Some Leagues Are Better than Others

 

Traditionally, it is the target for most players with a lot of talent to go to the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and to a slightly lesser extent Ligue 1 because of the historic teams to come out of these leagues and their affinity for what many consider the ultimate club prize, The Champion's League trophy.

A recent trend in football has been the massive increase in money going to clubs from outside investors and owners. It is natural that this would happen in the aforementioned leagues because being arguably the biggest sport in the world, there is opportunity in buying a football club. The part that's most interesting is in the leagues with a lot less popularity and cannot participate in the Champion's League. Beckham and Henry started the trend of people not quite ready to retire going to the MLS (Major League Soccer) in the United States to boost popularity. So far it has been fairly successful it seems and though I don't really like to look into rumors, it seems like MLS is beginning to become more appealing to players hitting their 30's, with enough fame, and who are not looking to end their careers. Even more recently has been the migration to Russian and Asian (primarily Chinese) money clubs to promote these leagues and collect huge wages.

My curiosity is whether there will be a time where one of these leagues will gain enough popularity to become a big league in their own right. I exclude the Brazilian league from this conversation because I believe they will maintain their own niche of being low key, fast-paced football and a respectable league in their own right regardless of the viewers. I believe the MLS is close in some regards but the inability to participate in European competitions and the sheer number of competing sports in the country is a huge disadvantage. I believe as long as the leaders in world football decide to stick to the top European leagues then there will not be a league that draws quite as close. It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming decade or two.

Daniel