European soccer was so close to greatness before fan backlash caused the new “Super League” to crumble. It’s no coincidence that some thought to call the league the “Americanization” of European soccer.
Maybe it was greed that motivated the best soccer clubs from the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Spain, and France to think they should split off and form their own league. But with greed comes competition, and competition in Europe has been sorely lacking.
The teams that were considered for the move have dominated their home leagues. Juventus has won nine straight titles in Italy. Bayern Munich has won eight straight in Germany. In France, Paris Saint-Germain has won seven of the last eight. In Spain, only one of the last 16 titles has been won by a team that wasn’t Real Madrid or Barcelona, and that was by another prospective Super League team. In the U.K., the prospective Super League teams have won 24 of the last 25.
If you want competition, European soccer could use a little Americanization. In its 25-year existence, Major League Soccer has seen 13 different champions. Four different teams have been crowned champions in the last four years. In football, the NFL has seen 11 different Super Bowl winners in the last 13 years. Over the last decade, sports leagues in the United States have seen the same parity in baseball (8 different champions), basketball (7), and hockey (7).
In that case, is Americanization really such a bad thing?
U.S. sports leagues determine their champions with a playoff system, allowing the top teams to battle it out one game (or series) at a time. European soccer essentially crowns its regular-season champion as the league champion, as teams accumulate points starting from the first game. NASCAR used to use this model before it too shifted to a playoff format.
Maybe European soccer fans don’t really care about competition. Maybe it’s just the tradition of it all: Swedish star Zlatan Ibrahimovic notably hated the MLS playoff system. But certainly, there are worse things that could befall European soccer than a little bit of American-inspired competition.
