Trying to reason with football season

This post is not an attempt to explain how the game of football/futballlll/soccer is played.  That would be an exercise in futility for one as ignorant as myself.  Rather, it is an attempt to sort out how the teams work their way through the season.


The Tiers/Flights
Professional football teams in the UK are organised into a massive scheme of leagues and tiers.  In the US we have minor league baseball, but those teams are affiliated with a major league team.  In the UK, all of the teams are part of a multi-tiered system of conferences, with no affiliations between the teams.  At the top tier is the Barclay's Premiere League, the top 20 teams being ranked in a  "table."  Ranking in the table is not based on wins and losses but on points.  Every time you play, you get three points for a win, one point for a tie, and zero points for a loss.  The only American sport that I can think of that uses a points system is hockey.  A points system therefore appears to be a scheme adopted by sports where a tie is common.  While the point system generally correlates to a win-loss record, it is a possible for a team with fewer wins to have more points than a team with more wins.  As I look at the league tables today, 34 games into the season, West Bromwich Albion (which sounds like a kind of mussel) has 12 wins and is ranked 13th.  The teams ranked 9 through 11 all have 11 wins, but fewer losses, so they are ranked ahead of a team with more wins.  Wigan Athletic is ranked 16th with 34 points.  This means that a team could theoretically tie all of their games, get 34 points, and be ranked 16th out of 20.  Ok, that may not be impressive, but if those ties were all 0-0 (pronounced "nil-nil"), it means that a team could be ranked 16 out of 20 without having scored a single goal all season.


Below the Premier League is the Championship League.  Below them is Football League One, and below them is Football League Two.  Given the hyperbole of the naming, surely the third tier should be called the Superstars League and League Two should be the League of the Gods.  Below them are Conference National, Conference North, and Conference South,  Below that I lose interest, but there are at least six tiers of professional football.


Promotion and Relegation
This is the fun part. At then end of the season, the bottom three teams in the Premiere League are demoted ("relegated") to the Championship League, and the top three teams in the Championship League are promoted ("promoted") to the Premiere league.  This has huge implications for revenues, contracts etc.  Some teams spend years on the bubble moving up and down from one conference to the next and back again.  This is cascaded throughout the tiers.  Imagine if the Buffalo Bills at the end of the season were shipped off to the Big 12 Conference, and the Arkansas Razorbacks were placed in the AFC North.  Presumably, the Arkansas players would have to take a pay cut.


Playoffs?  Don't talk about...playoffs?  You kiddin' me? Playoffs?
The different tiers do not have playoffs.  At the end of the regular season (which, as you will soon see, is anything but regular), the team with the most points wins the league, and gets a cheesy trophy.


But wait there's more
At the same time that these teams are playing within their leagues, they can also be playing for the FA Cup.  The FA Cup is a tournament featuring all of the teams in the top five tiers, plus some other teams who probably bribe FA officials, who are famous for their northern accents [ed: this is the moment that Daniel became a Brit] and bad comb-overs.  Here's where I get confused:  the games are scheduled amongst the League games.  So, Chelsea could play Fulham (two Premiere League teams) one week as part of the Premiere League schedule, and play them again the next week as part of the FA Cup tournament, and the FA Cup game doesn't count for the Premiere League rankings, and the Premiere League game doesn't count towards the FA Cup tournament.  The FA Cup Tournament is a proper tournament lasting 14 rounds, interweaved with the regular schedule, if there is such a thing as a regular schedule (the term here is "fixtures," which I am not going touch).  Over 700 teams are eligible for the FA Cup, which means that on any given Saturday, over 10% of the population of the UK could be playing in an FA Cup game.


At the same time, they could also be playing for the Carling Cup.  This is open to a mere 90 teams in the top -- I give up at this point - teams.  The Carling Cup tournament is typically decided about halfway through the season.  Most of the Premiere League teams view the Carling Cup games as a waste of time, and put in their second- or third-string players when a Carling Cup game comes up on the schedule.  This year, Liverpool won the Carling Cup, and are ranked 8th in the Premiere League.


Now Let's Get on an Airplane
At the same time that teams are playing for their league championships, the FA cup, and the Carling Cup, some are also playing in a pan-European tournament call the UEFA Champions League (not to be confused with the Championship League).  Last night, for example, Chelsea played Madrid -- maybe it was Barcelona --  in a Champions League game that had no bearing on their standing in the Premiere League, the FA Cup, or the Carling Cup (which was over anyway).  The top four teams in the Premiere League automatically qualify for the Champions League the following year.  For many coaches and players, they would rather win the Champions League than anything else.  Here is an exact quote from Wikipedia on how a team qualifies for the Champions League:

The number of teams that each association [from each participating country] enters into the UEFA Champions League is based upon the UEFA coefficients of the member associations. These coefficients are generated by the results of clubs representing each association during the previous five Champions League and UEFA Europa League/UEFA Cup seasons. The higher an association's coefficient, the more teams represent the association in the Champions League, and the fewer qualification rounds the association's teams must compete in.

5 of the remaining ten qualifying places are granted to the winners of a four round qualifying tournament between the remaining 39 or 38 national champions, within which those champions from associations with higher coefficients receive byes to later rounds. The other 5 are granted to the winners of a two round qualifying tournament between the 15 clubs from the associations ranked 1–15, which have qualified based upon finishing 2nd–4th in their national league.

...so stop complaining about the BCS.

We're Not Done Yet

Players on UK teams may disappear for weeks at a time to play tournaments for the national team of their home country.