How about the ones who insist that "the world's brightest stars entertain us in La Liga."
With the cash infusion that the Prem has been recieving lately, the downfall of Italian football, and the influx of talent to Spain, it's easy to get caught up in the debate between sides adamant that their league is the world's best. Guess what? They're all wrong. Those leagues are NOT the world's best, and I'll tell you why.
A league can have the best teams in the world in it, winning the Champions League time after time, and still not be considered the best. So what is it that makes a league the best? COMPETITIVENESS. If, on any given day, any team can beat any other team, then that's a good fucking league. You never know what's going to happen, you never know who's going to win, and you never know what the final positions are going to be. There is no "Big Two," "Big Three," or "Big Four" as there is with Spanish, Italian, and English football, respectively. Which leads me to the world's most exciting league...
It's interesting to note that the world's most exciting league, and the league that I would say is not far behind in competetiveness, both reside in nations that have ALWAYS had strong domestic programs and therefore strong national teams and identities. These nations are (drumroll please) GERMANY followed by FRANCE.
Back in the day, Bayern Munich used to win it all, followed by Werder Bremen, and then some combination of Schalke, Hamburg, Leverkusen, and Stuttgart. No longer. Bayern has since fallen from grace. Stuttgart sits in the relegation zone, while Bremen without Diego are a midtable side that happen to be doing well. Hoffenheim, a newly promoted club, were in the lead for a large part of the season and only dropped out when one of their star strikers suffered a serious injury. On any given day, even the promoted sides can give the top teams a run for their money. Now that is fucking exciting. When was the last time we saw that? Is Xerez going to trouble Barcelona? Does anyone really think that Wolverhampton is going to lose by fewer than 3 goals to Chelsea? How about Livorno? Not doing so well against Inter Milan.
The other upside to this is that we could see a huge amount of turnover in the Champions League entrants. That's awesome, because then the little clubs could get a piece of that money-tastic pie and do even better for themselves. The problem is that in order to get there, they have to first prove themselves without that additional money. That's why it's so impressive when a team like Wolfsburg comes in and makes it to the knockout round (fingers crossed).
The bottom line is that money is going to drive successful clubs forward, and that's a shame. If that wasn't the case, we could see a lot more competition for the league title in a lot of different countries. Manchester United, for example, have loads of supporters who pay to see their top players play, and therefore ManU can afford to buy said players.
I fully support the Bundesliga's competitiveness and I love the way anyone can beat anyone. The turnover in top teams that make it into the Champions League is also a plus for me, but here's the rub: it's cruelly ironic that the "weaker" teams that win their league have to play against the traditional European superpowers and likely lose, thus making people think that the Bundesliga is a lesser domestic league than the EPL or La Liga. The same goes for Ligue 1. Here's to either Wolfsburg, Lyon, Bordeaux, or Bayern making it through to at least the quarterfinals. Is it a coincidence that we're also predicting Germany and France hitting at least the quarterfinals in the World Cup next summer? I don't think so.
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