Which domestic football league in the world is the best?
Based on national pride and the aesthetics of the game in each country, this topic may start a discussion that will never come to a conclusion.
We choose to look at some of the statistics that contribute most to the game and develop a ranking based on that approach rather than debating whose league looks better while watching it.
Here are the top 10 football leagues in the world according to statistics.
Criteria
These days, it’s easy to determine the quality of a league using a variety of statistics.
We chose to focus on some of the most important facts rather than going in-depth on how many successful tackles or aerial duels were won by each side in each division.
Goals per game, cards per game, continental victories, and point difference from first to last were the four variables used for this ranking.
There is no disputing the fact that goals are the greatest game-changer in football since they provide a level of enjoyment. The total number of games played in each league was divided by the total number of goals scored for the purposes of this ranking.
Red cards were chosen to assess a league’s level of discipline. Red cards, as we all know, can completely change the course of a game, therefore whichever league had the most red cards every game played was at a disadvantage.
While point differential indicated the level of parity in a single league by counting the difference in points from first to last in the league table, continental victories were used to assess how good the teams in one domestic league were versus elite clubs from other leagues.
The majority of North and South American teams’ most recent complete season was used for part of the statistics, while the current league season was used for all other teams.
English Premier League
The English Premier League meets all the requirements to be named the finest statistical league in the world.
In terms of goals per game, discipline, wins in the continents, and point differential, the EPL came in sixth overall. The EPL beat out La Liga and the Bundesliga in all but one of those categories. In their own country, the English benefit from a very competitive league where the difference between first and worst is only 31 points.
Table volatility is common in England, as evidenced by the fact that the bottom of the table has 11 clubs separated by just six points. Six English teams qualified for the Champions League and Europa League knockout rounds, showing how strong the English clubs were on the continent.
We had the greatest wins-per-team average in Europe, 3.71, thanks to the 26 victories split among seven teams. This figure was 0.21 higher than that of the Bundesliga and 0.43 higher than that of La Liga.
Bundesliga
Even though there wasn’t much between second and third, there were several metrics where the Bundesliga outperformed La Liga. The first statistic in which the Bundesliga clearly excels is goals per game, a metric that is not constrained by Germany’s bottom half of the league.
The majority of German clubs—all but three—have over 20 goals this year. The bottom three clubs that haven’t scored that many goals are all in danger of going down. The Germans may have two less victories than the Spaniards at the European level, but they also have one fewer team competing in the two continental tournaments.
Five victories were shared between Bayern Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt in Europe, while Borussia Dortmund gave the Germans four victories and Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen each gave three. Freiburg earned a victory in Europe despite being ousted from the Europa League.
Despite having two less clubs in their domestic league, the point differential also favored the Germans. The Germans would still have a higher point difference, albeit by just one point, even if the lowest two in Spain were removed from the standings.
La Liga
Because the disparity between the top three leagues was so small, Spain’s reputation as a two- or three-club league may have damaged them a little.
In the league standings, there are 39 points separating Atletico Madrid and Real Betis, while there are 14 points between first and fourth place.
The top three clubs in the league average between 2.5 and 2.7 goals per game, thus scoring is not a problem for them. However, scoring is a problem for the teams at the bottom of the table, which accounts for the league average of 1.45 goals per game.
The only thing that the top three teams, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, and Real Madrid, have going for them is their combined total of 14 continental victories. La Liga was a major danger in both tournaments’ final rounds thanks to Valencia and Sevilla, who both won their respective group crowns in the Europa League. This performance earned them this third-place finish.
Serie A
Fans of Serie A should turn away immediately since their favorite league is down here in ninth position.
The large number of red cards and the enormous difference in level from top to bottom of the league are the two primary causes of the Italian top flight’s poor rating.With 52 total ejections in 380 games in the 2013–14 season, Serie A has the worst red card rate out of all the leagues analyzed.
Whether by coincidence or not, the league with the greatest rate of red cards also had one of the lowest point differentials. The current margin of 39 points between Juventus and Catania was one of the worst among the top European leagues.
Fortunately, a few of other leagues from North and South America edged the Italians out for the top spot in biggest point difference. Nevertheless, Serie A’s lack of self-control cost them greatly since red cards caused the flow of several games to change.
