There have been endless arguments on which league is the best in the world. People have been having different views about it. Even a search round the web proves that there is no straight answer to that question.
To make the answer easier, we have to limit our quest for finding a logical answer by concluding that the best football leagues in the world are in Europe.
When you are talking about European football, the governing body for football in the continent is UEFA. In its wisdom, the continental football governing body rates La Liga as the best in the continent.
But we are not going to use the UEFA Coefficient to try to arrive at the best league in the world or in Europe in particular. We are going to device ranking standards to see if we can arrive at a logical conclusion on this issue and each of the standards has 10 points.
Those standards are:
Excitement
Competitiveness
Star Power
Success in the Continent
Before we continue to find out the best league in the world using the standards above, let us establish the fact that the four leagues in contention are: Bundesliga, English Premier League, La Liga and Serie A.
Now, let us go into the analysis using our standards:
Excitement:
Every football fan watches a match to get excitement from it. But this is not applicable to a fanatic who wants to see that his/her club is always winning no matter how the team is playing. Based on this and other research, it is a fact that the most followed and the most-watched football match in the world is El Classico.
El Classico is a match played between Real Madrid and Barcelona, two teams that have been dominating La Liga and the Champions League for over 10 years now. The teams are arguably the most followed teams in the world because of the kind of excitement they bring to the game. Hence, La Liga is the most exciting league in the world.
Most Competitive League
Football is a competitive game. Though La Liga matches might be exciting on the field of play there is little or no excitement when it comes to being competitive on the table. In La Liga, Barcelona or Real Madrid is expected to be crowned champion. Sometimes, Atlantico Madrid comes into the party.
But in the case of the Premier League, any team on the league table can compete with the big boys – Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham, and end up winning the league. Leicester City is a good example of this. Hence, the Premier League is the most competitive league in the world.
League with the most Star Power
When you are talking about star power, La Liga has the highest concentration of superstars as far as football is concerned. Even most of the superstars in other leagues (except the EPL), enjoyed the biggest fame while playing in the La Liga. In the last ten years, the best three players in the world play in the La Liga at the same time – Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Neymar.
Though Neymar now plays in France while Ronaldo now plays in Italy, Spain still has the highest concentration of superstars in football. Hence, La Liga is number one when it comes to star power.
Success in the Continent
In the history of continental football in Europe, the most successful football team is Real Madrid which has won 13 Champions League trophies. Still, in the last 10 years, the most successful football club in Europe is Barcelona with 5 Champion Leagues titles. These two clubs have also won more FIFA World Club Cup than any other club in any other league in the world. Hence, La Liga is the most successful league in Europe and indeed the whole world.
In conclusion, the best league in the world is between the English Premier League and the Spanish La Liga. But based on our analysis where we used the four standards analysed above as yardsticks, the best league in the world is Spanish La Liga.
