Soccer Blog

Is the English Premier League the best league in the world?

A lot of people think that the English Premier League is the most richest, exciting and most watched league in the world. They may be right in saying that it is the richest and possibly most watched, but when it comes to the most exciting league in the world I tend to disagree.

Yes, ok it has some of the best players in the world playing in it, but that doesn’t mean its the most exciting league in the world. Take the title race as an example. Year in year out we see the same group of teams challenging for the same position in the league table. Each season you will see Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool challenging for the top four positions in the English Premier League. This has to be the dullest scenario to a season ever. We always see the same teams in a relegation battle as well, not that they can help it that is. Now I don’t support a Premier League team, in fact I can’t stand any of them, but I do watch it from time to time, basically because i’m a football fan and its football at the end of the day. So as an unbiased person I can honestly say that there are far more exciting leagues in the world than the English Premier League. You’ve even got lower leagues in England that are more exciting. I support Grimsby Town, they play in League Two. Not all games are pretty, but thats not expected at that level, however each game is exciting and each game is unpredictable, unlike the English Premier League where when a top team plays a lower team you can guess the outcome and 99% of the time it happens. Not in League Two, a top of the table team could play the bottom of the table team and get thrashed. Other leagues such as the La Liga or Serie A are similar to League Two.

I’m not saying there aren’t exciting games in the English Premier League, i’m just trying to point out that the people who say it is the most exciting league in the world need to wake up and smell the coffee. Oh and the FA need to cut the number of foreign players playing in England down as well, but I won’t go into that, i’ll leave it for another day.

So last week saw the next England manager named, Fabio Cappello was the lucky manager. The Italian has a great list of trophies and titles he’s won to his name, but can’t speak a word of English. At a press conference today he assured England fans that he would learn the language in a month, it can be done, he learnt Spanish in a month when he joined Real Madrid.

He was a favorite to become the manager from the moment Steve McLaren was sacked, along with Jose Mourinho and Marcello Lippi. Many wanted former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho as the new manager after what they saw of him during his time in the English Premier League. However, he neither said he wanted the job, nor did he say he didn’t want it.

Cappello was given a four year contract, which, should he stay in the job for that length would take him up until the European Championships of 2012. Many fans have criticised the lengths of contracts the FA give out to new England managers, as we saw with Eriksson and McLaren, and the amount they ended up paying to both of them in compensation.

Whatever anyone thinks of having an oversee’s manager as the manager of England, one thing is for sure we can expect Cappello to make the players in his squad proud to pull on the England football shirt and also play with passion. Cappello is a rather defensive manager, he doesn’t like to play attacking football, so we can expect to see less goals, but also expect to see less goals conceded. Cappello has a few games to try out his new squad before the World Cup Qualifiers star. He has a few games to tinker with the formation and choose his best tram.

Cappello said he would not be afraid to drop the big players in the team should they not be pulling their wieght, which will be good news to England fans ears.

Whatever your thoughts on Cappello, he is sure one hell of a capture for England, and hopefully his promise that he will win us the World Cup in 2010 will be true.

Yesterday was d-day for the England football team. It was the day they would learn their Euro 2008 fate. Would they go into the Croatia match on Wednesday knowing a win would take them through to the Euro 2008 finals, or would they go into it dejected and out of the running to qualify for the tournament.

It all came down to the Israel-Russia match. If Israel beat Russia then England would still be in with a chance to qualify, in fact qualification would be in their hands. Should Russia beat Israel however and England could kiss goodbye to any chance of going to Austria, Switzerland for the Euro 2008 tournament.

All English eyes were fixed on the Russia game. Israel scored first in the first half, but had a torrid time in the second half. The Russians battered the defence of Israel and socred an equaliser. However, a draw would still mean England could qualify. In the last 5 minutes of the game, Russia were very close to winning it, but a brave Israel defence stood firm and held out. Israel hit Russia on the counter attack in the dying minutes and snatched what was to be an unlikely 2-1 victory to keep England’s hopes of qualification alive.

We can thank Israel all we like, but the fact of the matter is, we should never have been relying on them to do us a favor. We should have been top and crusing to the finals, however we now go into Wednesday crunch game with Croatia knowing we need to get either a draw or a win to qualify. We go into the match without star striker Michael Owen, who picked up an injury in England’s friendly on Friday with Austria. It comes as a huge blow to McClaren who now must decide whether to play out of form Jermain Defoe or Darren Bent or to call up a young striker like Theo Walcott to partner Peter Crouch.

One thing is for sure, we never give ourselves an easy passage into tournaments.

Roll on Wednesday, i’m sure they’ll be a few sore heads on Thursday morning whatever the outcome of the previous night’s game!

So, who ever puts on the England football shirt on Wednesday needs to play with passion and pride to get us into the European Championships.