August is a great time for most sports fans — football season is about to start, baseball season is near the playoffs and most importantly for me, the soccer leagues in Europe are about to start.
After watching so much good soccer this past few weeks — between summer school and fall semester — I have come to a bold conclusion: this season might be the greatest soccer season ever.
Before you turn the page thinking I jumped the gun incredibly early, hear me out. I might have extrapolated using only three weeks’ worth of matches, but once you break down every league one by one, you see that there’s never been this much talent and excitement in Europe.
Let’s start off in Spain, home of Barcelona’s football kings. Barcelona has mastered the tiki-taka football — a style that focuses on short passes and movement — by mainly developing home-grown players from within their academies.
Watching Barcelona play is breath-taking because I know I am watching something special, sort of like how I felt about the Chicago Bulls in the 90s.
But if there is a team to dethrone Barcelona anytime soon, it seems to be the rival Real Madrid. The rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona — aptly named “El Clasico” — symbolizes Spain’s deep political clashes between the capital and northeast Catalonia.
I don’t think we have seen such a mix of talent, bad blood and social importance regarding a sporting match since the “Miracle on Ice” hockey match between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Whereas La Liga is a diarchic league of Real Madrid and Barcelona, the English Premier League is more of an oligarchy, with six teams vying for the title. From the traditional “Big Four” of Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, Manchester City and my Tottenham Hotspur have snuck into the title race this past year.
Manchester City — backed by the shiekhs of Abu Dhabi — have become the new Dubai of football, throwing money around that makes the New York Yankees look fiscally conservative. Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool has been stockpiling talent to not lose a step in the arms race, while Arsenal and Tottenham are still sticking to the outdated gentlemen’s game of bringing players at a reasonable, fair price.
All these arms races have translated very well on the field this season. Two games into the season, the two Manchester clubs are on the top of the league.If you want a top-heavy league where the best teams bully lesser teams, England is the place to be. If you want more parity across the league, the German Bundesliga is paramount. Stylistically, the Bundesliga is between the physical Premier League and the technical La Liga, appealing to those who want something different than the two.
For some time, European football fans in America were like the hipsters of sports fans, following an obscure sport played in a faraway land, wearing odd scarves and jerseys of teams nobody has heard of.
But that scene is slowly changing. More and more football matches are broadcast in the U.S., creating more exposure and more football fans.
After the Women’s World Cup this summer, soccer’s popularity has reached a new high in America, recording the most tweets per second during the World Cup final. Soccer is officially in.
And don’t be foolish to wait for a better time to dive in. You are living in the Golden Age of Soccer; carpe diem, my friends.
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