World Football Thread 2025/26

[Voll Blau]

On 25/05/2026 at 21:56, Dan said:

The Bundesliga team has survived 15 times out of 17 since it's inception.

 

German football is really peculiar with the performance of bigger clubs vs smaller. Lots of decent sized clubs seem to be permanently rubbish while you get small ones frequently making it to the Bundesliga and even Europe.

Rot-Weiss Essen failed to get up from the 3 Liga too.

[Dan]

2 hours ago, Voll Blau said:

Rot-Weiss Essen failed to get up from the 3 Liga too.

Imagine you tell a Dusseldorf fan after that first leg two years ago that they'll kick 2026 off in the third tier.

 

Reminds me of...

[shen]

On 10/05/2026 at 18:35, VinceNoir said:

In Denmark, my hometown club Aarhus GF are on the way to their first title in 40 years. Just need one win in the last two games and currently leading 2-0 away at Steve Cooper’s Brøndby. 

The surprising aspect is not that they won this year, where FC Copenhagen have been historically bad and Brøndby appointed Cooper ('nuff said), while Midtjylland have just dropped the ball time and again despite their Europa League heroics. It's that it's taken them 40 years to do so.
I've never understood how the biggest club from the second-largest city, with a football-crazed fan base, a large-ish stadium and some proper players, never ever looked like contenders for much of the past few decades.

 

On 17/05/2026 at 15:27, Super_horns said:

This probably sounds familiar!!

 

A Danish version?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c794ly3lzjeo

Nah. Because one (clueless) punter thought they'd get relegated doesn't make it remotely close to our story. This is more akin to Spurs I feel.

 

On 24/05/2026 at 23:52, MC Prussian said:

Nice and Saint-Etienne battling over two legs for the last Ligue 1 spot next week.

I mean, this could easily have been a European playoff game judged by the size and pedigree of those clubs! 

[Finnegan]

On 25/05/2026 at 21:56, Dan said:

The Bundesliga team has survived 15 times out of 17 since it's inception.

 

German football is really peculiar with the performance of bigger clubs vs smaller. Lots of decent sized clubs seem to be permanently rubbish while you get small ones frequently making it to the Bundesliga and even Europe.

 

Almost like hugely curbing billionaire owners and (mostly) enforcing a majority fan ownership is generally better for creating a more even playing field. 

 

[Sir Steve Howard]

1 hour ago, Finnegan said:

 

Almost like hugely curbing billionaire owners and (mostly) enforcing a majority fan ownership is generally better for creating a more even playing field. 

 

Yet Bayern stomp the league almost every year and their summer transfer policy = buy the best player from nearest rivals from latest season.

PSG in different format and even at the bottom, 15/17 strongly hints at huge disparity between leagues.

There are a lot of positive things about German football yet the Bundesliga is about as boring as it gets unfortunately.

[Finnegan]

4 minutes ago, Sir Steve Howard said:

Yet Bayern stomp the league almost every year and their summer transfer policy = buy the best player from nearest rivals from latest season.

PSG in different format and even at the bottom, 15/17 strongly hints at huge disparity between leagues.

There are a lot of positive things about German football yet the Bundesliga is about as boring as it gets unfortunately.

 

Yeah there's still obviously problems at the very top. The biggest though isn't exactly a problem with German football specifically it's the fact they don't exist purely in a bubble. The Champions League is such a ridiculous cash cow and being one of Europe's biggest clubs these days brings in absolutely gigantic revenue from overseas. Bayern are playing with the money cheats on relative to the other clubs. 

 

It wasn't always like that. Yes, they've always been one of the most succesful clubs but if you wind the clock back to before the millennium and look at the winners of the Bundesliga it's a much different picture. It's Bayern passing the title back and forth with Kaiserslauten, Stuttgart, Dortmund, Bremen, Hamburg, Koln, Gladbach and Co for decades. 

 

But everywhere below Bayern its still very variable. I can't think of another of Europe's major footballing countries where such big clubs routinely drop to the second tier and relative village teams pass them in the opposite direction. 

 

[fox_up_north]

2 hours ago, Finnegan said:

 

Yeah there's still obviously problems at the very top. The biggest though isn't exactly a problem with German football specifically it's the fact they don't exist purely in a bubble. The Champions League is such a ridiculous cash cow and being one of Europe's biggest clubs these days brings in absolutely gigantic revenue from overseas. Bayern are playing with the money cheats on relative to the other clubs. 

 

It wasn't always like that. Yes, they've always been one of the most succesful clubs but if you wind the clock back to before the millennium and look at the winners of the Bundesliga it's a much different picture. It's Bayern passing the title back and forth with Kaiserslauten, Stuttgart, Dortmund, Bremen, Hamburg, Koln, Gladbach and Co for decades. 

I watched a video on this and apparently it's to do with Bayern setting themselves up a limited commercial entity somewhere around 2001, with a base in the US. Sure there was an Athletic video on it. 

 

They basically became a commercial juggernaut fairly quickly

[Finnegan]

1 hour ago, fox_up_north said:

I watched a video on this and apparently it's to do with Bayern setting themselves up a limited commercial entity somewhere around 2001, with a base in the US. Sure there was an Athletic video on it. 

 

They basically became a commercial juggernaut fairly quickly

 

Exactly, yeah. They're basically the Manchester United or Real Madrid of Germany. Even without the Champions League money they'd be massive. 

 

In the mid-late 90s to early 00s when the sport started to blow up massively globally and the commercialism of the sport started reaching new levels, those clubs really lead the charge and started gaining masses of followers all round the world. 

 

There'll be decent sized Bayern fan clubs in probably well over half the countries in the world. 

 

[MC Prussian]

It‘s Brescia vs. Ascoli for the last Serie B spot.

[AKCJ]

Insane stat for a player of his calibre...

 

Of the 6,044 outfield players to play in the top 20 rated leagues. Only one player averages fewer defensive contributions per 90 than Kylian Mbappe.

 

Think about the likes of Bouba Soumare and Jordan Ayew. Mbappe is lazier than them.

 

[StanSP]

10 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

Think about the likes of Bouba Soumare and Jordan Ayew. Mbappe is lazier than them.

I'd rather not think them of them any more thank you very much. 

[JimJams]

12 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

Insane stat for a player of his calibre...

 

Of the 6,044 outfield players to play in the top 20 rated leagues. Only one player averages fewer defensive contributions per 90 than Kylian Mbappe.

 

Think about the likes of Bouba Soumare and Jordan Ayew. Mbappe is lazier than them.

 

Who's the one lazy fxxker in Ecuador?