I understand how us and the Americans have closed leagues and draft systems but that's ours and their cultures and we live with it, are used to it and have accepted it. But I still believe if Australia had 60, 70M people we'd probably look into a 30-50 team Australia wide competition in a 3 or 4 league system.
There's also something great about the European football codes inclusion of all the countries football teams into a pyramid system like the English 92 league format, and all the local non division teams who can rise into it if they win the Southern League, the Northern League, etc. And all the countries have their local versions of the FA Cup and League Cups for all those teams.
Yeah they have their issues with dominance by a couple of teams and no one else wins anything but there's still some excitement when a Leicester, Atletico Madrid I think Lille are on top in France and change it around for a little bit.
It first sparked my mind when Wimbledon beat my Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup. 10 years earlier they were a nothing club playing in the Southern League, below the old English Fourth Division and amazingly by 1987 made the First Division (EPL today).
Then they surprised the hell out of the football world by beating one of the best teams in the world in an FA Cup final. From memory Sunderland did the same just before my time in 1971? versus Leeds Utd.
Then we come to today's era, Leicester winning the league, and even as a 'Red' I was hoping they'd win the bloody thing. It's exciting to see absolute underdogs without money behind them, no worldwide fan base, topple the big boys. This is what genuine competition is all about.
I'm even excited to see Utah Jazz and Phoenix Sun's in the NBA hopefully keep their form through the NBA Playoffs. It's so boring Patriots every year, Utd under Fergie, Bayern now going for 10 in a row, Juve with 9 in a row, this gets pretty boring very easily for the rest of the league. Where's the competition?
All the American codes are set up franchise wise and most are there just to make a buck, they'll never win a thing, the owners don't care.
Charlotte, Minnesota teams, Portland, OKC all just money making banks for the owners. And now the players have more say and they're creating their own franchises - LeBron did it at the Heat, KD did it twice now with GWS and the Nets lol. So smaller cities have even less of a chance for success, why would I follow the Hornets.
And now as we see the Leicester's, West Ham, Villa threatening to take yearly nearly guaranteed European spots from them all, there's only 5 Euro spots in England yet 6 are going into the Super League, they want to pick the ball up off the field and run home. But at least they don't have to qualify yearly for Europe do they aye
(Chelsea hanging on in 4th, Spurs outside Euro q'fication in 6th,Liverpool 7th, Arsenal 9th, Juve 4th in Italy, Barca 4th)