also mentioned above, it said that the EPL still managed to drawe 30% of the total vote, which is surely not bad?
 
some of the editing on goal.com is hilarious
 
nivek said:
some of the editing on goal.com is hilarious
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I'd never heard of it before it was mentioned on here.

For me, it looks like a poor man's copy of soccernet. Which is embarrassing in itself, as soccernet is run by yanks :o
 
HenryJ said:
I'd never heard of it before it was mentioned on here.

For me, it looks like a poor man's copy of soccernet. Which is embarrassing in itself, as soccernet is run by yanks :o
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Actually it's Brits living in yankie land :p
 
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