World Soccer: I need a pro team to follow

A good and exciting question, thank you very much for asking us.

First of all, I don't know how much you know, so excuse me if I say things you're familiar with already. Besides, I'm not going to tell you which team to support, because most of the fun will be to find one for yourself.

Compared to the simplicity of American team sport seasons (one competition to rule them all, whoever wins is the Undisputed Champion Of Everything), European soccer has got lots of prizes on offer. English and European Champions Manchester United, for example, will be contesting seven different trophies in 2008-9, two of them (the Charity Shield and the European Super Cup) involving just one game, as curtain-raisers to the English and European season, and another tournament involving just two games (the Club World Cup, for the right to be named best in the world).

European countries have got two competitions: the League and the Cup. The league is the most important of the two, and in it the best teams in the country (usually between 16 and 20, although in some contries there are less teams) play each other twice. The team with the most points at the end is the League champion and reckoned the best team in the nation. The bottom teams are relegated to the second division and replaced by the best from that second tier. The best teams in each country's league (from some countries just one, from others as many as four, depending on the league's ranking) qualify for the following season's Champions League, where the best teams in the continent play to be the European Champion, at the same time as they play another league and cup in their country. The Champions League is played in group stages followed by elimination rounds, home and away, until the final, played in a neutral venue. There is a second continent-wide competition for the 'best of the rest' called the UEFA Cup, a kind of second division in Europe.

The national Cup is an elimination competition running parallel to these two. This is open to more than just the 20 best teams in the country. Some countries restrict the rest of the entrants to professional teams and others allow many other teams. In this competition the excitement comes from the constant threat of elimination, often at the hands of lesser opposition, what is called 'giant-killing'. In the league you can recover after a bad game. In the Cup you can't, so the best team doesn't always win it.

Some countries have two cup competitions, which leads to a quite crowded fixture list. In England, for example, the teams involved in European competition tend to play teams full of reserves and young players at least in the early rounds of this second cup, the League Cup.

So, all of this can be quite a bit to take in. If you throw in international games played by the national teams (from September, qualification games for the 2010 World Cup), you can find players playing four different competitions in four consecutive matches.

If you have time for only one thing, follow the Champions League. It's just the NBA of soccer. All players in the world play in it or want to play in it, and if any don't, there's a reason why: they're not good enough yet, they tried and failed, their team didn't make it and he couldn't transfer to a team that did... It's the place to be.

Besides, it's a competition in which any team from up to 10-12 clubs have a realistic chance of winning it, and it is impossible to predict which one will. Since this format was started in 1993, no team has retained the trophy.

In Europe there isn't a draft system to help balance teams, so usually the same teams dominate the national leagues year after year, buying the best players from the rest, winning more titles, which helps them buy the best again, etc. It is not impossible to break these dynasties up, but it happens rarely.

The leagues to watch are Spain, England and Italy. If you can follow them as well as the Champions League you'll get the whole pciture of European football, as what happens in one competition can affect what happens in the rest: an injury, a sacked manager, a refereeing scandal... They're the top 3 leagues, as ranked by UEFA, and their top teams have the best players in the world. If you take the top 4 in England (Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea, both from London), the top 3 in Italy (Juventus of Turin, Internazionale of Milan and AC Milan), the top two in Spain (Real Madrid and Barcelona) and the top 1 in Germany (Beyern Munich), those 10 teams consistently have the best players in the world, and if there's a good one somewhere else, he'll be signed up asap, or there will be something iffy with him. If you're going for glamour and real chances of winning trophies, your choice of team might come from one of these.

The German, French, Portuguese and Dutch leagues usually come next. Their teams can give any of the top clubs a good fright and have slipped through won the title on occasion. Olympique Lyonnais are dominant in France (seven straight league titles), Porto, and Benfica and Sporting, both from Lisbon, are the best in Portugal, and Ajax of Amsterdam, Feyenoord of Rotterdam and PSV of Eindhoven dominate in the Netherlands, a country renowned with producing brilliant players who then move on abroad. The best players from world powers Brazil and Argentina also play in Europe.

The rest of Europe struggles to be noticed in the Champions League. Greek and Turkish teams do well every now and then, but they usually just make up the numbers. A chance to shine might come in the lesser competition, the UEFA Cup, in which a Russian team beat a Scottish one in this year's final.

This is your short guide to the European game. As for which team to follow, I think that will come naturally to you by watching games. For example, Russia's best player at Euro 2008, Andrei Arshavin, has just said that he always liked FC Barcelona, of Spain. When he was 11 Barcelona were European Champions, reached another final two years later, and had a team and a style of play may fans in Europe still remember. And now he might just get himself signed by Barcelona.

This happens very often: each fan has a liking for a team in his own country and a sympathy for the dominant team in the continent when he started to watch football. In any interview you read you will hear players talk about their favourite teams being Liverpool, Real Madrid, Milan or Ajax depending on their age.

So I recommend you do the same. Watch, see what you like, and of course, read World Soccer.

One thing I'd recommend you, being American, is that you use your roots, which could be fun. Unless you're 100 per cent Native American, your ancestors, somewhere up in the family tree, came from somewhere else. Find out about it and support the teams from where they came from. You might even have your own Champions League to choose from, if you have people from different countries in it. It will teach you something about yourself as well as help you enjoy the footie.

Cheers and welcome.

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