Years pass, Libertadores, Champions, national competitions, the center of football turns, a new market emerges and invests a lot, but the debate always remains open: “which are the most balanced Championships in the world?”.
The doubt remains, as the discussion has two sides, whether it is the one in which there are 3 or 4 teams that buy the best players on the planet and are champions that are a pleasure to watch play or whether it is the competition in which the teams are leveled (sometimes underneath) and anyone can win.
The preference for the best is subjective, it depends on each football lover, but there is an answer to which is the most disputed championship, the IFFHS, the International Federation of Football History and Statistics, created a ranking based on the performance of each team in the world and used criteria to give weight to competitions.
See which are the fiercest competitions:
According to the entity’s survey, in 2023, the Brasileirão is the most disputed championship of all. The top 10 is formed as follows:
- Brasileirão (1.181 pontos)
- English Championship (1,086)
- Spanish Championship (967.5)
- German Championship (921.5)
- Italian Championship (866)
- French Championship (855)
- Portuguese Championship (853.25)
- Dutch Championship (808.75)
- Argentine Championship (798.5)
- Paraguayan Championship (701)
The criteria for carrying out the survey and stipulating the score for each league takes into account the performance of the teams, in their continental competitions, that compete in the national league, mainly.
For example, Brazilian teams have won the last 5 Libertadores, inevitably the score, for such a ranking, is much higher for clubs in Brazil and for the Brazilian Championship, than in the national leagues in South America.
The strong performance in the Copa Sudamericana also explains the election. Just as the English perform better in the Champions League than the Dutch, Italians and even the Spanish, if we look at the teams in general.
It may not surprise football lovers, or those who analyze today’s match predictions, to know that the Brasileirão is voted the most competitive, as teams from the second half of the table constantly beat the teams at the top, there are 5 candidates for the title in the middle of the season. and about 8 worrying about relegation, and this all makes the competition more interesting too.
Furthermore, it has the aggravating factor of being a very large country, with a tight calendar, and travel that wears out the players, among other factors that bring balance to the competition, unlike what happens in several championships in which there are only the same 2 or 3 favorites every year.
Still according to the ranking, championships such as MLS and Saudi Arabia, which are investing a lot to enter this list, are close to the top10, after all, performance in continental competitions must improve and as the leagues are growing as a whole, it is not just one team that is growing, they emerge as favorites to grow on the list.
In more competitive championships, where there is more unpredictability during the games, where it is not possible to be sure who will be the winner of the match, the number of goals, cards and other game situations that may be more predictable in some leagues, the lover football tends to have more interest.
In a German Championship, for example, the duel between the 12th and 16th is much less attractive than in a league like the Brasileirão, where the victory of the 12th can represent an approximation of the G6 and the defeat raises the warning signal for the relegation zone.
The more competitive the championship, with the unpredictability of some clashes, the more profitable the league? No. Although the Brasileirão leads the ranking, the value of the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and even the Eredivisie, Dutch Championship, move more money than the leader of this survey, the Campeonato Brasileiro.
This one, despite being more interesting and having a much greater economic power on the Continent, is still less valuable than the main European ones and this may reflect the technical difference. We will see in next year’s World Championship, in which Brazilians and Europeans will face each other and it will be a good barometer to understand how much the Brazilian league is still behind the Old Continent.
