"Understanding European Soccer in Four Simple Steps: A Guide For Americans" | reaction 

For fans of a team near the bottom of the league, avoiding the relegation spots is an exciting but nerve wracking experience. Finishing just 1 point above the the cut off on the last game of the season can feel almost as good as being champions.

Relegation is the best thing about our football. It means the teams are in that league are there on merit, and not on reputation or just be default

Aw man, "bad" timing, because UEFA decided to change the Champions League playing format precisely this season (24/25). It's completely different than what it's said in the video! 😅

In England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, after the industrial revolution, each large business had its own members only social club/ bar/pub and a football, a rugby, and a cricket team which the employees would use and be a part of. Modern football, rugby, and cricket grew out of this cultural/social tradition, which is why people are so attached and passionate about their clubs

The main thing is, "Jumpers for Goal Posts."

There are over 40,000 clubs in England, with over 7,000 of those in the Football Pyramid System which has 11 Levels. Only the Top 4 of the Pyramid are considered to be Professional Leagues, with the Premier League at the top followed by the 3 English Football League (EFL) Leagues. These are called The Championship, League One and League Two. Below them is the National League, even though it's not technically considered a professional league, 21 of the 24 teams are pro with only 3 being semi-pro. Being relegated from there is when the League starts to "Pyramid" in shape with the National League North and National League South being equal on Level. It continues to split up into smaller regions as you get lower down the pyramid levels. Any Levels below the official 11 are county level leagues and aren't managed by the FA but on a local level by County FAs of which there are 50. The oldest football competition in the world is the FA Cup. A knockout tournament in which all teams from Levels 1-9 are invited to play (sometimes Level 10 teams if Level 9s reject the offer).

The prmotions and relegations happen at the end of each season between the lowest score on the upper dvision relegated and the highers scoring in the division below promoted

In England, there are 4 professional 'leagues', better known as divisions. The top division is the Premier League, with 20 clubs. The 2nd division is called the Championship, with 24 clubs. The 3rd division is called, confusingly, League One and also has 24 teams. The 4th and final professional division is League Two, also 24 teams. The top division is run by the Premier League organisation itself. The 2nd , 3rd and 4th divisions form what's known as the English Football League. Below that are semi-professional leagues also called non-league football. There are 57 leagues featuring a total of 84 divisions across England which provide a feeder system through to the EFL. And that's just England. Scotland and Wales have their own leagues!!!

In England rather than just promote 3 teams, 2 get promoted and the next 4 go into playoffs, ending with a single match at Wembley to decide the third and final place, which is a massive game.

As europian fan I salute you, young smart lady for only non europian RU-vidr who actually understand this video perfectly corect.

NIT is the National Invitation Tournament for college basketball. At one time it was the biggest tournament for college basketball but eventually the NCAA March Madness Tournament surpassed it. The NIT is now generally considered to be the other tournament for teams that were not good enough to make the March Madness Tournament.

Relegation and Promotion happens every year, it’s not done on comparative performance between different leagues but the bottom three of League 1 are relegated and top 3 of League 2 are promoted (numbers and specifics vary between leagues but the principle is always the same).

Promoted teams do not "outperform" the relegated teams. They have to outperform other sides in their own Division. Recently one Club:Norwich City had 6 successive seasons and it went:- Promotion, Relegation, Promotion, Relegation, Promotion, Relegation....LOL

We call the tiers of leagues in England, "The Football Pyramid". It contains 7000 teams ish. The further you go down the pyramid the more complicated it gets because theres more leagues on a given level. Hence pyramid. (The first 5 levels i think a league covers the coutry, next level has north/south league, next level divides the coutry in quarters and 4 leagues etc etc etc down the pyramid.

All leagues don't have these time periods, Sweden for example goes from April to November and we have fewer teams in the top division due to shorter seasons. We do not really have the climate for deep winter football. think Norway does something similar.

Players and teams have a very long season on England.. August to May with either 38(Premier) or 46 games matches PLUS The F A Cup matches PLUS The(unmentioned) League Cup games PLUS their team's European matches,if their Club finished in The Top 6 in the previous season. Besides the European Champions League, there are also 2 other European Club events: The Europa Cup and The Conference League. AFTER ALL THAT during the summer, every other year there is either The World Cup or Euros when players represent their country! Then Pre Season Tours and Friendlies and before you know it,we are off for another season:)

She gives other peoples comments a like, why cant she give my comment a like! She breaks my heart every time!🥺❤️

I'd argue that there are some basic rules that are far more important to understand for making football interesting to watch. The offside rule, video assistant rule, financial fair play rule and substitute rules being the ones that come to mind. Worth finding a video on interesting EPL rules.

A former coworker or mine was from Whales. He moved to the US to marry his wife. We all adopted EPL teams and started following to help him feel at home. I picked Chelsea.

I enjoyed your reaction, my friend. Some points about this though. In England, the difference is £200,000,000 or $240,000,000 NOT $40,000,000 between being in either the Top Division (The Premiership) or THe Second Ter ( The Championship ). Those first 4 Divisions feature the 92 Teams (Clubs) in The Football League but there are many Semi-Professional and amateur leagues below and, initially, 700 Teams enter The English F A Cup (the Worlds oldest and best domestic Cup ). There is ALSO a League Cup in England just for the 92 teams so the best teams play,at least, twice a week in The Premiership, The FA A Cup, The League Cup or the Champions League :)

As a Dane, I can recommend the movie "Summer of '92". It's a movie about Denmarks(national soccer team) journey to and through the 1992 European Championships. It's an interesting mix between actual footage, and a movie(which works surprisingly well), with a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

I know nothing about futball / soccer, so I learned a little about it watching this; thanks! I still have no clue how they decide who won a game, since points are not racked up during play but awarded at the end based on win, lose, or tie. Relegation sounds horrible; I feel so bad for the bottom 3 teams each year. That's got to wreck them emotionally (and financially) to get kicked out. Still not going to watch soccer now that I know all this, but it was fun to learn. :)

Champions League format has changed since this video was made.

it happens every year. the bottom 3 teams (or 2 +1, ill get back to it after) get kicked down to the lower division and the top 3 get promoted. every single year. in some countries the 3rd spot is decided by a playoff game between the 3rd bottom place in the top division and the 3rd higher in the next division down. the number of teams for 1st division may vary, but on average each country's 1st division has around 18 teams.

London calling: South American football recommendation. The ‘Superclásico’ between Buenos Aires rivals Boca Juniors and River Plate is said to be the most intense experience you can have as a spectator. The clips I’ve seen look mad.

2:22 it happens every year for the 3 bottom teams

In Ireland the season goes from Feb to Nov. And teams play each other four times.

Each country's top tier league has a set number of teams and only the best can qualify... Those clubs that fail are relegated to 2nd tier league. In the USA, there is the MLS and there is no relegation because of the limited number of clubs and their season goes from January to December. American MLS teams include - Inter Miami, DC United, LA Galaxy, NY Red Bulls, Atlanta United, etc. Clubs can also compete in tournaments that compete through elimination until a champion is crowned. For example, top European clubs compete in the Champions League tournament... 2nd tier teams compete in the Europa League tournament... In N. America, there is the CONCACAF Champions Cup played between teams in USA, Mexico, Canada. And then, there are the national teams that compete in tournaments... The biggest is the World Cup, held every 4 years in which national teams have to qualify from their regions and compete for the ultimate prize of World Champions... Only 8 teams have won the title since 1930 - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, France, England, (West) Germany, Italy. European nations compete in the UEFA Euro Football Championship every 4 years... N. and S. American teams compete for the Copa America Championship. Then, there are the U-20 youth teams that have their own tournaments. Asia has their AFC Asian Cup... etc. etc.

Well,how about Le Tissier. English player. Spectacular highlights.

Most leagues also have a sponsored trophy called a league cup. So one team could actually win four trophies. Top of division, football association cup, league cup, and champions league cup.

Wishing you peace love and joy and great success

And the Champions League music anthem was composed to be used during the crowning of a British monarch (and yes featured recently at King Charles III’s coronation)

In England there are 4 tiers of professional leagues with 20 in the Premier league and 24 x 3 in the other 3 leagues. Three teams get promoted, first 2 automatic, next 4 in playoffs. 3rd v 6th, 4th v 5th home + away. Then winners playoff at Wembley to get that 3rd promotion spot. The Champions League is a bit misleading. Most major leagues supply top 3 teams to the CL (with an added 4th possible depending on how that country performed in Europe in the past. Mid-rated leagues supply up to 2, small supply just one.

Relegation is every year. In All tiers. So Like the top Team from 3rd Division goes to 2nd Division and the Last from 2nd Division goes down to third Division. Last from 1st Division goes to 2nd Division and 1st in 2nd Division Goes to First Division. This is true down to the 7th Division

I really like the way its set up over there. It definitely makes things more interesting

i think welcome to wrexham is a really good example of how it works since it starts with a 5th tier footballteam

The German Bundesliga has 18 teams the bottom 2 team gets relegated with 16th playing a 2 legged game with 3rd team in second tier, 2. Bundesliga, Zweitie Bundesliga translated to second Federal league.

one of the most interesting games was the 2022/23 season Everton vs Bournemouth game. the top relegation spot was between Everton or Leicester and Leicester were on track to win their game, whilst Everton were on track for a goal-less draw. As things stood, if Leicester won their bout whilst Everton drew against Bournemouth, Everton and Leicester would finish on equal points, and Everton had a worse goal difference, so would be relegated. So Everton had to beat Bournemouth to stay in the prem. I don't support any of the teams, but that was a great game to watch

“Football isn't a game, nor a sport, it's a religion.”

El fútbol a sol y sombra - Eduardo Galeano is a classic book on South American football. Broad strokes but good.

In Europe pretty much every "team sport" has the same system. Also basketball or volleyball championships, for example, have the same rules of relegations.

The number of teams varies by country and by league but for the top leagues its usually between 18 and 20 teams so teams usually play between 34-38 league games a season plus cup games and if they finish high enough the previous season European games as well.there are 3 pan European competitions sll have changed to use a one league group phase instead of the multiple group system mentioned in the video, relegation occurs every season the number of teams going down varies from league to league and some use a relegation playoff system were a team from the top division has to play against a team from the next division down to decide who plays in the top league the next season. South American make it a bit more complicated as some countries use split the season into 2 different competitions with relegation occurring irregular

No Protocol Awesome Video Today!!🔥🐐🐐💎

Di Stefano Puskas are interesting but Matthias Sindelar has the most important story of any footballer. One of the greatest humans to have played the game. 🍉

.. MUSIC about futebol .. Jorge Ben Jor "Umbabarauma " look for the version with Mano Brown.

Everton are the second longest serving team in England's top tier (now called the Premier League) having avoided relegation since 1954. They are currently scraping along the bottom of the PL and it will be tough for them to avoid the drop this year.

2:17 In case you're still confused about this. It's not teams from the two divisions that are compared against but just as the real-life example shown in the video: every year the three lowest scoring teams of the upper division are replaced by the three highest scoring teams from the lower division.

I’d imagine England will have the most professional teams in Europe

Just to confuse matters further , the Champions league, .......has just changed format completely this year and now no one in Europe even understands what the hell is going on LMAO

Each year. New teams are relegated and promoted each year. Furthermore, most nations have more than one or two leagues, especially the big ones (Spain, Italy, Germany, England and France would be the big 5, but there are a few other notable ones). So, let's take my Serie A (Italy) as an example. The teams at the top or near the top of the league will fight for the league title and/or to qualify for the 3 European competitions. At the lower end, it's a different story. At the end of this year, the 3 teams that are lowest in the league will be relegated to Serie B (the second division). Easy enough so far? Good. Now, the winner of this year's Serie B will be promoted directly to Serie A, together with the 2nd qualifed team. The remaining spot will be taken by the winner of a small *play off* tournament among the 3rd to 8th qualified teams in the league. So, up to the last day, the teams orbiting between, say 7th and 11th spot, will still be fighting to secure a spot in the top 8, which might mean being in Serie A next year. Of course, this is not an universal rule, and play offs vary from league to league, from country to country and even from year to year... and some countries don't use play offs at all and just promote the teams that are highest in the table. But that's not all! Italy also has a Serie C (still professional). The 3 teams at the bottom of Serie B will automatically fall down to Serie C. However, the 4th to last and 5th to last will play each other for the right to stay in Serie B, while the loser will join the others in Serie C. How will those 4 spots be filled? Well, Serie C is divided in three groups. The winners of each group will be promoted, together with the winner of the Serie C play offs. And then there's Serie D (semi professional), and below that Eccellenza (regional league), and then Promozione, and then Prima Categoria, Seconda Categoria and Terza Categoria (amateur league, provincial). 9 levels of increasingly minor leagues. Now, it doesn't happen... well... basically ever that someone from the ninth league goes up to the professional ones. But it has happened that popular big teams that went bankrupt had to restart from Eccellenza or Serie D and work their way up to the top (successfully). And yes... teams have done two or three back to back promotions, as well as back to back relegations, a bunch of times. So you'd find in Serie A, the top level of Italian football, a team that two years before was among the best in Serie C, and the year before that it was fighting not to fall into the semi-professional league.

"How often does that happen?" Every season. In most leagues there is no playoffs between the clubs being relegated and the ones being promoted. In the brazilian league, every year 4 clubs get relegated and 4 get promoted. Period. Most times, big clubs that got relegated get promoted again after 1 year in the B, while it's also common that smaller clubs just promoted can´t avoid relegation in their first year after promotion.

If you're going for legends of the sport you should look up Johan Cruijff next.

If you're interested in a team from a lower division league making it at the big stage, check out Leicester City's 2015/2016 PL season, it's an awesome story, the odds were 5000 to 1 or something crazy like that

“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

Being relegated means you have to plan with a lot smaller budget, because the revenue from TV broadcasts is a lot smaller. So you may have to release or trade away some or most of your players and get cheaper ones. That is unless if you only relegated because you already had cheaper players to begin with and thus weren't competitive. In Germany there is a complex licencing procedure you have to pass to ensure your finances are sufficient to play the full season. If you fail that they force your club down to amateur level. It still happens sometimes, that clubs miscalculate badly and basically go bankrupt. But that's rare nowadays. Also the number of clubs is obviously proportional to the number of people. The more people there are the more Football clubs they found. And also the more talent is there, that has ambitions to become professional. Hence, in Germany for example the Ruhrpott area (West Germany, the large industrial area around the river Ruhr) has the most clubs, because it is the area with the highest population density. Same with London in England.

The German leagues do actually have reserve teams owned by the larger clubs in their lower leagues, but these teams can't win promotion to the top two tiers in the German league system, the reserve teams are mainly academy players but in England for example the reserve teams have their own separate youth league.

I'm European (Swedish) and I've always wondered what the hell these "cup" games are. Not to the extent that I bothered with looking it up, but now and then I'd go "cup? what cup?" 🤷‍♂️ Well, now I know.

.. probably Brazil has more clubs because of the size, every state is like a european country

It’s not a case of the teams from the lower division outperforming the teams in the higher division. The bottom three teams in the higher division go down regardless of how many games they won compared to teams in the lower division 🙂

"How often relegation happens?" Every year. Every country has their main league & 2 or 3 divisions below that, so the worst 3 team of every division gets punished with a demotion (relegation) & gets replaced by the 3 teams in it's lower division who got promoted for their good performance in their own division

this video (and the talk of relegation, in particular) reminds me of Ted Lasso. now I understand some things that were said.

Sheffield FC is the oldest association football club in the world. The term soccer (association where the term comes from) was coined in posh parts of education in London, also on the BBC and such. Then the term went State side because of the TV coverage and so on.

Not everyone considers the Champions League Final to be the most important soccer game of the year. Especially in England.

The official name for football/soccer is Association Football.

I think England has the most clubs. Because it has many, many towns which have multiple clubs across 4 main divisions, The Premiership or EPL being the highest.

She has given likes to so many people but not me! She clearly does not like me! 🥺💔❤️

I don’t know much about soccer (football) but I do love how your mind works in such a science base haha

League of Ireland is Feb to Nov. My club, bohemian fc lost to their rivals last night and we're skirting close to relegation. It's nerve wracking. ⚫🔴

Speaking of learning about other countries' sporting traditions, a React recommendation: Everything I know about cricket, I know from owning a 2011 album by the British vocal group Cantabile (or The London Quartet) called SONGS OF CRICKET, a sincere and somewhat light-hearted album of songs about... cricket. (Like, the opening track is partially a medley of songs associated with TV/radio cricket broadcasts, one of which is "Mambo No. 5".) In terms of specific songs, I'd recommend you could React to "The Summer Game", "The Barmy Army", "School Songs Medley", or "You've Got to Be a Cricket Hero (To Get Along with the Beautiful Girls)".

if I'm not mistaken, you just described "relegation" in a way different from the video guy. he said the 3 lowest performing clubs in the top tier would be relegated, and you said if a second-tier team performed better than the first-tier teams they could replace them... that means many teams might get relegated as there are second-tier teams who perform better! THAT would be something!

NIT = National Invitational Tournament

A little known fact!!! The third slide in @ 0:12 is a diagram explaining why toast always falls butter side down! 🍞🧈🔪👇...

my school didn't even have a soccer team, but I remember kids having watch parties for the world cup, one year.

Try Irish galiec football.... this year's final was amazing !

"how often does that happen?" Every year ... every year the top three from 2nd division take the spot of the last three teams from 1st division...

There are roughly 1150 professional clubs in Europe...in 33 countries.....

When league seasons come to an end, the champions may have already secured the title, and there is little to play for except bragging rights. Seems like a damp squib, but often there are still teams fighting to not be relegated, and you would think they were the biggest games of the season. If a team "stays up", expect to see hordes of fans run on to the pitch to celebrate like they just won a cup final. Same for teams who get promoted from the divisions below. And massive floods of tears and sadness if a team get relegated or don't get promoted from the division below after coming close. Football is great, full of emotion at every level.

England has over 100 professional teams, the top 4 divisions are the 92 clubs of the EFL (English Football League) then in the 5th Div. National League or "Non-League" that's where you start to find more semi-professional clubs, below the EFL

It's basically the same concept in South America and everywhere else. You have a national league, with several divisions, each one with X number of teams, and the worst ones from each division are relegated down after the end of the season, and the best ones from the division below promoted to the division above. There's also continental tournaments everywhere. The specific format varies, but the concept is the same. USA is the only place in the world where the sports system is completely different.

As for teams across all leagues and divisions in England alone, you would be looking at thousands.

England has the most professional clubs because it invented the game and over 100 years the clubs had a chance to form. There are also many previous clubs who are now defunct such as Northwich Victoria and Oldham Athletic.

PELÉ • Melhores Gols, Dribles e Passes

Southamerican football is a bit more "raw". A very similar system, except we have Libertadores instead of the Champions league. But everything is a bit more violent. The players, the public, the police guarding the events. Usually the best players in south America are sold to the best teams in Europe, the rest are sold to other monos teams in Europe and the scrap is sold to Mexico o USA.

..and the NIT is National Invitation Tournament. It's like the consolation tournament for the teams that don't make the NCAA college basketball tournament that determines the national basketball champion. They also hold a preseason NIT.

england has 92 i think i did the math right...premier league which is the top has 20 teams then the championship with 24, league 1 with 24, league 2 with 24...all professional. and at the end of each season is promotion and relegation and league 2 teams can be relegated to semi-pro national league.

Each league has a given number of teams, it's usually 18 or 20. A team from a lower division doesn't outperform a team from a higher division. They all play their respective leagues and for example 3 worse teams from 1st division go to the 2nd division for the next season and 3 best teams from 2nd division take their spots. They don't play each other for those spots. On the side note I must say that it feels weird when while speaking English you pronounce Colombia in Spanish way.

Some of this is dated now because there are 3 European Competitions now and the format for the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League have changed this season.

This may have already been said, this video is out of date now. The Champions League format changed a little starting this season

In my opinion, the structure of the European soccer leagues is something that US sports leagues should take up. Although Major League Baseball might have a difficult time with it given the extent to which the major leagues have invested in the minor league system. But the NBA and NFL should be able to pull it off given that the college level is basically their minor league system and so they don't have that built up infrastructure that MLB has. And you wouldn't have to get rid of the playoff system to implement relegation/promotion.

England has the most teams competing in a professional league. 92 clubs not including the non-league teams which can still get promoted to the Football League. Wrexham are a good example of a club capable and currently moving up the tables

New update thats changed starting from this season is the way the champions league group stage is played. Now instead of 8 groups of 4 teams all the 32 teams are in the same group and play random 8 teams four at home and 4 away. The top 16 teams progress to the next stage and the structure continues just like in the video.

The format for the Champion's League has changed this season. I hope when you lived in Spain you were supporting Barcelona. If you ever find yourself in Geordieland I will take you to St. James's Park to see Newcastle play. And finally if you want a good book - "How Football Explains the World" Franklin Foer

Nice love the video protocol Stay motivated Dream big 1 mill on the way

The CL format has been changed to get more matches, international football has also gotten more matches over the years, the first mentioning of a player strike has already been there. It's also a bit weird because it might generate a little bit more money, the responsible organization the UEFA is not a for profit organization. There is no need to make more money whatsoever.

More to add… there’s also a second tier European championship called the Europa League.

Recomendation: Toque Peruano (Tiki Taka Original)

What he said about the relegation in the German Bundesliga is not entirely correct. The third-last team from the Bundesliga and the third-placed team from the second division play two relegation matches. If the former wins, it remains in the first division and the latter in the second division; if the latter wins, it is promoted and the other is relegated.

Copa America is equivalent of Euro = continental championship for national representative teams. South American footbal club "systems" is, in fact, almost identical to europan system as explained in the video... There are national leagues, there is a cup competition in every country, and there are continental cup competitions (Copa Libertadores is equivalent to UEFA Champions League) all running concurently throughout the season.

It's called "Football" here in the UK, because we use our feet. In America, what you call "Football", is called football, because you use your hands....Hmmmmm????🤣🤣🤣🤣

Greetings. I hope you embrace Soccerball.