Best League in the World?
Sao Paulo´s victory in the World Club Championship this morning kicked off a small debate amongst us as to which League is the best in the World. The obvious candidates are the Spanish, Italian and English leagues, but with Sao Paulo as World Club Champions, should the Brazilian League be included in the debate too?
Admittedly, the European teams have all the best Brazilian players. Yet some of the football we had seen over the last few months had contained just as much skill and passion as any of the major European leagues and now they had proved themselves as World Club Champions.
Doug argued that the World Club Championship isn´t taken seriously in Europe, but while this may be true, it probably isn´t fair. It´s certainly taken seriously in Brazil as a chance to prove that their teams are every bit as good as the better promoted and better paid teams of Europe.
Perhaps another reason that South American leagues in general aren´t taken as seriously by Europeans is down to the rumours of corruption and scandal that inevitably devalue the teams. Still, with any luck, Brazilian teams are putting this behind them and futher, having now adopted the European League system (with the team with the most points winning the Championship) I think that European clubs should be giving a lot more respect to their South American counterparts and to the result of the World Club Championship.
The Brazilian League might not be the best in the World right now, but with continued sponsorship, the right media coverage and a shift in opinion, there´s no reason why it couldn´t challenge for the title in the future; it certainly has the potential.
posted by Finn Carver @ 9:30 PM
2 Comments:
Why should allegations of corruption that happen behind the scene affect the way that the style and quality of football is perceived on the pitch? Surely its what happens on the pitch that matters not what happens in the boardroom. If they were taking performance enhancing drugs that would be a different matter.
If there is corruption within the government and within boardrooms, then there is always a possibility that this could translate onto the pitch via player or referee bungs. This season´s scandal with several games being re-played as a result of referee match-fixing is a prime example.
Further, events such as Fluminense´s recent, unjustified jump from the Third to the First Division verges on the ridiculous. If the leagues themselves are a joke, and games don´t really mean anything, then how can the football be taken seriously?
Hopefully, this kind of event is firmly in the past now and the World´s attention can be cast solely on the great football being played here.
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