Why is the EPL the best league in the world?

I'm going to take the approach that this is a poll to rate the most common response from that round-up of managers' grabs Sky Sports do in those years when more than one team has got into the last four of the CL (always featuring at the v least McLeish, Pulis, Allardyce), in which case the answer is p much always 'How the game is played there' with a bit of 'the biggest stars play there'. The underpinning of the first being the usual narrative of unchanging English mud and garryowens remaining at the core throughout the game's history and into the EPL, the second paradoxically balancing that with a sense of glittering expensive continental flair. And for all it being an irritating cliche that is probably untrue in many ways and wrong in terms of historical detail it also seems about right to me, idk, the last match I went to see was Brentford-Colchester so.

i'd like to say nobody outside England but i doubt that's true, sadly. the EPL seems well marketed worldwide now and i guess the combo of high tempo, flaky flair players and inept defending/tactics makes for some v. entertaining fitba. entertaining like wrestling entertaining.

so i don't know how to vote? maybe the soap opera, maybe, for the reasons i just said, how the game is played here.

Technique

which reminds me, i saw an ad for this the other day in Fleet Tesco

http://www.princeshall.com/article/5379/All-Star-Super-Slam-Wrestling

thinking of going.

yeah, i p certain there are lots and lots of people outside England who do think it's true.

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc6/211166_225964567472574_1480771554_n.jpg

sorry, not trying to derail.

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/lol_zps59a2b463.jpg

It's either passantino on xanax or sam on speed

Think it has to be the soap opera angle for me, though I say that with the caveat that it's as much about on-pitch narratives as the crap that goes on in the news. Thing is, I suppose every fan of every single league in the world will have this relationship with the sport on some level. It's just that the vast amounts of money and prestige and starpower in the top leagues enables the stories to get correspondingly huger. Perhaps I should be voting for a couple of these options.

The supreme example of this has to be Chelsea last season (aware this is primarily a CL story rather than a PL one as such, but as a Premier League team the prestige goes to the league etc. and a large part of it was to do with how bad they were in the league). But the reason this is better than any soap opera is because it is just SO much more complex than any soap could realistically be. That couple of weeks where Chelsea went on their cup runs felt at the time like the culmination of almost a decade's worth of storylines, and the fans knew them all. They don't lose interest after a 6 month arc the way Corrie or Eastenders fans tend to. I mean if we take just a few points -

- the end of Roman Abramovich's mighty quest for the biggest trophy in the world. and after all the sackings and the close-but-no-cigars and the money thrown at the problem, for it to be the same old guard that everyone had written off, being led by club legend, patented Bad Manager Bobby Di Matteo FFS

- John Terry finally letting the club down big time (no honest mistakes here) when it really mattered, allowing loveable doofus sidekick Neville Longbottom (sorry, Frank Lampard) to courageously step up and do what the big bullying number 1 couldnt, stepping out from JT's shadow at long last

- Didier Drogba slaying the monster, saving the world and getting the girl before riding off into the sunset in a blaze of eternal glory, like fucking John Travolta in Grease or some shit

- Fernando Torres' fleeting redemption as he overcame the yips in spectacular style to put away the official Sky Sports BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD EVER back on his old hunting ground.

- legitimate BEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD EVER Leo Messi's inability to stick the ball in the net against Chelsea coming back to haunt him with that penalty

- the pleasingly World War narrative of an inferior English team overcoming two of the three greatest superpowers of the continent against truly absurd odds, with nothing more or less than blood, sweat and tears to match the vastly superior footballing abilities of their opponents - most importantly, the all conquering FC Barcelona coming up short not once but twice against a brutally defensive Chelsea side - a triumph for good English grit over those swanky foreigners (let's not talk about when Inter did the same thing tho)

Sorry, I'm rambling, and I'm aware that this is a misleading example. The narratives in EPL this season have largely been terrible (QPR most interesting team around?). But essentially what I'm trying to get at is that it's all about the soap opera element. That doesn't set the EPL apart necessarily, I think that'll be true in a lot of leagues. But wed the story to the huge amounts of money and prestige that's lying around the EPL, and you get scenarios like the Chelsea one, where the sense of scale is HUGE. Best form of continuous rolling entertainment you're gonna find anywhere, who cares if the quality is low and teams can't defend? Just makes it more fun for all involved.

the epl is evidently not 'the best' in any more than some recherché volkist-spiritual sense for english people and children from malaysia

epl supremacism became codifed circa 2007 and derived from the 'most cl semifinalists' metric, which looked better than 'most cl winners' given that even during the epl's augustan phase from 2005-2010 there were as many serie a winners

now it rests upon the 'most competitive' 'most strength in depth' 'most real' etc, though all the hilarious woundedness when not a single epl player was named in the fifa xi a couple of months ago shows that is does bother epl plebs that all of the money haemorrhaged offshore has yielded very few really elite players

it is nonetheless better now than it has ever been, fewer truly dreadful british style teams (disregarding relative success of everton lately), the epl is becoming less like accelerated brownian motion and more deterministic (number of passes/game has increased >10% in the last half decade or so)

the number and importance of english franchise players is declining further and there are now at least seven or eight teams who can play fitba

somehow i have got tired of watching real madrid / barcelona home games and even though atleti, malaga, valencia etc are fine teams, so although i watched more primera liga six/seven years ago, right now i watch more epl.....partly for reasons above but more because of the paratextual elements, epl has the best paratext in the world and a lot of that is thanks to you, ilx

I don't support any of the clubs, I don't even like any of the clubs but unfortunately it is unavoidable. I didn't watch English football when I was growing up, Scottish football was interesting then!

Watch less English football now than I have ever done tbh. Couldn't even be arsed to watch the last 3 MOTD's I recorded. Think the only epl games I've seen in 2013 are a game and a half of QPR.

Been missing a lot of MOTD's too actually. I keep making the mistake of watching the Villa game on a stream each weekend. Guaranteed that by the time it's finished I'm not in the mood for any more football that day. Tend to catch both games on a Sunday though, not got much else on atm

Xp if i drank only shit coffee i'd dislike coffee but i mean

other leagues shit games are not as funny as epl shit games

I was probably thinking mostly about the epl's global preëminence as seen from the outside because it's hard to tell from the eye of the storm; but that probably only leaves boxall, jibe and LBI, so vote as you see fit.

Windsor nailing it tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--CdA8IhE6Q

I could maybe have collapsed 'best clubs' and 'football culture' into one option - I don't suppose regard for Hackney Marshes figures highly in the world's regard for the epl, whereas this guy can imagine himself a gooner. Maybe only hooligan fetishists could point to a general love separate from Big Club X, and that's been long ironed out of the story.

I reckon the full grounds and noise must be a decent selling-point though.

'end to end' fitba and aggro atmosphere are less important than marketing reasons

homogenous, well presented, predictable product (like no disputes over whether the season will start on time as in spain)

games played at convenient times for overseas audience

maybe most importantly, foreign epl benefits from english speaking population in usa, india, se asia etc with natural affinity for anglo products, secondary coverage in a language they understand, can follow domestic fitba blather from afar......germany or italy have a layer of alienation here

I'm not sure, end-to-end and blood-and-guts (not that there's so much of the latter anymore) does make for a spectacle that you don't have to be particularly sophisticated, or even a football fan, to enjoy. I'm thinking of the Chinese bloke next to me at the 'Nal-Spurs 5-2 last season, who only turned up at half-time, spent the whole 45 minutes on his mobile, yet jumped up & down at every goal having the time of his life.

I doubt that type of fan is as drawn to a tactically compelling Serie A nil-nil.

yes because that is exactly representative of the difference between the two leagues

Serie A's taken a slapstick turn recently in fairness, but it hardly trades on it

and i think you have conflated the 'naive foreign epl viewer' archetype with someone who actually bought a ticket to watch arsenal and could have been the architect of the sinosophere's most devoted carl jenkinson tumblr page for all you knew

Indeed, but if he lives for Jenk you'd think he'd've turned up on time

though yes, I accept he may have been dictating liveblog copy

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i'll have to agree with nakh's answer. living in asia, the only football games you get at decent hours are the english ones. the epl is also damn good at marketing itself, organising summer tours in asia, sponsoring mr potato crisps (god how i loved going to the supermaket and seeing rooney's ugly face on bags of crisps). i really need to put up some of the pictures of very random sponsored items i saw here and there some are hilarious. this is a self-sustaining cycle - you only see the epl, keep hearing that it's the best league in the world, so you want to watch only the epl, where you keep hearing it's the best league in the world and so on.

tbh though, in my random conversations with malaysian taxi drivers sporting arsenal, liverpool, manU/C, chelsea flags in their cars, most would agree that the best team and player in the world were barcelona+messi. but not only are the games at horrible times (clasico starting at 10pm in spain= 5am in malaysia), the other feeling is that there's only those two teams. la liga really suffers from this impression there's a lack of competition, whereas the epl has 4-5 teams who look like they can compete (even though who are we kidding, manU/C are the only likely winners).

haha i remembered you were in malaysia, home of ilx favourite and old trafford hoardings staple MISTER POTATO, but i never put the two together

not in malaysia anymore, though i hope to get back there soon, but the mr potato thing was really hilarious. my other favorite was a branded "manchester united champions roll-on deodorant". i've yet to come across any funny epl marketing in india but i'm sure i'll find some soon enough.

the intensely shouty trailers for the 'liverpool vs chelsea' nollywood film from a few years back seemed like one of the more potent foreign reimaginings of the epl

germany or italy have a layer of alienation here

I only have Freeview, whereas it seems like a few of the football nuts here seem to have access to every major league in the world, but I always try to catch the Bundesliga higlights show, which is on where... ITV4? Think I'd rather watch the Bundesliga than have the Premiership rammed down my gullet 24/7. Also I like how the big Teutonic blonde they've got to present it doesn't speak very good English, I mean out of all the big Teutonic blondes they could have hired in Germany....

Ive got setanta, espn as part of my cable bundle. I would use the brother's sky go but it's total shit so i stream anything else. CL is rte. Tbh i dont watch that much footy tho.

How the game is played there - lol no.
The rolling soap opera off the pitch - depressing rather than entertaining for the past couple of years
The biggest stars play there - manifestly untrue
It has the best clubs - manifestly untrue except Spurs obviously
England's football culture - being priced out of Premiership games
Because you can't avoid it - probably, also y'know it's here, I'd never be able to get the same level of emotional attachment to any other league even if I watched it every week
nobody outside England thinks it's tblitw - not true either

We've already discussed this tho iirc, in direct relation to why england has tblitw but are shit internationally. It's the addiction to thundering melodrama thing.

England's football culture - and this is different from anyone else's in what way?

Also the soap opera element isn't exactly a novelty in world football

There are some ways I think - more people going to games (the Championship is the real unique thing here), fan culture (though this is a residue of the dark days and dying of old age shortly imo), home of football (Wembley in particular seems to inspire slightly bewildering reverence), perception of fair play (Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker, maybe Beckham even)

Don't know the stats on yr first point, the rest is bollocks tho

Gary Lineker? The guy whose diving brought England to the verge of World Cup glory in 1990?

The Championship is something like the fourth-best-attended league in Europe iirc

Eh and hold on - those Cameroon ones weren't penalties?

I don't remember exactly which penalties he dived for tbh. There is a missing option in the is poll, "Because we say we are".

              average       total
Bundesliga   45,179  13,805,496
EPL           34,601  13,148,465
La Liga       30,275  11,504,567
Championship  17,738   9,791,690
Serie A       23,459   7,765,082

The really impressive thing about that poll is the Bundesliga averages! That's a big gap to second place.

I believe the depth of support in English football and the following of the lower leagues is stronger than elsewhere in Europe but let's not pretend The Best League In The World is concerned with that.

Bundesliga stadia still have terraces, which is a big part of it.

Actually Bundesliga 2 pushes the Championship close in average attendance, but has much fewer games so the total is only a bit over half.

(xp) and it's cheaper too?

Just to be clear, not a person posting here believes that the epl is 'the best league in the world', which is a very different thing than tblitw.

itt ppl pretend like last season wasn't the most ridiculous gripping fun

this season is the nasty hangover though i'll grant u

tbh the epl is blitw a bit by default? to most people, la liga is two teams and 18 sparring partners, bundesliga= bayern and 17 other teams with unwieldy names and then there's serie A, whose claim to greatness lies more in its past than current situation.

The grass is literally greener

Tempo

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

On Mancini's future Quinn added: "It's hard to say Mancini is not the right man. He's brought the title there after all these years.

"In any sane, civilised league, you would think he would be given more time but the Premier League is the most high-powered, fascinating, atmospherically-charged league in the world and with that comes the price to be paid for managers looking for time."

Get that man a sub-editor.

every time i hear 'EPL' now i think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg5amJgH7sc

suggest that NBC nix this 'BPL' shit and shore up the EDL name with gritty intertitles of remedial trash grunting E E EPL

11 likes 11 dislikes, a nation divided

good chant though, and I note the uploader takes his name from an SL2 banger

the bobbling transparent plastic umbrella as favoured by some elderly shoppers near me is the dark heart of that vid.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3308370/Leicester-City-s-match-ball-delivered-helicopter-Premier-League-clubs-mark-Remembrance-Sunday-poppy-displays.html

tragically 239 fans were subsequently shot for deserting their post before the half time whistle

I love all these clubs and am so glad that they took the time to celebrate this hard earned golden era of international world peace that we currently live in thanks to our armed forces. Ranieri looks a bit spooked, maybe a spectral El Duce was giving him some gyp!