sabertoothalex My question for the footie freaks here though is what’s the level of competition in some of these other leagues?
The best you can watch is Champions League, which starts this coming week. It’s played during the week (so Tuesday and Wednesday morning for you), to let national league games be played during the weekend.
The Premier League spends more money before every season than all other top flight leagues combined, and the trend keeps accelerating. Spain used to have Barcelona and Real Madrid able to compete financially but the reality of economics + COVID have now made it one of the poorest leagues in Europe. This economic unbalance is seriously disrupting modern football.
Bundesliga is always one of the most fun and innovative leagues, with very aggressive football, which is why many of the recent top coaches in Europe came through this league. After about a decade of mediocrity, top Italian teams seem to be back in form again (last year’s season was very entertaining) thanks to innovative coaches and smarter management. If you are from the US, you also have Pulisic to root for at AC Milan, which is playing excellent football right now and a cool underdog for this year’s Champion’s League.
PSV is playing great football right now so that alone elevates the appeal of Dutch Eredivisie. French Ligue 1 has more than half a dozen genuinely good coaches this year and a handful of rich teams so entertaining football would be expected this year, but the beginning of the season has been disappointing. I have seen a few MLS games and a bunch of J.League; I’d still say J.League is above MLS in terms of tactics and collective performance.
I’d personally tier the quality of playing in that order:
Champions League
English Premier League
German Bundesliga • Italian Serie A
Spanish Liga • French Ligue 1 • Dutch Eredivisie
J.League
MLS
English First Division (the division below PL) is probably hanging around with the third tier now but I admittedly never watch it. I don’t know enough about recent Portuguese, Korean, Mexican, Scottish or that new morally ambiguous Saudi football league to give an opinion on their level.
