It was a rare moment when Leicester City won the Premier League in 2016. It was the most surprising title win since Nottingham Forest won the old Premier League in his 1978. It also reminded soccer fans that there was still some romance going on.
Across Europe, domestic football has become a case of ‘league within a league’, with his two-thirds of teams in almost every country missing any tangible chance of success. Surviving at the highest and most lucrative levels has become a priority for many. Football has become the property of big city clubs. The chances of a small or medium-sized local club winning the league are now slim to none. In fact, there is a correlation between population size and soccer success.
Big city clubs are more likely to build economic growth and mass fan engagement. There are exceptions, of course, but given football’s traditional demographics – working class, male, white – big cities have always ensured success. In addition, major cities have commercial and industrial links to provide income to football clubs in the form of sponsorships, patronage and business opportunities. This is also a profile issue. The more people there are, the more visible and integrated the club will be in society.
Leicester, for example, is a city of 330,000 people, but the club is backed by Thai corporations, so the assumption that the Foxes are a humble team capable of causing an upset is a bit unfounded. It shocked the system, but by the time Leicester won the title, the status had changed. Leicester are certainly not Steeple Wanderers, but they have to live with the bigger and wealthier clubs.
Before football became a free market, the first step was the abolition of his £20 maximum wage in the early 1960s. Most clubs with good management and a handful of decent players could try to win big prize money. Straight back to the beginning of the Football League and Preston North his end. Today Preston is a city of 120,000 people and can be compared to 1889 and when he won the league in 1890. He also adopted a professional approach and tactical awareness, which made him too strong against his opponents.
English football’s early years were dominated by teams from the industrial regions of the country, the north and the midlands.
Before football became a free market, the first step was the abolition of the £20 maximum wage in the early 1960s. Most clubs with good management and a handful of decent players could try to win big prize money. Straight back to the beginning of the Football League and Preston North his end. Today Preston is her city of 120,000, as much as it was in 1889 and he won the league in 1890. In a late 19th century bank, Preston recruited groups of Scots to form teams, forming teams of up to six men or his seven at a time, employing a professional approach and tactical awareness, Too strong against enemies.
At the time, neighboring Manchester had grown tremendously during the Industrial Revolution, with a population of around 700,000. Preston’s moment in the sun, as little did they know, was short lived. The target was over 20,000 and Preston was about half that when they won their first title on . Like many Lancashire-area clubs, Manchester’s industrial growth and United’s rise have pushed them into the shadows, losing the first-mover advantage that Preston had benefited from.
England professional His early footballing decades were shaped by industrial areas in the North and Midlands that gave clubs like Newcastle and Aston his Villa some of their most fruitful and influential years . It was during this time that football began to define its audience. From the 19th century to his early 20th century, the working class used cheap entertainment that served as a pressure valve for struggle and extreme poverty in big cities and small towns.
Focus began to shift in the 1930s coinciding with the rise of Arsenal. The rise of London, which had never won until 1931, came at a time when northern England was being hit hard by the Great Depression and industrial decline. During this period, the club, which had been at the top of English football, began to lose momentum. In some towns in the north of England, unemployment was as high as 70% for him. Newcastle United, for example, saw attendance drop from his peak of 40,000 to 20,000 and also saw relegation. There are many clubs struggling to regain their mojo from the days when they dominated the game.
Aston Villa and Sunderland are two other good examples of him.
Scroll down to the post-war period when big names like Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United began winning the league regularly. 1951 and he played for Tottenham in 1961, Chelsea in 1955, Burnley in 1960 and Ipswich Town in 1962 with some exceptions. By the time England won his 1966 World Cup, the two cities had won his fourth consecutive league title, and he had won three of his four FA Cups up to that point. had earned. The most notable of the surprise title winning streaks were Portsmouth’s streak in 1949 and 1950, Burnley’s victory in 1960 and Ipswich Town’s victory in 1962.
Portsmouth’s win in 1948-49 could easily have been explained as a curious success in a time when the major clubs were rebuilding after the war, but to do it again a year later underlined their genuine quality. In hindsight, and considering the history of the club over the past 50 years, Pompey’s success now seems even more unlikely. As for Burnley, Harry Potts had a blend of promising young players and proven talent, while Ipswich’s success was startling because the club had little money and depended on the management and tactical brain of Alf Ramsey to take English football by surprise.
It would not be until 1972 that a team from outside the large cities, Derby County, won the title again and that was largely because of the exceptional managerial talent of Brian Clough, who built a team that combined function with form thanks to astute transfer market activity and a loyal band of players.
Clough repeated the trick at Nottingham Forest in 1978 with pretty much the same format, while Derby did it again in 1975 under Dave Mackay. Both towns had populations of less than 300,000, but were still larger than Burnley (73,000) and Ipswich (133,000).
However, with the growth of the Premier League, English football has become increasingly polarized, and similar prominence seems highly unlikely. Aston Villa revived in his 1981 and his 1982, winning the league title and his European Cup, but even Birmingham, his second-largest city in England, had a formula for lasting success. I’m having trouble finding the .
As Blackburn Rovers discovered in his 1995, money can bring short-lived success, benefiting from money from longtime supporter Jack Walker. Rovers won the title and were back in place in a relatively short cycle. That’s why Leicester’s story was so amazing that people forgot that any club other than London, Liverpool or Manchester could actually win the trophy. It was only their eighth post-war title win from the Midlands including, but it was the weakest quarter in recent history. However, it should be noted that the region has won three European Cups, which he has one more than London.
If there are limited opportunities in Italy, Madrid and Barcelona have stood astride football in Spain for decades.
Turin is now the football capital of Italy, but Milan used to be the capital. Roma’s lack of success is so pronounced that he has only won five titles between AS Roma and Lazio. Italian football has had unexpected victories, including 1956 and his 1969 Fiorentina, 1970 Cagliari, 1985 Verona and 1991 Sampdoria. Of these, Cagliari, Sardinia, is the least populous of the modern Serie A winners, at just 154,000.
Smaller Italian clubs have managed promotion to Serie A in recent years, but are up against bigger teams. Given that both Milan and Turin have rich industrial histories and are currently among the 30 richest cities in Europe, it is surprising that clubs in these locations dominate Italian football. It’s not what you should do. There is a very clear north-south divide in Italy, with the north being much more prosperous. In fact, economic sociologists argue that no other European country has as wide a gap between the country’s richest and poorest as Italy. This may explain why Napoli, who won the Scudetto in his Maradona era on two occasions (1987 and his 1990), is his club’s sole champion sub-Rome and mainland. I can’t. Italian fans often mocked Napoli supporters by calling them “Africa” and serenaded their soil by chanting “Welcome to Italy”. If opportunities are limited in Italy, they have long been so in Spain, where Real Madrid and Barcelona dominate La Liga. , one or both are in transition, or another less-favored club is benefiting from the influx of cash. In any case, the strength of Spain’s major clubs is such that all other successes have proven unsustainable. and the Real Sociedad of San Sebastian and Deportivo La Coruña, cities of 245,000 people.
Real and Barça’s enormous financial power, combined with their political and cultural clout and strong position in Spanish society, make it nearly impossible for any other club to win the title. It’s hard to imagine a La Liga winner outside the top three clubs, as the disparity is so obvious to anyone, and even then, Atlético have managed to break the axis between Real and Barça consistently. You need to outperform and possibly overspend.
Big cities like Valencia (791,000) and Seville (689,000) rarely show up for the title. Valencia has won La Liga six times, most recently in 2004, while Sevilla has won only once, in 1946. Athletic Bilbao have adopted a Basque political system and have won eight league titles, the last of which was in 1984. At first glance, Bilbao’s policy of playing only Basques, though a sign of regional pride, did not always work in their favour. The region has a population of just over 2 million, a small percentage compared to Spain’s 47 million. When La Liga began, five of the ten teams were from the Basque Country, and Bilbao had a golden period, winning his four titles in eight seasons and finishing runner-up twice.
The Spanish Civil War ended Bilbao’s era of rule. The National League was suspended, but in 1937 the republican territories of Spain formed La Liga del Mediterraneo (Mediterranean League) and La Copa de la Espana Ribe (Free Spanish Cup). Bilbao didn’t play – the Basque country was at the forefront of the battle against General Franco and most of the club’s players had either volunteered or fled to France.Athletic Bilbao was the most supported and most dedicated club However, its success is temporary and it will never regain the brilliance of its glory days.
It’s safe to say that Paris Saint-Germain is currently enjoying its glory days thanks to its financial strength and support. Ligue 1 is monopolized and the financial gap between PSG and other divisions is now huge. PSG have elevated Paris’ status as a football city after the French capital appeared to be busy with other activities.
Historically, French football has been much more democratic than other countries. Success is shared, with Marseille and Saint-Etienne winning more trophies (10) than any other club. Interestingly, Marseille has 900,000 inhabitants, while Saint-Etienne has only 175,000. This underscores that the later occupants performed exceptionally well on both the national and European stages in the 1970s.
People don’t seem to talk much about who has won the French league so far, with Lens (31,000), Monaco (38,000) and Auxerre (37,000) all winning the title. However, since 2012/13 PSG have won his eight of the last ten Ligue 1 championships, with Monaco and Lille on hiatus. Without PSG’s artificial wealth, French football is perhaps the most competitive of the top leagues, with well-supported clubs like Marseille (50,361 on average) and Lyon (49,079) playing the most. It could be included among the likely contenders, which is why the football capital of France is now also the capital of France.
Only today can Paris claim to be the epicentre of French football.
The same is not true for Germany, where football power has long been in the hands of Munich. The country’s history certainly prevented Berlin from taking that position, the last Berlin champion of any kind being the East Germans who, with state support, won ten consecutive East German Oberliga titles. It was Dynamo Berlin, the last time Western side Hertha Berlin won the title in his 1931. In the 2019/20 season, Union his Berlin will face Hertha for the first time in the Bundesliga.
FC Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga title for the first time in 1969 after joining the new German league. Nuremberg were the most successful team in the interwar period, winning five titles, but until then German football was very open. In the post-war world, in 16 seasons he produced 11 different German champions.
In many respects, Munich was a natural city to become a standard-bearer for German football, even in its post-war boom.Munich has played a key role in the economic, political and cultural redevelopment of the country, with Heimliche his It was nicknamed Haupstadt (secret capital).
Bayern’s rise began at a time when Munich was in the spotlight. In 1972, the city became the venue for the Olympic Games, and two years later, when Munich was still rocked by the tragic murder of an Israeli athlete in the Olympic Village by terrorists, the World Cup final was played at the magnificent Olympic Stadium. was broken.
It’s hard to call Munich or any of Germany’s big cities rural.The country has a largely decentralized economy due to its constitutional structure. The capital is Berlin, but the financial center is certainly Frankfurt. Munich, Stuttgart and the Ruhr area are good examples. German football has long reflected this, but the modern ‘industry’ has placed FC Bayern at the top as a kind of ‘national champion’, along with BMW, Bosch, Porsche and Siemens.
Another German company, national champion Volkswagen, backs club Wolfsburg in the town of 123,000 who won the Bundesliga in 2008/09. Wolfsburg is a relatively unpopular club due to the benefits of being affiliated with VW, although its financial clout has somewhat diminished in modern times. Nevertheless, Wolfsburg are the last club to win the Bundesliga alongside Bayern and Borussia Dortmund.
In general, capital clubs have dominated leagues across Europe due to economic, political and demographic reasons. In the former Soviet Union, Moscow was a powerhouse until his 1960s, but it was not until his 1961 that Dynamo his Kyiv defeated the power of the capital on the Soviet football his scene. However, in the 1970s and 1980s teams such as Ararat Yerevan (Armenia), Dynamo Tbilisi (Georgia) and Dnipro (Ukraine) thrived, and Moscow teams rarely won silver medals.
However, since the dissolution of the federation, Russian football has won 19 of its last 30 championships from Moscow. However, clubs such as Spartak, Lokomotiv and CSKA were challenged and Zenit Sankt his Petersburg went from strength to strength with the backing of energy giant Gazprom. Future Russian title fights are likely to take place between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Outside Lisbon and Porto, Portuguese clubs have very little chance of winning a major prize.
In Portugal, he has never won a championship outside of Lisbon (57 wins) and Porto (31 wins). It’s easy to forget that Portugal is a relatively small country with a population of 10 million and a capital of 500,000. With 37 titles to his name, Benfica’s average target is over 50,000 in normal times. This is his 10% of Lisbon’s population, but the club has a ‘national’ status, with fans coming from all over Portugal. But there is no doubt that local clubs are unlikely to achieve great success. The gap between the top clubs (Benfica, Porto, Sporting) and the others is huge.
In Holland, the Eredivisie title was dominated by her four cities.
Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, The Hague. In total they have won 114 championships compared to 28 in other countries. Eindhoven is a city of 228,000 inhabitants, but PSV’s success has historically been fueled by the club’s relationship with electronics giant Philips. As a result, Eindhoven is ahead in terms of population, but Utrecht, a metropolis of 345,000, holds the title.
In other European countries, cities such as Brussels, Budapest, Istanbul, Prague and Vienna are centers of football development. In Austria, now dominated by RB Salzburg thanks to an economic stimulus from the beverage giant Red Bull, Wien won 78 of their 110 championships, but between 1911 and 1923 they fell out of the Austrian League. included only clubs in the capital. The last time a Viennese club won the Bundesliga was in 2013 (Vienna, Austria), and the last time Rapid, Austria’s most awarded club, won the Bundesliga in 2008. Sturm Graz was the last regional club before Red Bull dominated the league (2011).
Budapest has always been a great football city, but Hungarian football has declined over the past 50 years and has always struggled to recapture the golden age of the 1950s. In the 21st century, Budapest’s clubs have been challenged by rivals from Debrecen (population 202,000) and Szekesfehervar (population 98,000).
Debrecen is his second most important city in Hungary and its football club receives generous support from the government. From 2005 to 2014, Debrecen won seven titles in Hungary. Budapest, on the other hand, had a drought and never won the league from 2008 to 2015, when MTK were champions. Ferencvaros restored order in his 2016.
The Czech capital, Prague, has also faced off against the famous beer city of Viktoria Pilsen in recent years. Prague has won 66 of the 95 titles, led by Sparta and Slavia. However, his two of the most historic and illustrious names in Czech football, Dukla and Bohemian, have not lifted the crown since his 1982 and his 1983 respectively. Other cities, such as Brno (1) and Ostrava (4), did not win as many awards as might be expected.
Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey, but it is the city that dominates domestic football. Passionate as they may be, Turkish football is dominated by Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Besiktas, who have won 53 of their 63 championships.
Capital city Ankara has yet to win the title, but top flight SüperLig includes his two clubs in the city. The last team outside of Istanbul to win the championship was Bursapor in 2010. Given the economic clout of Istanbul’s Big Three, I doubt the balance of power in Turkish football will change anytime soon.
Switzerland has changed a lot in recent seasons. Young Boys His Bern has revived the idea that the Swiss capital Bern is playing an important role, and after a period of Basel dominance, from 2018 to 2021 he won his fourth title in a row. won. Zurich, Switzerland’s financial center as well as its R&D hub, has won more league titles than any other hub in Switzerland and in 2022 he hopes FC Zurich will become his 2009 I have won the title since then.
In Belgium, Bruges have won the league title three times in the past, and the most successful club has to be traced back to Anderlecht’s last title in 2017. Bruges has won his fifth in his seven years, and Anderlecht has also been challenged by Genk and Ghent. Genk, who plays an important role in the Belgian industry, has a population of 66,000, of which over 50% are foreigners. It is her third most important city in Flanders. Although the national team is strong and the country has a track record of exporting top players, Belgian clubs are struggling to compete in Europe. It is no coincidence that the clubs that have dominated the league over the last decade – Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Real Madrid and Barcelona – hail from some of Europe’s richest and most populous cities. There is none.
The achievements of smaller, modest clubs like Ipswich Town, Leicester City, Burnley, Cagliari, Verona, Lens, Kaiserslautern and Deportivo La Coruna, among others, can never be taken away. The question is, with such an emphasis on cash generating clubs from principal cities, can it really happen again?