I'd like to get into European football, but I don't know anything about it; the leagues seem so confusing. Anyone wanna' give me a quick rundown of the setup over there?

Meh, briefly:

The "major" leagues of Europe are the English Premiership (arguably the strongest in Europe), Italian Serie A, Spanish Primera League and the French Ligue 1. Oh, the German Bundesliga is a signficant one as well.

Unlike American soccer, the leagues are table-based and the primary emphasis is to win your league. There are no divisions within each league level, so, the 20-team English Premiership, everyone plays each other twice, and the team with the most points at the end (3 for a win, 1 for a tie) wins the league. This is the biggest accomplishment for a team.

The top 2-3 teams of each domestic league will be "promoted" until they get to the premier league in their country..so the Coca-Cola Championship league (Division 1 soccer in England) have their 1st and 2nd place teams promoted to the premiership and have 4 teams play-off for the 3rd spot. Likewise, the bottom 3 premier clubs will be "relegated" to the lower division.

Usually, the top 6 or so teams in each major league of Europe and the top 1-2 in the smaller leagues will advance to one of the two major European tourneys, the UEFA Cup or the Champions League, the latter being the more prestigous of the two.

There are also at least 2 domestic tournaments that teams can play in; and these are volunteer entries and can be entered by teams in different levels of league within the same countries. To win one of these is nice but not as nice as winning your own league/being promoted to the Premiership or getting to play in Europe, etc.

This is pretty much how all the countries over there play.

Thanks.

I've long fancied myself a Newcastle man, but I know so little about it... I think I'm going to start getting really into this. What time of years do they play?

Premier league starts on Sat. Will be interesting to see how your boys will do.

Is there a way to watch in America?

FSC- the Fox Soccer Channel broadcasts games from all of the world's top leagues, except La Liga (Spain). I have it as a part of a bundle on digital cable.

DirecTV has a season pass like NFL Sunday Ticket that has all the games, but I'm sure it's SUPER expensive.


oh... and I can save you a couple hours of wasted time... Saturday's game will end 0-0 and everyone will say how awesome it was. Enjoy.

See response in OT.

FSC is the best unless you get PPV, Dirty.

Braveheart, you're just jealous because lots of people watched the WC

Dirty, I have this sick little ritual I do on Sat. mornings during Premier League season...if there's a big game, I get up at 715am on Sat all hungover, cook me some eggs and bacon, watch the game from 730-930am on FSC, then go back to bed for the rest of the day OR sleep on the hammoc if it's nice outside. It's bliss.

I am looking forward to Saturday. Finally the season starts up again. Got a little fix with the Community Cup last weekend but I am ready to go! Go Fulham!

I thought Bocanegra was a steal for my fantasy team. Hope he starts a lot.

Ahh, that reminded me I still needed to pull Van Nistlerooy off my team. I have Bocanegra as well. Where are you playing at?

Premier League.com. Free but lots of fun, you pick your team name and jersey, etc. And there aren't trades, you buy/sell depending on how your roll looks.

I have Rooney, Lua Lua and Keane as my forwards. Was starting LL and Rooney but I yanked Rooney b/c I heard he's doubtful for the opener. Paid for Gerrard to captain it. Hahnemann is my starting keep. Picked up Carragher for the backfield too.

Ahh cool, that is where I am at as well. So Rooney no go? I will have to pull him. I have Keane and Henry up front, Campo, Mendes, C. Ronaldo, and Malbranque, in the midfield, and Given is my keeper.

Fox Soccer Channel, GolTV, and Setanta Sports. To get Setanta you have to have DirecTV and pay another 12 bucks a month for it. Setanta also gives you a ton of Rugby too. FSC comes with most Digital Cable packages and GolTv has to be specially purchased for cable, but some providers may not have it

I'm pretty sure Lua Lua is injured too. I have Berbatov and Shevchenko up front, lampard, alonso, nolan and benayoun in midfield, and dawson, neill, ferdinand and distin at the back. Paul Robinson's my keeper.

How on earth did you afford that team..did you do a draft or something?

A great game of soccer management is www.hattrick.org but there's not the real players.

Soccer in Europe is really #1 sport. Some weeks we could have more than 5 or 6 games broadcasted on TV (without Cable).

Living in France, and support Paris Saint Germain (PSG) which plays in French Ligue 1.


http://www.psg.fr

The three majors leagues are in England, Spain and Italy, followed by France and Germany.

Newcastle United will win the Premiership this year. That is all.

I think the match against Wigan will tell a lot about how those two teams will fare this year.

That is the early game ins't it?

Also a big PSG fan. I wish I could get access to a lot more games and leagues.

Check the sig. This saturday.

I know they play Saturday, just can't remember which of the three games it is on FSC this Saturday. I want to say 1st one.

Its all about Ajax, baby

Soccer is indeed #1 sport by far here in Europe.

Ajax is gonna kick some *** this year..Huntelaar, Stam..Gabri.

good to see people read the sports guy article about picking an EPL team and stole his choice

im a west ham man myself

up and coming team, young, develops talent nicely, has a young american (spector), should be a fun EPL season

I, like you Dutch, have just recently tried to get into European football. My friends that were into it all followed the English Premier League, so I followed their lead. I kind of took the Bill Simmons route of picking a team. As soon as I saw this video I knew I had to follow Liverpool.

I became a fan of Fulham mainly due to always using them when playing Fifa games. lol. Just got to know the team and started following them online last year. Not a great team, not a team that will finish in the top 3 but I like a lot of their players.

I just like soccer. Played it all my life and enjoy the sport and just happy to be able to catch games on FSC. All summer I watched plenty of last years games on reruns.

I like many teams though,
Arsenal, PSG, Ajax, FC Copenhagen, Newcastle, Chelsea, and Tottenham. But I think Fulham is the one I root for more.

Can I ask why do you like PSG ?

But loving both Arsenal, Chelsea & Tottenham is pretty weird because they're all in London and for exemple Arsenal's fans hate Tottenham. Arsenal vs Tottenham is big derby, like Chelsea vs Tottenham or Chelsea vs Fulham.

I like PSG because I get to see more of their games so I am more familiar with them.

In regards to your second question. I live in Royal Oak, Michigan, far away from any EPL teams city. I am sure if I actually lived anywhere near London I would be an Arsenal Fan who hates the Spurs or the other way around, but I just like football and enjoy watching and rooting for certain teams.

Thanks for the answer

Is the PSG often broadcasted ? Just to know because I'm living in Paris

We have a channel in the States called Fox Soccer Channel. They show replays of past games and new games when the season starts of MLS, USL, French, Italy, Argentina, Spanish Leagues and EPL. So I have seen a few PSG games. Plus I am a huge Portugal fan and Pauletta is on PSG so there is a big reason why as well. If only Ronaldo played for someone other than Man U.

,...although if he played anywhere else, you'd see him on TV less in the States.

Well, it's Anton Ferdinand, not Rio. That would make a big difference! Apart from that, I just used the points I had available.

west ham is always young and up and coming, they can just never afford to keep their players so that they can make a real run, but they do have Keira Knightley as a supporter

That is optomistic. Newcastle are a strange club, buying good players, then not playing them or buying players that used to be good and pinning all there hopes on them. Weird.



We need a channel like this in Australia. Our paytv, foxtel, has a channel for AFL that runs all through the summer showing pointless games that no one cares about. Weird.

I'm a great fan of Pauleta too. He's in the top 15 of European ligues strikers and #1 in French Ligue 1. The masterpiece of the PSG.

I look forward to following this more this year now that I have the Fox channel carrying the games. Enjoyed the Newcastle/Wigan match saturday morning.

Looking forward to seeing Aresenal play, I cheer for them because it was the name of my first premiere division team I played on.

I certainly hope Fulham plays a bit better than they did today. Could be a long season if they continue to defend like that.


yeah.........not with those frontrunners they won't. They have a strong midfield and a good goalie but that is about it. Defenders are unbelievably bad and they have no strike force.

Steven Gerrard....best midfielder in England.

Lampard.

using logic with fans of the scum doesn't ever work

well according to FSC's website, i get to see my west ham boys play in a half hour.......according to tvguide.com, i do not.....who knows.



edit: woof, maybe i should learn what day it is, they arent showing it live, but are showing it tomorrow at 130 allegedly. bleh. guess ill avoid seeing the result

lol double edit: it isnt even happening until tomorrow. calendars are your friend.

My wife brought up a great point about soccer and watching the games on delay at times. When I used to work Sundays she would tape the Detroit Lions games for me but I could never get home without knowing the final score thus make watching it boring. Luckily I just need to stay away from the soccer threads here and can watch the games without knowing anything at all. Great to be in America where I won't here..."OMG, ManU just beat Chelsea 5-0! It was a great game!

Lampard is obviously top class but I still think Gerrard is better. Gerrard is a better passer and a better defender than Lampard is. Also, Gerrard is a better leader and has inspired Liverpool to some very important victories.

Gerrard carried 'Pool through the Houllier era. Enough said.

Someone should rip the Newcastle game and seed it, or better yet, put it on Youtube. When I say "should," I mean "you have no real reason or incentive for doing so, but it would be awesome for my sake, because I'm a super awesome pirate who refuses to pay for things." Any takers? I'll give you 10,000 Awesomatrix points.

QFT.

Gerrard owns. he is clutch.