Football means different things to different people. Sometimes, it is enough for someone to simply get out and support their local team without much expectation of glory. For others, it is a win-at-all-costs scenario, to help prove a point that their team is the greatest of all.
Regardless of what people want from the beautiful game, the popularity of football knows no bounds. With more matches flooding the market every year with reformatted cup competitions, one area of the game that changes very little is domestic leagues.
League competitions are the backbone of football, and most fans will argue that the league their team is in is the best in the world to watch. But is there one league that stands out above them all for fans and neutrals alike?
The Perfect Storm
No matter the league, there is always a blend of dull, excitingly outrageous, and average matches happening throughout a season. This creates a perfect balance because the instantly forgettable 0–0 games are a necessary foil that makes those seven-goal thrillers just that extra bit exciting and unexpected.
It is, however, those nail-biting thrillers that are remembered the most fondly, and many fans judge the best league to watch by the volume of high-quality, high-scoring games that happen. Interestingly, however, across the board, there is typically an average of around 26–30% of all fixtures ending in a draw, no matter the league.
Anyone who has enjoyed soccer betting will know how often the draw comes up—happening more often than most people think. Most bettors only pick a winning result for a team, and a tricky draw can scupper bets on things like strong home favourites.
While there are boring draws, there’s a balance with exciting ones as well, and a tense 2–2 draw at the top of the table where an equaliser happened deep into stoppage time will be talked about for a lot longer than a mid-table, midweek 0–0 draw.
Top Talent
There is a reason why the likes of the Premier League and La Liga dominate the headlines. It’s because they attract the top talent in the world, like Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappé, and Erling Haaland. The Premier League is the richest football league in the world, and seeing superstars like Mo Salah and Cole Palmer strut their stuff naturally gives it an advantage over others.
The more money flowing into a league, the bigger and better the talent playing in it is, and the more people will watch. But does that make it the best to watch? The problem with this model is that vacuums exist where only a handful of the richest clubs are likely to ever win the title. So often, in terms of thrilling title races, the elite leagues can fall short.
Competitiveness
Competitiveness is a great metric to measure what the best league in the world to watch is, and the Championship, the second tier of English football, is one widely known for its competitiveness. The prize at the top of the tree is one of the biggest in the game, namely a lucrative slot up in the Premier League, while the jeopardy of relegation to League One, meanwhile, means a harrowing long climb back up towards the top flight.
The Championship is a lot more evenly matched in levels of competitiveness than the likes of the Bundesliga, Serie A, or Premier League will ever be. While the quality of football may not be up to the very top standards, there’s no denying the passion that goes into it, and it is backed by fans who aren’t just following clubs for days of glory-hunting.
The Championship is often football at its rawest, not quite at the top domestic levels, but typically well ahead of anything else in the country. This puts the division in that sweet spot, and because there are 24 teams—compared to just 20 in the Premier League—it also creates the challenge of longer, more arduous seasons.
Extra Spice
The added layer of thrills that come from watching the Championship is found in the Playoffs. The teams that finish third through sixth battle for the remaining promotion spot up to the top flight and this creates drama that is seldom found elsewhere due to the magnitude of what is at stake.
The Championship Playoffs give teams that just miss out on automatic promotion a second bite of the cherry, and opportunities for outsiders who just squeezed into them, a shot at something much bigger. All-in-all, the drama and action out on the pitch are all just a little more real in the Championship, which is stripped back from the over-scrutinised VAR world of the big European leagues but doesn’t lack drama because of this.
A Little More Real
Ultimately, the best league to watch is likely to be the one that your team is currently in, whether that’s League Two, the Italian second division, the MLS, or, indeed, the Premier League. But everything is in balance, and nothing stays the same. Just as teams change leagues through promotion and relegation, leagues themselves go through spells where negative tactics dominate, or they suddenly become chaotic free-scoring thrill rides.
So, the answer regarding the best one to watch is subjective, but the real point is enjoying the game and embracing those boredom-inducing draws and painstaking defeats, along with the glorious highs of away day victories against your team’s biggest rivals.
