European football, the sport that is commonly called soccer here in America, will eventually have inter-country play between the respective big leagues, such as the Spanish La Liga, the English Premier League, the German Bundesliga and so forth. The leagues currently do not have inter-country league play, although in regards to tournaments such as the Champions League tournament, which takes the best clubs in all of Europe and has them face off in a tournament format until one team stands alone as the champion, along also with the UEFA Europa cup, which takes teams of a slightly lesser stature, into a similar format as the Champions League are played on a yearly format.
These tournaments are both popular and desired by the viewing public because they stand as a testing point as to which European team stands tallest amongst them all and thereby has the bragging rights and financial rewards for having done so. However, these are tournament inter-country challenges in which the results will not affect the domestic standings of the respective country’s teams. It seems to me, if Europe is able to pretty much unite under one common currency than the leagues themselves should also begin to take the steps to challenge one another for supremacy during the regular season across borders.
While the European soccer leagues at the top level follow the format of a simple home and away game against every other team in their respective league, with the team accumulating the most points, being declared the champion, there isn’t any reason why a couple extra games of inter-league inter-country play could not be added to the official league standings.
The best way to start this proposed format change is to begin relatively modestly with basically each team being given a seeded rating, to which teams of comparable quality would face off against the other, so that what you would get would be something like Real Madrid v. Manchester City, rather than Read Madrid v. Sunderland. Immediately, one might criticize this as merely being a repeat of current tournament matchups which is somewhat valid, but doesn’t take into account that the lesser teams would also get to participate by facing others of a similar class, nor does it take into account that the players themselves want to test their skills against their respective counterparts in other leagues, again and again, and would be extremely motivated to perform well.
This proposed inter-country regular season play, would be a winner on every level, as the players, the fans, the club owners, the advertisers, and the broadcasters would all be strong supporters of this extra competition and the additional revenue stream. It is absolutely critical that the inter-country games count in the standings, as that would give these contests validity. One does get tired of hearing about how such and such league is the best in the world, and mere talking, or even a tournament of champions is not enough to make that a definitive statement, whereas a true league competition, would demonstrate the depth and strength of each league and those results would tell the tale.