1 #europeansuperleague Been having a look at competition in European Leagues - ALL, not just the 'big' five' General upshot is huge decline in Germany & Italy. England far more competitive than most - big or small.

A thread

2 I examined league winners in every European league over the past ten years - bar Kosovo & Gibraltar which haven't been FIFA/UEFA members for the whole decade

3 No country produced more than six different champions. Three hit that number - Armenia, Georgia, Sweden. A further eight countries had five different champions. England was the only one of the 'big five' to do so

4 Of others on five strongest leagues seem to be Hungary, Poland, Romania. The others are the Faroes, Montenegro, Latvia, ROI

5 Of the rest of the 'big five,' France had four, Spain three, Germany & Italy two apiece.

6 Two was the smallest number for any country. No fewer than eleven countries (over 20% of the total) have had just two champion clubs. Lack of competition is as acute in Luxembourg as it is in Italy

7 Other than the German & Italian giants, several mid-to-strong countries also had just two winners - Portugal, Ukraine, Croatia, Serbia, Switzerland, Bulgaria & - can I say Scotland here? Okay, & Scotland. Luxembourg & Azerbaijan also had just two.

8 The average number of clubs per country to win the title was 3.6

9 In every country at least one club won two successive titles. In 17 of the 52 analysed no club won more than two. Most competitive overall were Georgia & Sweden with six separate champions & none winning more than two in a row

10 It may be surprising to see the #PremierLeague just below that with no more than two in a row & five separate title winners. The Faroes, Montenegro & Hungary also produce the same figures

11 At the other end of the scale the same club won nine successive titles in Bulgaria, Italy and Scotland. There were depressingly long successive sequences in many countries both large and small

12 Eight in a row in Belarus, Germany & Wales. Seven in Austria, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Greece & Switzerland. Six in Albania, Andorra, Croatia & Kazakhstan. Overall 23 countries had clubs winning four or more in a row inside the ten years in question

13 Some of these runs are even longer but as I started from scratch from 2010-11 this doesn't show.

14 But I did look at leagues' history overall in terms of one-club domination. Ex-USSR & Yugoslavia come out worst with six of those countries seeing clubs win TEN or more titles in succession.

15 Armenia, Georgia (odd, considering recent competitiveness), Moldova all have had clubs winning ten in a row, Croatia eleven, Belarus thirteen & worst of all Latvia with fourteen

16 Bear in mind we're not going back a century here. All in the previous tweet have joined UEFA in the past 30 years. Huge chunks of the past three decades have been subject to one-club dominance

17 There is one exception to the ex-USSR/Yugo rule & that's Norway where Rosenborg won thirteen times on the trot 1992-2004 inclusive. Unusual not just in Norway but Scandinavia as a whole which regularly sees the most competitive leagues in Europe

18 Worth noting that while Rosenborg have added another four in a row since then, SIX other clubs have won the Norwegian title - much more in keeping with Norway prior to Rosenborg's amazing run

19 In only seven countries has the title been won by the same club on less than four occasions - and most of those come heavily caveated

20 Statistically most competitive of all is Montenegro - the only country where no club has won three titles in a row. But - & it's a huge big neon-lit BUT -the Montenegrin league has only been operating since 2006

21 Four of the six countries where no club has won more than three in succession are also asterisked. San Marino's league has operated since 1985, North Macedonia 1992, Slovakia 1993, Bosnia 1995 in theory, 2002 in practice - due to Balkan wars

22 So that leaves just two countries with long-established leagues where no club has ever won more than three successive championships. Denmark & England

23 It may be surprising to some but the #PremierLeague comes out well in terms of competition. Just about every country has a few clubs that dominate leagues. That's true in England also but the English 'few' are not as few as elsewhere

24 Many of us grew up in the era when English football was fiercely competitive - in the 1960s & early 1970s but since the Liverpool hegemony of the mid-70s to late 80s (though Forest, Villa & Everton all interrupted it) that competition is no longer as widespread

25 But it is - as both contemporary & historical figures show- not only far more competitive than the other 'big five' leagues but far more competitive than over 90% of European leagues as a whole.

26 What's changed is lack of competition in countries like Germany & Italy. We have reached a paradoxical situation (though this will be familiar to viewers in Scotland) where big clubs exert their financial muscle to dominate the domestic game then moan about lack of competition

27 To which I do not think it's possible to construct a violin small enough to shed tears to. Fuck them.

28 Number of different clubs to have won league titles in the past decade

29 Shortest to longest consecutive titles in past decade

30 Finally, periods of one club dominance historically. Shortest to longest