Getting into European Football

What is European Football?

In Europe, Football is a whole different sport than our American Football starting with the name itself. What they call Football is known as Soccer over in the America. There are more than 24 teams in the country, and over a hundred in the UK alone but, how does that work? The country as a whole is broken up into multiple leagues that have about 20 teams in each that move up down in the rankings after each season. But are the rankings and how do they work? The ranking system has a primary league that have the best 20 like the premier league but if they cannot keep up with the rest the get relegated the league under it that is called the championship. What is Relegation? Relegation is a term that means a transfer of a sports team to a lower division, but this doesn’t mean it’s over, while some teams get relegated other teams that are in the Championship could be promoted to the Premier League.

What team you cheer on is completely up to you and your preferences. Every team has a story, some have more of an entertaining history than others for those not from the UK. Some of the big Premier League in the 2023 and 2024 season are teams like Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham, and Chelsea. Some other teams that could be cheered for that are doing good this season are teams like Aston Villa and Brighton which are teams that a couple of years ago were mid table teams that built up a squad that can play on a larger European scale. And other teams that have strong fans are teams like West Ham and Crystal Palace.

There are other leagues in Europe that have many good teams with good players in them too. Spain’s league LaLiga has very notable teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid. And Italy’s League Serie A has some more major teams like Inter Milan, Napoli, Ac Milan, and Juventus. A league with few power houses is Germany’s Bundesliga with Dortmund, Leverkusen, and Bayern. And to the final of the main five European Leagues is Frances’s league named Ligue 1 with Monaco, Lille, and PSG. All of these leagues and teams go by the same rules as England’s Leagues, not including organizations from Portugal and the Netherlands which shows many other teams.

All of these Leagues bring the best teams from the past season to play in European Tournament to show the best from their standing like the Champions, Europa, and the Europa Conference League which puts teams from a group stage to a bracket system just like our NFL playoffs but for most Games they have to parts. These parts are called legs where if in leg one a team loses by two then in leg two the team that lost would have to win by three two moves on to the next stage.

How many teams there are which team should you cheer on now? Personally, I’d look for players, locations, history, and even colors that stand out to you so that it’s not random and it is something that you can like personally. Switching teams though isn’t really a liked concept because it like betraying your home but a plus about being from the U.S. is that we can’t relate location wise (Unless Family) to these locations.

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