European Super League 2017-18

UPDATE 5/26/18: Final standings for the season.

Some of the richest clubs of European football have made noise about permanent spots in the UEFA Champions League, or wanting to create a closed European Super League. Naturally, I would prefer an open Super League, with promotion and relegation with the domestic leagues.

Since there are too many "big" clubs for one twenty-team league, I have created a twenty-team Super League and a second division with forty teams, split into East and West Leagues. To pick which teams are placed in which leagues, I used the UEFA Club Coefficients from the end of the 2014-15 season. After the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons, two teams were relegated from the Super League to Division 2, replaced by the east and west champions. Two teams from each Division 2 league were relegated, replaced by the four teams that progressed the furthest in the Champions League and Europa League. (Ideally, this would just be the final four Champions League teams, with the relegated teams automatically qualified for the next season's Champions League so they have the potential for promotion as soon as possible).

PSV Eindhoven was relegated from the Super League to Division 2 West. Zenit Saint Petersburg was relegated from the Super League to Division 2 East. Liverpool and Shakhtar Donetsk were promoted to the Super League. Wolfsburg, Celtic, Salzburg and Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk were relegated to their respective domestic leagues. Leicester City, Celta de Vigo and Borussia Mönchengladbach were promoted to Division 2 West. Monaco was promoted to Division 2 East.

To keep the Division 2 leagues with even teams, Basel 1893 was moved from the West to the East, since Basel is east of Mönchengladbach.

Here is a map of the sixty teams in the international leagues. Click the rectangle tab thing in the upper left to get to the list where you can deselect the separate divisions.

Here are the final standings.

The standings include games only against teams in a team's division (Super League or Division 2). Borussia Monchengladbach did not play any such games this season. The first tiebreaker is the number of games played. The second tiebreaker is the UEFA club coefficient rankings.

The four teams promoted from the domestic leagues are the four teams (that aren't above) who progressed the furthest in the Champions League and Europa League. Since no "new" team advanced to the knock-out round of the Champions League, all four are from the Europa League: Lokomotiv Moskva, RB Leipzig, Salzburg, and Ludogorets 1945, who have the highest coefficient of the teams eliminated in the round of 32.

US Soccer Combined Leagues 2017

UPDATE 1/7/18: Final standings updated based on revised teams for 2018.

Just suppose that many years ago, the US Soccer Federation required all professional teams to play in the same league system. Just suppose that they decided that it would be best to always have two equal leagues, east and west, and then divide teams vertically into Division 1, Division 2, etc. Just suppose that, each year, they promoted the best teams from Division 2 and relegated the worst teams from Division 1.

And here's the big leap. Just suppose that we didn't have any more teams playing than what we actually have.

In 2017, the USSF has 60 professional teams. Four teams folded/withdrew after the 2016 season (Fort Lauderdale Strikers, FC Montreal, Rayo OKC, and Wilmington Hammerheads). New teams added to Division 2 West are Reno 1868 and San Francisco Deltas. In the East, the new teams in Division 2 are Atlanta United and Puerto Rico.

To balance the leagues, Columbus Crew was moved from the West to the East.

Here is a map of the teams. Click the rectangle tab thing in the upper left to get to the list where you can deselect the separate divisions.

Here are the final standings for 2017:

Oof. That's a lot of gray.

Since a wonderful home-and-away round robin won't actually happen in each league above, I will substitute that with ranking the teams by points-per-game, including each team's league and cup games played in 2017, only counting games against teams in its division (Division 1 or 2).

At least one team from each Division 1 league will be relegated and at least one team from each Division 2 league will be promoted. The final number is determined by the number of professional teams in 2018 and the resultant promotions without relegations to even out the divisions. Without adjustments to the number of teams, three would be relegated and three would be promoted.

B teams in Division 2 are ineligible for promotion as B teams can't be in Division 1.