Somehow the people in charge of the Premier League have taken a competition that was notoriously provincial, ugly, and unsophisticated, and turned it around into a huge financial success with some basic redistribution and outside investment. Whereas the big two in Spain have been allowed to make the competition virtually irrelevant for everyone outside their orbit – and that constant short-term thinking is going to make things even worse there.

Bingo. The fact that each team has to negotiate it’s own TV deal makes it completely unfair.

There are probably more people who watch Fulham on a weekly basis than Athletic Bilbao, which explains everything about how incompetent Spain is at manufacturing an exciting domestic league.

So now we’re judging quality by attendance? Got it.

EPL > La Liga > Serie A > Bundesliga

I don’t watch enough Serie A and Bundesliga to comment, but I agree with the rating of the first two.

EPL > La Liga > Serie A > Bundesliga

And very, very close between 1 & 2. Just the way things are right now. Discuss…

That’s not really the point though – the English teams were by and large awful in Europe,

It is the point though, just because the remaining teams are so far behind RM and Barca doesn’t mean they are shit teams, it just means that RM and Barca are that much better. We’re talking about two of the top 3 teams in the world, not just Spain. I watch a lot of La Liga matches because I’m a Madrid fan, so I can see there is quality in the other teams in the league. In the final 8 of the CL and EL, I believe there were 4 or 5 La Liga teams remaining. You can throw out the European matches if you want, but they still counted and they’d still be used to tout the EPL if they were successful. You can compare a league’s strength on how you think they’d match up, I’ll take a look at how they match up when they actually play each other.

Which is why the Europa Cup final contained two La Liga teams.

That’s not really the point though – the English teams were by and large awful in Europe, but their league as a competitive spectacle is vastly superior to Spain’s. Outside of maybe Malaga, the other teams have no chance in the long run to build something special. Such a squad would get poached by the bigger clubs, or they’ll hit a wall once they realize that no one in Asia wants a Sevilla shirt.

I almost feel bad for him.

I then think about the CL title he won, the money he’s made and the insane amount of smoking hot European vagina he’s torn through and I stop feeling bad for him.

Totally with you here. “Almost…”

Of course the problem is, if you take those two teams away from La Liga, the league is garbage.

Which is why the Europa Cup final contained two La Liga teams.