The OLBG European Super League Era

The OLBG European Super League

With the news that UEFA no longer have a monopoly on the governance of European club competition, talk of a European Super League has once again reared its head. No longer a breakaway model but one that could run parallel with competitions such as the Champions League and Europa League.

For as long as talks of a European Super League have been discussed, the lingering threat is always the likes of Manchester City and Real Madrid upping sticks and chasing an abundance of financial gains elsewhere.

Now that the European Courts have decided that separate competitions can co-exist, it has muddied the waters somewhat and clubs may soon have to decide whether they are bold enough to go it alone or stay with the current status quo.

The new Super League mooted by the company known as A22 is one idea but what if OLBG were to come up with another? A league based more on the American sporting model of conferences that feed into one overall league table – an idea that is partly used within Major League Soccer.

The New League Rules

With this in mind, I have decided to merge the five major European leagues: 

• Premier League
• La Liga
• Bundesliga
• Ligue 1
• Serie A

From here 96 clubs will be placed in an overall table and the way to win points is by getting the better of teams in your own domestic league or ‘conference’ if we are using American sporting terminology.

For example, Manchester City would have fixtures against Liverpool and Arsenal. Barcelona would go up against the likes of Atletico and Real Madrid from La Liga. How you fare on a domestic level will contribute to continental success.

At the same time, there needs to be a balancing of performance and that comes courtesy of Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga only having 18 teams while their three European counterparts operate with 20. Therefore, a Premier League team has four more matches than a Ligue 1 side and more opportunities to win points.

With this in mind, our balancing act will be the measure of average points per game and this means that clubs with 20 teams in their own domestic league, do not benefit more than those that only have 18 by comparison.

New Super League Table

The rules are set and now the final step is to look at the current top 20 in our Ultimate European Super League: 

As we can see it is Inter who currently sit top of the table by virtue of a better goal difference than German counterparts Bayer Leverkusen. Both teams have recorded 2.67 points per game on average and considering you can only earn a maximum of 3.00, that is a rather fearsome tally.

The current Serie A and Bundesliga leaders find themselves 0.23 points clear of Real Madrid in third and in turn, the Santiago Bernabeu outfit are 0.11 points clear of Liverpool in fourth. The Merseyside men at the top of the Premier League shop and just 0.03 points better off than Manchester City.

The Premier League’s top two in fourth and fifth respectively, with fellow title challengers Arsenal in seventh overall. With three English teams in the top seven of our European Super League table, it also suggests how cut-throat the race for Premier League honours currently is.

While PSG find themselves lying sixth in the standings and just 0.01 points behind Manchester City and 0.04 points clear of Bayern Munich who currently find themselves lying eighth and not used to be second in the German Bundesliga.

Alternative League Leaders

I can go another way to measure this by comparing where each of the five domestic league leaders currently sit in our European Super League Top 20.

Rather unsurprisingly, the respective league leaders across the top five European leagues are also at the sharper end of proceedings in Europe. There is a 0.38 point gap between Inter/Bayer Leverkusen at the top and PSG in sixth.

However, with PSG having an easier league compared to potential rivals, you would imagine the French league leaders to be a lot closer to the current highest value of 2.67. If anything, it suggests that by their own standards, the Parisians are not having it all their own way.

Yes, they will likely win Ligue 1 at a canter but with Kylian Mbappe set to depart from PSG in the summer, it seems as if the big money experiment that has been undertaken by their Qatari-based owners is closer to being deemed a failure.

Best Contributing Leagues

Another way I can highlight the difficulty of a league is how many representatives per league find themselves in our current European Top 20:

Five clubs from the Premier League, just as many from La Liga, a quartet from the Bundesliga and Serie A and two from Ligue 1. This suggest there is less quality in the latter of the competitions as the big names pull clear of the rest.

While the inverse can be said for the Premier League and La Liga, this suggests there is more quality in these two leagues and with half of the top 20 coming from these two leagues alone, it only further highlights the strength of the teams within them.

One interesting point to note is that of the top 20 teams in the table, 15 of them have earned more than 2.00 in terms of PPG. A value of this magnitude should be enough to secure a top-four finish and subsequent entry to the Champions League, it is certainly enough to reach the Europa League.

The only five out of the top 20 who have not reached that threshold are Brest and Tottenham on 1.92, Bologna on 1.89, Athletic Club on 1.85 and Dortmund and 1.83 – both Tottenham and Athletic Club finding themselves outside of the Champions League paying positions.

PSG as we know sit sixth in our current top 20 and there are th French representatives within this sample. Nice who are second in Ligue 1 are 16^th in our overall table, by comparison Brest find themselves lying 19^th.

Ligue 1 has long been PSG’s own personal plaything; this only reinforces the point. The reason they will not be top of this European Super League is for the simple reason that they do not need to be – even lying sixth they are nearly half a point clear of Brest.

While although Bayern Munich have also been the only champions of the Bundesliga across the past decade, the fact that Bayer Leverkusen are top in Germany and joint in our European Super League only highlights how good you have to be in order to beat Harry Kane and his Allianz Arena teammates.

Editorial Information and Sources

Dan Tracey is a multi-talented writer, data analyst and podcaster whose six-year career in the sports data sphere has seen incredible successes. 

Dan Tracey

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Source Data:

https://fbref.com/en/comps/Big5/Big-5-European-Leagues-Stats

Correct as of 8th March 2024