Explaining European Football

Omar Mahmoud

If you clicked on this article, its for one of two reasons:

You are a football fan and you want to read what I am saying

You are new to football/curious about football and want to learn more

Either way; I got you.

Football all over the world is based on football clubs that “buy” players for a sum of money. Each club is based in a city. Almost every city in Europe has a club, whether it be large or small. Each club has owners, a leading system… everything. Each country has a football league system composed of every single football club in that country. There are multiple tiers in most of the countries (some countries have only 1) and each tier has a number of teams who play each other twice, once at their stadium and once away.

Now, let me get into that real quick.

Each club has a stadium in its city. Generally, the city’s population makes up the majority of the club’s supporters. When a club has its own stadium, it plays its home games there, giving it the advantage of having more fans. Away games are a disadvantage because there are fewer supporters. Fans always give the team a boost. It’s almost unexplainable. Some famous stadiums are known for absolutely destroying the away team's morale, no matter how weak the home team is. These include:

Anfield (Liverpool)
Santiago Bernabeu Stadium (Real Madrid)
Camp Nou (Barcelona)
Celtic Park (Celtic)
Signal Iduna Park (Dortmund)

As a result of fan support, the home and away system against each and every team provides a balance. The games are spread out throughout the year. Each win is worth 3 points, a draw is 1 and a loss is nothing. At the end of the season, the team with the most points wins the tier trophy. In any league other than the first, the top number of teams qualify for the league above. In the top league, the top number qualify for the Champions League. (I will talk more about European Football Tournaments in a bit). The bottom number of teams from each league (other than the last one) go down a tier. The number going up has to be the same as the number of teams going down. The switches happen at the end of the season and they play in their new league the following season.

As promised, here I will go over the UEFA Champions League (UCL). The UEFA Champions League is the biggest annual sports tournament in the entire world. The final tournament involves 32 teams, broken into 8 groups of 4, followed by a knockout stage and, finally, a final game. All games, other than the final, are based on a home and away basis and the games are spread throughout the year

Essentially, every league in Europe sends a number of the top teams to go to a round of the Champions League. The number and placement are based on the ranking of the league according to UEFA. UEFA uses a coefficient point system based on how strong the overall teams of the league are to rank them. The better your rank, the more teams you get in later rounds of the tournament. For example, the top 4 European leagues each send their top 4 teams immediately to next year’s group stage, while the worst 4 send only 1 team, their champion, to the very first qualification round. Every league gets guaranteed at least 1 club in the Premier club competition. The Champions League winner qualifies for the Club World Cup, a tournament that involves each continent's Champions League winner.

There are 2 other competitions in Europe that are lower-tiered than the UCL. The second tier, the Europa League, has been around since the start of UCL. It only takes in teams from the top 18 leagues in Europe, unlike the UCL which takes from all Therefore, realistically, a club from San Marino, the worst league, could feature in the group stage. Unlikely, but possible.

The Europa League offers a chance for the top leagues to send their slightly worse teams. Finally, there is the newly made Europa Conference league which involves mostly the worst leagues. So, the lower-ranked leagues send in more teams than in the other 2 competitions, while the top leagues send significantly fewer. For example, England only has one representative in the UECL.

There you have it. European football explained simply. If you have any questions let me know.

Page layout by Lily Patterson

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