By Robbie Butler

When almost all UEFA football came to a halt in March 2020, European leagues became frozen in time. Some leagues were cancelled, others used predicted points to reach a final league table, and others returned to play in empty stadiums during the summer months. 

While Liverpool finally won the Premier League and Real Madrid La Liga, the other three big leagues in Europe were won by the defending champions - PSG, Bayern Munich and Juventus. In the cases of Bayern and Juve, it was their 8th and 9th consecutive league titles.

​They were not alone in UEFA leagues in this regard. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, eight teams in Europe had winning streaks of 6 years or more. These are presented to the left below.

Following the resumption of football behind closed doors it is interesting to observe how many of these streaks survived. 

Probably the most high-profile casualties were the two teams seeking 10-in-a-row; Celtic and Juventus. Both the Scottish and Italian champions failed to live up to expectations during the 2020/21 season when playing behind closed doors.

Of course, this is not the only reason why they may have come up well short, but neither looked like winning their 10th title in a row from early in the season. Inter Milan (last weekend) and Rangers (a number of weeks ago) have already been crowned champions of Italy and Scotland respectively. 

But these two are not alone in losing their streak. APOEL and Astana both lost their streaks in 2020 and 2021. Of the 8 teams that entered the Covid-19 era with a streak in tact, just 4 are still standing; Bayern, Ludogorets, Qarabag and Red Bull Salzburg. 

It will be interesting to see if a return of fans helps or hinders the cause of the four remaining streaks that have survived Covid. 

by Declan Jordan

​This season’s Airtricity League of Ireland kicks off this week. The Premier Division features 10 teams, with 12 teams in the First Division.
 
Colleagues in UCC will be disappointed that this season the local side, Cork City, will be plying their trade in the First Division. The relegation of Cork City last season followed a rapid decline, since the club were league and cup double winners as recently as 2017, and were in the top two league positions for the five seasons from 2014 to 2018.
 
Aside from the local disappointment, the relegation of Cork City also has implications for the geographical representation of the league and reduces the reach of the league into the major population centres in Ireland.
 
This season there are no Premier Division clubs in the second, third, and fourth largest cities in Ireland. Cork, Limerick, and Galway will all have teams in the First Division this season. This is a combined urban population of approximately 400,000 without a top flight team.
 
The relegation of Cork City, even with the relegation of Shelbourne from Dublin, and their replacement with Drogheda United and Longford Town means there is a greater concentration of clubs on the east coast. The map below shows the location of clubs in the Premier Division in 2020 and in the coming 2021 season. The red dots represent clubs in both; green are clubs only in 2020, and yellow dots represent clubs only in 2021.

The green line demonstrates that the west and south of the island are not represented in the 2021 Premier Division season.

​By calculating the distance between every club in the division (using Google Maps) the level of spatial dispersion can be assessed. In 2020 Cork City had to travel furthest on average than all of the other clubs with an average distance to all of the other clubs of 296km. This ‘honour’ now goes to the only remaining Munster club, Waterford FC, who will travel 246km on average this season. The presence of Derry City and Finn Harps reduce their average travel distances because of their proximity in the peripheral north-west of the island.
 
Six of the clubs (clustered around the greater Dublin area) have average distances of less than 130km this season. The average distance travelled has fallen from 190km to 158km. This means the concentration of east coast/Leinster clubs provides means that they have notably lower average distances than the average.

​The lack of clubs in the top flight from Sligo in the north-west right down the west and south coast as far as Waterford means the league is geographically lopsided. It will have to be seen how competitively lopsided the league will be on the pitch.

by Declan Jordan

​Just over 40 years ago my hometown football club had one its biggest games. Limerick United played Real Madrid in the European Cup in October 1980. The ‘home’ game was moved to Dublin in a vain attempt to raise some extra money. It turned out to be a bad idea, as only 6,000 people turned up to see the part-timers lose 2-1 against a late goal and a very suspect penalty. We also had a goal disallowed, but we are not holding on to it too much.
 
For Irish football fans the days of attracting big clubs for European fixtures are now very rare. Shamrock Rovers played AC Milan earlier this season in the Europa League, but typically our clubs now are more likely have early round games against clubs from other lesser leagues.
 
These games came about because the European Cup used to be a competition between European league champions. Now it is a much bigger competition with the larger leagues now having up to four qualifiers. The teams from the big leagues are seeded so they are kept away from clubs in less illustrious leagues in the earlier rounds.
 
I think it is clear that the inclusion of more teams from the stronger leagues has improved the quality of the competition and we see much better games, particularly in the knock-out stages. The television viewer cannot complain and the Champions League is arguably the best club competition in the world.
 
However, as a supporter of a team in a less fashionable league I do also have a sense of the loss of these big occasions for fans like me.
 
There is also the implication for balance in the competition. Allowing more big clubs into the competition should mean that more clubs have a better chance of winning, since it is not necessary to win the domestic league to qualify. What we might also expect though is that the number of different countries producing winners may decrease, as more qualifiers from the stronger leagues, and the more forgiving move away from straight knockout, favour the better (and richer) countries.
 
The table below shows the number of different clubs and the number of different leagues that have won, lost the final, and lost a semi-final in the Champions League compared to the European Cup experience over a similar time period.
 
It is important to note that one of the strongest leagues (England) had no representatives in the European Cup from 1985 to 1990 after the Heysel tragedy. This gap does not change the different number of countries that won the European Cup, though it is interesting to note that no English team featured in a semi-final from the Liverpool defeat at Heysel in 1985 until Manchester United lost in the then Champions League the 1996/7 season.

​The table shows that the number of clubs that have won or reached the last four of the Champions League from 1993 to 2020 is lower than the corresponding number of number of clubs that won the European Cup over the same time period (1964 to 1992).  This difference is even more pronounced in the last 10 years relative to the final 10 years of the European Cup.
 
It is also the case that we have seen fewer leagues represented in the final four places of the Champions League.
 
This has been particularly noticeable in the last 10 years. Since the 2010/11 season only five clubs from three leagues have won the tournament – Bayern, Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, and Real Madrid. More remarkably, only five leagues have been represented in the finals (adding in PSG and Juventus) and six leagues when we drop down to include semi-finalists (Ajax). This means the last four places have been monopolised by the top 6 leagues (Spain, England, Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands).
 
Compare this to the final places in the last 10 years before the establishment of the Champions League. There 9 winners in 10 seasons – Hamburg, Liverpool, Juventus, Steaua, Porto, PSV, Milan, Red Star, and Barcelona. Eighteen different leagues had teams in at least the semi-finals.
 
I should note that I have used the current nations in the analysis – so that winners before 1989 that played in the Soviet and Czechoslovakian league are counted as Russian, Ukrainian, Cezh or Slovakian as appropriate. This turned out to be a minor issue as, for example, no East German teams featured and only Sebrian teams featured for Yugoslavia.
 
Allowing more teams from the stronger leagues is associated with greater concentration of success, at club and league levels. For the stronger, and richer, leagues in Europe this may very well be a feature rather than a bug.

By Robbie Butler

I have dedicated a number of posts on this site to VAR over the past 18 months or so. I must admit, my understanding of how VAR works is getting worse rather than better with the passage of time.

From the economist's perspective the beauty of VAR, indeed football, is that it is about decision making. While the rules are codified, and have been so since 1863, interpretation of these rules is open to judgement - that of the referee. Prior to VAR many believed that the introduction of technology would move us from judgement or normative analysis towards science or positive analysis. I do not believe this has happened or if it is indeed possible with our current technology.

The biggest issue with the use of VAR for me is the scientific analysis imposed on one parameter (the attacking player's position on the field of play) and the arbitrary nature of the other parameters which are equally critical. Here are three that seem to be considered at the judgement of the officials:

1. When the ball is kicked. Offside has two points and differs from a photo finish in horse racing in this regard. It does not matter where the horses started (in national hunt racing at least) only where they finish. When the ball is kicked/first touched even, it actually has not left the foot of the player. To use a freeze frame with VAR's current technology, where the ball has moved (even slightly) is then not accurate. 
2. What part of the body the vertical defending line is drawn. When imposing this restriction, I have seen the line drawn anywhere from the shoulder to below the elbow. When the arm of the defender is outstretched this could be a foot of more in distance. 
3. Where the vertical lines touch the ground. These lines should be perpendicular to the feet. The recent Burnley Man City match illustrates an example of this not being the case. For me, this is the most glaring error of all. The left knee of a defending player had a line dropped that met the ground in the wrong place (at a 90 degree angle to the right foot and not the left foot) - an error. 

One of these problems is enough to undermine VAR. Combined, they demonstrate how inaccurate it can be and instead of improving decision making it could be making it worse. As someone said to me recently, we have moved back to 1990 when in-line with the defender was actually offside. The movement in the early 1990s to make in-line onside was very positive for the game.

Maybe in time VAR will evolve and a player will be onside if any part of their body is in-line with the defender. So we could have to go backwards to the early 1990s to go forwards.

By Robbie Butler

Pick up any standard microeconomics textbook for undergraduates and you will meet a chapter explaining the theory of the firm. Readers will be introduced to issues like profit maximisation, marginal revenue, average costs and marginal costs, amongst other things.

Embedded in the theory is an explanation of "shutting down" and "exiting" the market. The former is regarded as temporary closure, while the latter is permanent. Because of this distinction, the short-run decision (shutdown) and long-run decision (to exit the market) differ for the firm. If a firm shuts down, it loses all revenue from the sale of its product, but must still cover all fixed costs. Therefore, the firm will shut down if the revenue it would get from producing is less than its variable costs of production. The firm will only exit the market if total revenue from the sale of its product is less than the total cost of production (all costs).

Sky Sports have a lovely insight to this today thanks to an interview with Tranmere chairman Mark Palios. Football clubs have essentially "shut down" in recent months - with no fans at games. The variable cost of fans (security, light, heat, insurance, health and safety, policing, etc.) have largely disappeared. However, the reopening of stadia will bring these costs back. The fixed costs never left e.g. player salaries.

Palios explains the problem this is for clubs. 
"If you just come down the tiers to 2,000 fans [tier 2], our season tickets are 3,000. So actually cash-wise we are probably worse off because if we have fans in the ground, I know the costs would be about £10,000 to open up. We'd have all the gates open for social distancing, and all the turnstiles on. As a consequence of that, we wouldn't get anymore cash and we'd have to spend £10,000 a match. If it stayed like that, in the context of about a further 18 matches, it's nearly £200,000 of costs. And if you were allowed in 4,000, it's only for the extra 1,000 of general attendance [on top of 3,000 season ticket holders], but we'd still have the costs. It would be pretty minimal, with regards any excess for us."

A lovely illustration of fixed costs, variable costs and total revenue, and the problems facing clubs that rely on match-day income as their primary source of revenue.

By Robbie Butler

In August 2018 I wrote a short piece here about the newly formed Nations League. I have to add, more than two years on, I still struggle with the competition structure and what it might mean for future qualification.

In the original piece, I wrote the following: 

"The good news for the minnows is that they not only get to play one another, and therefore have a golden opportunity to register a rare international win, the winner of this group also qualifies for the 2020 European Championships. This poses an obvious question? Is a country better-off targeting a place in Group D rather than Group C? This logic can apply to Group C/B and Group B/A."

As far as I can tell, UEFA qualifying for World Cup 2022 is based on the current standings in the Nations League. Play-off spots will be available to the two highest finishing teams that fail to finish 1st or 2nd in their qualifying groups. This encourages team to win.

What I don't now get is qualification for Euro 2024.

If the same rules hold as for Euro 2020, are Northern Ireland now better off than the Republic of Ireland? The North were relegated to Group C last night, while the Republic survived in Group B with a 0-0 draw at home to Bulgaria. 

It should be noted, neither team will play at Euro 2020, having been in Path B play-offs. Yet Scotland will be there having been seeded in Path C.

My question remains. Is a country better-off targeting a place in Group C rather than Group B?  Surely, losing can't be better than winning. Can it?

​By Robbie Butler

On Saturday afternoon, as I was watching Crystal Palace play Leeds United, I was struck by a comment from the match commentator that this was the home teams' 8th consecutive season in the Premier League.

Those that are familiar with English football will know that Crystal Palace are somewhat of a yoyo club, and have 5 different spells in the Premier League. That means 4 relegations and 4 promotions (they were in the league in 1992/3 for the first season). Their 8-year stint is by far their longest spell in England's top flight. 

Crystal Palace's current stay in the top flight was thanks to a promotion at the end of the 2012/13 season through the play-offs. The play-offs are for teams that finish the season in places 3/4/5/6 and involve semi-finals (two legs both home and away) and a final at Wembley.

The Championship Play-off Final - which Crystal Palace have incidentally won more than another other club (4 times) - is often referred to as the 'richest game in football' or the 'richest game in the world'. This is because of the enormous revenue streams that can be generated from playing the Premier League through broadcasting, sponsorship, matchday operations and merchandising. 

On the 27th of May 2013, former England and Sunderland striker Kevin Phillips, scored a penalty in added time of first half extra time to beat Watford in the 2013 Playoff Final. Crystal Palace have reaped the rewards since. Each season the clubs stays in the Premier League, the more value this goal become. Phillips, now 47, is long since retired and played his last game in 2014 for Leicester City.

However, there is a more valuable goal. A year before at Wembley West Ham United beat Blackpool in the 2012 Playoff Final.  Portuguese player Ricardo Vaz Tê - currently playing with Portimonense following spells in Turckey and the Chinese Super League scored the winning goal, 3 minutes from time, as West Ham won by two goals to one. 

West Ham have remained in the Premier League ever since. Every club to win the Playoff prior to 2012 have been relegated at least once from the Premier League. Vaz Tê's goal unlocked nine seasons of the Premier League and counting. Just like Kevin Phillips' goal a year later, the longer West Ham and Crystal Palace survive in the English Premier League, the more valuable these individual goals become. 

With the 2020/21 season well underway it seems very likely both clubs will see an 9th and 10th season in the Premier League. By then Phillips will be 48 and Vaz Tê 35. The impact both had on their respective clubs lives on. 

By Robbie Butler

There is a story in football circles that when a Premier League club was bought by an overseas investor in the late 2000s the new owners were unaware of the concept of relegation. Within a couple of seasons their new club had suffered just that - relegation. 

When news broke yesterday of yet another attempt to launch a European Super League I was reminded of this story. It was no surprise to me that Liverpool and Manchester United were yet again driving this concept in England. I think this is less down to the fact that they are the two most successful clubs, and the most supported globally. For me, the common denominator is that they both have American owners.

The difference in the style of ownership is stark and clear to see. In one city the owners are probably regarded as liberators that have returned a club to its full glory. In the other, the very opposite is probably the view held by many supporters. And while on the pitch their competition is fierce, off the field, their co-operation is clear to see. 

The establishment of a European Super League could be a further Americanization of European football. While details are still emerging, one thing this new league could do is remove the threat of relegation. This would effectively "close" the league and make it operate more like the NFL, MLB, MBA or MLS.

This is the crucial difference between US and European sports leagues and shifts the bargaining power from players and supporters towards owners. The  European super league would likely become an monopsony (own buyer of talent) and not punish entrants with the threat of relegation. The recently failed 'Project Big Picture', whilst not eliminating relegation, had argued that it should be reduced to just 2 teams in season in the EPL. 

To remove relegation would undermine 140 years of league football in England. Promotion and relegation are part of the fabric of the game. As it is in football leagues right across Europe. 

Take Luton Town for example. Since 2004-05 the club has enjoyed 4 promotions but has also experienced 3 relegations. The table to the right explains this.

At the start of the 2005/06 season Luton played in the 2nd highest tier of English Football (The Championship). The club then experienced three successive relegations, to League One, League Two, and in 2008/09 the Conference Premier Division (outside of the Football League). 

However, over the course of the past decade, the club has managed to make it back to the second tier of English football, just one tier away from the English Premier League. The revenue and resources that are on offer from reaching the Premier League are motivation enough to keep clubs like Luton Town dreaming.

I am sure this was as strong as ever during the years 2009-2013 when the club wasn't even playing in the Football League. 

If Luton ever reach the ELP, what a turn around that will be. A European Super League - without promotion or relegation - would limit the possibilities of most clubs.  While great for the lucky few, it would kill the dream for most. That's not European football and it never has been.

By Robbie Butler,

In the summer of 2017 I was asked to contribute to the Cork City FC match day programme. With University College Cork as the main sponsors of the club it was a nice fit and a chance to engage with the wider community in Cork.

I decided to touch on the general issue of championship uncertainty and the unique place that the League of Ireland holds when it comes to competitive balance. Within the article, which appeared in the match-day programme on the 9th of July 2017, I said the following:

"Often league success has been followed by a period of gradual decline, ending in financial distress and in some cases even relegation. The cycle of champions to relegation could take less than a decade to be complete. This rarely happens in other European leagues where followers will probably know Bayern Munich have just won their fifth consecutive league title, Juventus secured a sixth Seria A title, while Celtic have also been crowned champions for the past six seasons, and finished the current campaign unbeaten."

This may now become all too true for Cork City [again]. It has not taken a decade, but rather three years. The club remains bottom of the Premier Division in Ireland, and while relegation is still very much avoidable, less than 3 years ago the club won a historic league and cup double.

How can you go from double winners to relegation candidates in less than 36 months?

​In few (of any) other European league does a team that wins the domestic double face relegation 3 years afterwards.  And it is not the first time. Why does it happen here?

I have previously explored the issue here and here. One of the figures in the links is presented again below. It demonstrates how quickly League of Ireland champions can go into a spiral of decline 1 to 4 years post winning the league. ​Cork City's decline is even more rapid.

The rate of decline is even more apparent when compared to other European league winners from 2017 - the last time Cork City were champions.

The official UEFA 2017 Roll of Honour lists the league and cup champions that year for each nation member.

Should Cork City be relegated, the League of Ireland will be the only UEFA member where the 2017 league champions are no longer in the top division of their national league. This is an ongoing problem, and on which seems to be uniquely Irish. There is a need for the entire competition structure of the League of Ireland to be changed.

​As I have said previously, the removal of promotion and relegation would be the first positive step in helping what was once infamously called "the problem child" of Irish football.

By Robbie Butler

In May 2019 Irish national radio station Today FM broadcast its final episode of Premier League Live. The radio station had provided live coverage of a Saturday 3pm kick-off to radio listeners, and no doubt countless others online, for 21 consecutive seasons. I must admit, despite often listening to the show on the radio, I did not become aware of the decision to end the broadcast until the start of the 2019-20 season. 

I was both disappointed and surprised that the show had come to an end. For me, it was something that I habitually listened to on Saturday's and acted as a reference point in both my week and calendar year. As I reflected on the ending of the show in the weeks ahead, my surprise at the decision declined, but my disappointment remained. However, the game has changed over the past 21 years and the decision to end Premier League Live probably reflected this - and all of this before Covid-19. 

When I think of my consumption of the show it primarily occurred while I was in a car. I wonder how many others were in the same position? If I didn't happen to drive on Saturday afternoon, I probably didn't listen. 

A second issue must have been the television schedule that has become more and more important in recent seasons. The 3pm Saturday kick-off is now the home of many of the lesser games during the season. The 'big' fixtures generally take place at lunchtimes on Saturdays, on Sunday afternoons or Monday evenings. I wonder how much demand for listening was impacted by the games taking place.

The arrival of a 3pm game on television - the blackout does not apply in Ireland - was no doubt another blow to the radio show. Sometimes the game on TV was the same as that broadcast on radio. Of course, the televised game was behind the paywall, but could be viewed in most pubs.

And one has to wonder if the show would have survived this season, had it not been cancelled. The continuation of football behind closed doors means almost every game has a different kick-off time. Every game is broadcast on television, making the radio an inferior good. Well for most anyway.

With television today effectively having a match on numerous times a day, every day of the week, radio broadcasts may soon be a thing of the past entirely.