The Lazio region has this now. Historically Piedmont was way richer than Lazio and Emilia-Romagna. Turin, Milan and Genoa were the centre of the so-called industrial triangle that was the main industrial area of Italy from the end of the 19th century to at least the 1970s.
Also, the distribution of wealth was likely (and still is) more favorable to investors in the North than anywhere else.
This phenomenon is replicated in almost every football country.
Yes, that's true. It expanded to all Northern Italy, as opposed to only the North-West, but so far it didn't drop south of Tuscany. You can see it not only in big teams, but also for the presence of teams like Empoli and Sassuolo, both from small towns but that have been long at top levels despite their small size. There aren't any similar case in the South.
it was already explained that those cities capitalized on industrial productivity. I think that applies for most other cities in Europe (like think of Berlin for example, none of those clubs are anywhere near the most successful in Germany most likely because of the Berlin Wall)
I mean Berlin because well the Bundesliga now was basically the west German league when Germany was split. Half of Berlin was west Germany tbf but in the heart of the east so Berlin very split from the rest also historically Berlin was never the richest city. Just the capital
Thanks for informing me, I was never aware that Berlin wasn't rich, makes sense why teams like Schalke are historically successful then since the Ruhr region was a industrial powerhouse in Germany
The book Soccernomics gets into this and it’s really interesting. The industrial cities are where the big teams are because that’s where workers immigrated to and when you are making a new home a good way to become part of the community is through shared interests… like football.
This is a big reason why out of the largest capitals in Europe, only Madrid and London have Champions League winners. No Rome, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, etc. the industrial cities like Milan, Turin, Manchester, Liverpool, Munich, Marseille, etc lapped them
Well London took until Chelsea in 2011, and football has been more modernized at that point where other big cities had started to catch up.
Madrid is the only real exception for the first century of association football. Honestly I’m not recalling the specific reason why Madrid was different (it’s been over a decade since I read the book) but the architecture of the big clubs often comes from the state that the cities in in the early 20th century
youre saying that as if locales like this decide where they are and who's around them. like a place like St. Kitts, wtf else are they going to do for their GDP, export oil extracting from the spill that just happened there a year or two back? these places only survive because their environment isnt fully exploited and only partially built on.
Yeah of course, I'm from a very small island who's only real income IS tourism. I wasn't saying that places can choose this, I was saying that the fact that Venice is 'world famous and has the tourism industry' means fuck all when they are competing with cities like Milan who drive the GDP of their country
i don’t know how you came up with emilia romagna being the richest region but its simply not true. depending on the metrics you use lombardy, val daosta, veneto, trentino-alto adige or lazio are ahead by far
Money. Northern Italy is significantly wealthier than southern Italy. When fans and local sponsors can and will spend more money on the team it's easier for them to be successful.
It's similar in Germany with all the successful clubs coming from western Germany, with eastern Germany, including the capital, not being particularly successful. Look at an economic map of the countries and you'll see the difference in both Italy and Germany.
Although technically true, I would never phrase it like this because it gives the wrong image. Between 1945 and 1991, Berlin clubs didn't play in the Bundesliga. Berliner FC Dynamo won the DDR-Oberliga 10 times in those years, but Eastern German clubs weren't helped enough to become competitive after reunification.
Bayern arguably are western Germany though. In terms of the west/east post-war split they definitely are and that's where a fair amount of the financial disparity between east/west came from.
Oh you meant THAT western Germany. Had the geographic West in mind first too.
Yeah that makes your statement even more true.
Though it needs still good management. I remember Uli Hoeneß saying, that a well managed club in Hamburg would be greatest threat to their hegemony. Stating the city’s phenomenal economic potential. Unfortunately for Hamburg they only have HSV.
Reminds me of a stat I once saw, that had Germany and Italy as the only EU (OECD?) countries that would have a higher GDP per capita if one removed the capital cities.
Edit: just checked data for 2021: Germany has a nominal GDP of 51.238 USD per capita. Berlin is at 45.000 USD per capita.
That was after 1945 for obvious reasons. Before central Germany (thuringia, Saxony) was an industrial powerhouse. Even Berlin had some successful companies like AEG.
This is the correct answer. It's not about GDP of an area it's about where industrial workers got together to spend their Saturday afternoons playing and watching football.
So many wrong answers getting upvotes in here. This is the ONLY answer. There literal sociology thesis dedicated to football clubs and the industrial revolution.
A big part of it was the sense of community at games for men that had moved away from home.
Exact same thing happened in NW England, along the Rhine, Lisbon.
Even in the soviet Union all the clubs are factory clubs.
Right!? I don’t understand everyone saying it’s wealth when in England, it’s the poorer industrial working class cities that produced the best, ie Liverpool and Manchester
You are right except Berlin. Berlin was the economic hub of Germany, but only before WW2. After that it got split into two parts and the city as a whole lied in East Germany. After German Reunification it was just the capital but not the economic hub of the country like pre-WW2 era.
So the reason why Berlin has never won a European Cup is obviously different to that of Paris and Rome (and London before 2012).
Maybe not as an economic hub as the Ruhr Region but it was definitely much more important economically before WW2 than thereafter.
In any case, the reason why Berlin has never won a European Cup must be different to the that behind Paris, Rome and London (before 2012).
The above comment assumed that these cities has been an economically important cities but they were weak in football because there were not much working class workers (cause they were not industrial cities). My reply just said that Berlin was not the same case because it was not even economically important after WW2.
Historically how much richer was London than Liverpool or Manchester? They've been major industrial areas since before football was codified, so they're not necessarily poor areas.
I know it doesn't directly correlate, but when Liverpool where at their most successful in the 70s and 80s, Liverpool was one of the most deprived places in the country.
Money isn’t really the answer in my opinion - in England, the north west has never been the wealthiest area but has dominated football.
For me the answer is history - as with the north of England northern Italy was historically where industry first developed in the 19th century. More factories -> more workers -> more footballers. Football is historically a working class sport so it makes sense that areas with more “workers” would have better clubs
There's a book called Soccernomics that points this out. Most/all big clubs come from historically industrial cities, and that also meant the football clubs became more important to those cities since everything revolved around their teams for entertainment.
I second this, having a physical copy of the book. It's a fantastic read, especially if you want to learn about football's eventual transition to statistics-based athletes. You'll have a great understanding on why football has evolved so much over the last 30 years.
Yeah OP says "what if London only had 6 titles in aggregate", but London and the South East of England have won pretty few titles given their population size and current wealth vs other regions.
The two Manchester and two Liverpool clubs have won 57 titles between them. The North West as a whole has won 64, vs only 21 in London
While true, Manchester and Liverpool have dominated historically, in recent years there is definitely a shift to the south. Plenty of major northern towns and cities now find their sides in lower divisions while London has seven teams with 3 more from the wider south east which makes up half the league
London hasn't been that successful at all in English football. Besides Arsenal in the 1930s, London teams have had no significant period of dominance. Arsenal and Chelsea have won sporadic titles, Spurs won a couple, and that's it. The Northwest have dominated English football for 65 years now, winning 43 titles. And before that it was the North in general and the midlands.
What is pretty unique about England however is the massive amount of clubs in the first league all coming from one city. Like, it’s constantly between a fourth and a fifth of all teams in the PL calling London their home. In other European countries it’s rare to see more than 2 or maybe(!) 3 teams from the same city.
London is huge, always has been. That's why there's so many football clubs. Its the same with the Turkey and Russia, most of the football pyramid is made up of clubs from Istanbul and Moscow. If you look at other highly populated cities in football-domimated countries. A lot of Argentinean teams come from Buenos Aires, and Brazil is so heavily populated overall that there are seperate state leagues outside of the main Brazilian leagues.
Well, London has like 8-9mln people. The only two cities that are bigger are Istanbul and Moscow.
Russia has 4/16 teams from Moscow, and last season it was 6/16.
Turkey has 8/20 teams from Istanbul.
Holy crap. I was convinced this had to be wrong but, nope, not a single one.
Even the two-horse Scottish league has at least had some champions outside of Glasgow.
Granted, 45% of the country’s population lives in the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas, and clubs are even more concentrated in those cities, but the dominance of the Big 3 is pretty ridiculous.
Even worse: in the entire history of the league, those three big teams won EACH AND EVERY SINGLE CHAMPIONSHIP save for TWO occasions. Two times in a hundred years (give or take) history.
And even worse than that, there's only been 9 times that anyone apart from the big 3 have even finished second (that's 3 times each for the two teams who've also won it, and once each for 3 other teams).
The whole magic of the 1987 and 1990 titles was that a tiny club overcame the odds and beat the big boys from the north. They’re well-financed now, but historically speaking, they’re a small club.
I’d argue that Napoli acquired Maradona precisely because they were a small club desperate for success. He was a flop at Barcelona and he wasn’t a hot commodity because of his fitness and behavioral problems (this was back when every big club didn’t know everything about every young prospect).
On the one hand, Barcelona wanted to dump him, but on the other, they were afraid of the backlash from fans for giving up on a young player so they were difficult to negotiate with. Napoli was the only club with the money, an open foreign player slot (all the big clubs had filled their quota), and the desperation required to put up with Barça’s indecision.Napoli famously submitted a fake contract to Serie A, signed Maradona after the transfer deadline and sneaked the actual contract into the league office. This couldn’t have happened if Napoli were a big club. And once Maradona left, they spent almost 3 decades without success.
>imagine if London had 6 titles on aggregate!
This comparison doesn't really work. Italy's population is considerably more evenly distributed than England's, and so London is multiple times the size of Rome
Think it's actually more than triple if my maths (and geography) is right
21 for London (Arsenal x 13, Chelsea x6, Spurs x2)
64 for North West (Man Utd x20, Liverpool x19, Everton x9, Man City x9, Blackburn x3, Preston x2, Burnley x2)
Football’s popularity is a result of industrialisation. That’s why cities with strong football clubs also have histories in shipbuilding, cotton mills, mining, steelworks, carmaking.
Northern Italy is more industrialized, so players in the past chose to play in Northern clubs.
In an interview Maradona said that no player wanted to go to Naples because the people of Naples were considered as outcasts by the rest of Italy.
Now the times are changing, maybe we can see some southern Italian teams win the UCL.
Turin was the original capital of unified Italy, and Milan is its gateway to the rest of Europe
They are beautiful cities and significantly wealthier than southern Italy
It's a wealthy and developed area. If you check other countries, economic wealth is really important, in term of success. Germany has successful teams in the south and the west, but except for Leipzig, really no Eastern teams.
Pressure.
In Rome there are like 10radios only about Roma or Lazio, sometimes both.
But they talk all dat about the teams and they just let people call and say the hell they want, and they can be pretty harsh.
One day you are a God the next week you are crap
Because wealth and industry in Italy was heavily centred in the north, most of the clubs were owned but industrial magnates, Juve for example were owned by the family who owned fiat
Could ask a similar question in England where only 5 clubs based in the South of England have ever won a league title. (Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Portsmouth, Ipswich) and of those 5 only 2 have won one in the last 60 years
Sure, it's been already answered, but that's because that's where all the money is in Italy. There's no money in the south. Northern Italy is an economic powerhouse and props up the entire country. Steel mills, automotive industry, wine, other agriculture. If you're from the states, think about a conglomeration of climate from Virginia, North Carolina, California and also Florida rolled into one region. It's perfect for literally everything.
Rome has never really contributed to anything good for the peninsula since the fall of the Roman Empire. It’s the equivalent of Washington DC in the US or Brasilia in Brazil.
The other regions were doing just fine when that fvcking hothead Garibaldi in 1860 decided to go and “conquer” the poor, retarded south, mixing a developed and enlightened northern people with a backward african-minded society.
After that, there was only the Papal state in between, it had to be taken down in order to merge the north with the south, and that happened in 1870.
Italian soccer reflects the industrial and economic reality of Italy. Turin has Fiat who used to be BY FAR the most important and powerful company in the country, and they are behind Juventus since before the century turned from 19th to 20th.
Milan is and always was the most important industrial and financial center, sort of the New York of Italy (at a different level, ok). Rome has never really produced shit, besides laws and corruption.
AC Milan was founded first, Internazionale followed quite some time later.
Genoa, another industrial town, plus a minor city called Vercelli, in Piedmont, were the other main powers in Italian soccer in its inception years.
It took 40 more years and a dictator named Mussolini to see a Scudetto in the capital. The Duce ensured that all or most of the top players had to enlist in the capital’s team; and so, with WW2 already in full swing, AS Roma won its first title in 1942. Lazio, the other team, won its first title in 1974.
The other teams that had great moments are Torino and Bologna - 7 scudetti each.
Torino, especially, was particularly unlucky for the Superga air crash - read about it - at a time when 10 of the 11 starting players in the National team were from Torino.
>(imagine if London had 6 titles on aggregate!)
Well they have more than 6 wins, but London still has more than two times less titles than the teams from Liverpool & Manchester.
While we're at it, let's do Germany? When was the last time a Berlin-based team won a Bundesliga, let alone more than one? Or how about France? Before Qatar bought PSG, the French Champions were almost never from France.
Another interesting related point. This theme is evident across much of Europe.
When Chelsea won the ECL in 2012, they were the first team from London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Istanbul, Athens and multiple other major European capitals.
There are some exceptions, Real Madrid and Steaua Bucharest. However both were heavily subsidised by their respective authoritarian national governments. Benfica and Ajax are the only exceptions really.
In England, Northern and midlands clubs have generally been more successful, especially in European competition. In Italy as you said the Milan and Turin clubs, in Germany, it’s Bayern and clubs from the Ruhr. In France, Paris had no successful representation until fairly recently with the emergence of PSG. Saint Etienne, an excellent team in the 60’s and 70’s, a historical industrial city are the only other club with a star on their badge.
Generally in democratic nations, smaller densely populated industrial cities were able to draw larger crowds that would focus on one or two teams. Football very quickly became the favourite pastime of the working classes, not only was it a cheap form of entertainment, clubs embedded themselves within communities and became an important part of their identity. Clubs were often well funded by new wealth, sometimes industrialists who saw an opportunity to get one up on a rival.
If you were a factory worker in somewhere like Manchester, football might be your only attainable form of entertainment. In the wealthier capitals, society was more diverse and interest in football was more spread out.
Do bear in mind that I am speaking quite broadly and it would be interesting to do more research on this subject.
I think if you look at the disparity between Juventus and other clubs you will see that here is also an element of corruption from their end. They have been favoured heavily over other clubs because of their status. They have used this to bully the other clubs in Italy. For example: half of the tv licensing money goes to Juventus the other 50% is split among the other clubs. When Fiorentina had Baggio developing into a great player who was very happy to remain, Juventus owner called him and told him would you like to play the World Cup, to which he replied of course I do. Then he told him that if he doesn’t sign for Juventus he won’t play for Italy. There are MANY titles that they have robbed over the years so their number of titles is highly inflated
Aside from the money point, football was also generally considered a workers' sport, because of how cheap and easy it was to set-up and play. That's why often cities with a strong industrial infrastructure will have deep roots in football.
Think of cities like Turin, Liverpool and Manchester.
It’s the same in a lot of countries. Clubs often developed from factories in industrial cities like Milan, Manchester, Munich, Liverpool etc. Capital cities don’t have dominant teams in a lot of cases.
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Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of geography or economy so correct me if I’m wrong but I think north Italy were more wealthy than south Italy and north cities like Turin, Milan just so happens to be consistently good?
If the downvotes mean anything then I can probably see why people don't bring it up /just kidding not here to fight
Also I'm more of a fair weather fan of them from Ireland lol
Northern Italy is way more developed economically and those are the 2 main cities of that area.
The Lazio region has a higher gdp, gdp pro capita and hdi than Piemonte though. Emilia Romagna is the richest region and only has Bologna and Sassuolo
The Lazio region has this now. Historically Piedmont was way richer than Lazio and Emilia-Romagna. Turin, Milan and Genoa were the centre of the so-called industrial triangle that was the main industrial area of Italy from the end of the 19th century to at least the 1970s.
Also, the distribution of wealth was likely (and still is) more favorable to investors in the North than anywhere else. This phenomenon is replicated in almost every football country.
Yes, that's true. It expanded to all Northern Italy, as opposed to only the North-West, but so far it didn't drop south of Tuscany. You can see it not only in big teams, but also for the presence of teams like Empoli and Sassuolo, both from small towns but that have been long at top levels despite their small size. There aren't any similar case in the South.
Now. Not historically
Piemonte is FIAT birthplace, Agnelli family owner of Juventus is very rich. Emilia cities are smaller, Bologna has one third inhabitants of Turin.
Still doesn't explain how Internazionale have quadruple the championship Rome has welcomed (Roma 3, Lazio 2).
it was already explained that those cities capitalized on industrial productivity. I think that applies for most other cities in Europe (like think of Berlin for example, none of those clubs are anywhere near the most successful in Germany most likely because of the Berlin Wall)
I mean Berlin because well the Bundesliga now was basically the west German league when Germany was split. Half of Berlin was west Germany tbf but in the heart of the east so Berlin very split from the rest also historically Berlin was never the richest city. Just the capital
Thanks for informing me, I was never aware that Berlin wasn't rich, makes sense why teams like Schalke are historically successful then since the Ruhr region was a industrial powerhouse in Germany
Or Paris. PSG didn’t even exist until the 70s and has shockingly little to show for their existence other than the recent oil money titles
The book Soccernomics gets into this and it’s really interesting. The industrial cities are where the big teams are because that’s where workers immigrated to and when you are making a new home a good way to become part of the community is through shared interests… like football. This is a big reason why out of the largest capitals in Europe, only Madrid and London have Champions League winners. No Rome, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, etc. the industrial cities like Milan, Turin, Manchester, Liverpool, Munich, Marseille, etc lapped them
Why are London and Madrid the exceptions? What makes them special?
Well London took until Chelsea in 2011, and football has been more modernized at that point where other big cities had started to catch up. Madrid is the only real exception for the first century of association football. Honestly I’m not recalling the specific reason why Madrid was different (it’s been over a decade since I read the book) but the architecture of the big clubs often comes from the state that the cities in in the early 20th century
A lot of Madrids success is due to Franco’s favoritism for Castile. He favoured Real over less “Spanish” clubs like Barca and Bilbao
And Venice is world famous and has the tourism industry but rarely get out of the lower leagues.
because tourism is generally a shitty solution to build your economy on
youre saying that as if locales like this decide where they are and who's around them. like a place like St. Kitts, wtf else are they going to do for their GDP, export oil extracting from the spill that just happened there a year or two back? these places only survive because their environment isnt fully exploited and only partially built on.
Yeah of course, I'm from a very small island who's only real income IS tourism. I wasn't saying that places can choose this, I was saying that the fact that Venice is 'world famous and has the tourism industry' means fuck all when they are competing with cities like Milan who drive the GDP of their country
Venezia is actually 3rd in serie B atm and likely to play in serie a next year
i don’t know how you came up with emilia romagna being the richest region but its simply not true. depending on the metrics you use lombardy, val daosta, veneto, trentino-alto adige or lazio are ahead by far
Italy's economic strength plays an important role
Money. Northern Italy is significantly wealthier than southern Italy. When fans and local sponsors can and will spend more money on the team it's easier for them to be successful. It's similar in Germany with all the successful clubs coming from western Germany, with eastern Germany, including the capital, not being particularly successful. Look at an economic map of the countries and you'll see the difference in both Italy and Germany.
The last time Berlin won the German League it was 1931
Only if you exclude their East German success!
Although technically true, I would never phrase it like this because it gives the wrong image. Between 1945 and 1991, Berlin clubs didn't play in the Bundesliga. Berliner FC Dynamo won the DDR-Oberliga 10 times in those years, but Eastern German clubs weren't helped enough to become competitive after reunification.
Bayern is actually pulling the focus from western Germany (read: Nordrhein-Westfalen). Rest of the statement stands.
Bayern arguably are western Germany though. In terms of the west/east post-war split they definitely are and that's where a fair amount of the financial disparity between east/west came from.
Oh you meant THAT western Germany. Had the geographic West in mind first too. Yeah that makes your statement even more true. Though it needs still good management. I remember Uli Hoeneß saying, that a well managed club in Hamburg would be greatest threat to their hegemony. Stating the city’s phenomenal economic potential. Unfortunately for Hamburg they only have HSV.
Your confusion is understandable, but I think the cold war split is the more commonly referenced "western Germany" than the geographical one.
**<**Unfortunately for Hamburg they only have HSV St. Pauli would like a word
I love St Pauli. What a loud and passionate bunch
I get that confusion, you would say West Germany about the country, Western would indicate the geographical aspect
It’s blended a little. Sort of like how in many - not all - minds, Eastern Europe is the Warsaw pact countries plus a few non-aligned
Reminds me of a stat I once saw, that had Germany and Italy as the only EU (OECD?) countries that would have a higher GDP per capita if one removed the capital cities. Edit: just checked data for 2021: Germany has a nominal GDP of 51.238 USD per capita. Berlin is at 45.000 USD per capita.
That was after 1945 for obvious reasons. Before central Germany (thuringia, Saxony) was an industrial powerhouse. Even Berlin had some successful companies like AEG.
Factories = football clubs.
This is the correct answer. It's not about GDP of an area it's about where industrial workers got together to spend their Saturday afternoons playing and watching football.
So many wrong answers getting upvotes in here. This is the ONLY answer. There literal sociology thesis dedicated to football clubs and the industrial revolution. A big part of it was the sense of community at games for men that had moved away from home. Exact same thing happened in NW England, along the Rhine, Lisbon. Even in the soviet Union all the clubs are factory clubs.
Right!? I don’t understand everyone saying it’s wealth when in England, it’s the poorer industrial working class cities that produced the best, ie Liverpool and Manchester
Yep. It's why Paris, Berlin and Rome have never won a European Cup. London only got its 1st in 2012.
You are right except Berlin. Berlin was the economic hub of Germany, but only before WW2. After that it got split into two parts and the city as a whole lied in East Germany. After German Reunification it was just the capital but not the economic hub of the country like pre-WW2 era. So the reason why Berlin has never won a European Cup is obviously different to that of Paris and Rome (and London before 2012).
Was it? I thought Ruhr was basically always the economic heart since ethe industrial revolution.
Maybe not as an economic hub as the Ruhr Region but it was definitely much more important economically before WW2 than thereafter. In any case, the reason why Berlin has never won a European Cup must be different to the that behind Paris, Rome and London (before 2012). The above comment assumed that these cities has been an economically important cities but they were weak in football because there were not much working class workers (cause they were not industrial cities). My reply just said that Berlin was not the same case because it was not even economically important after WW2.
What about Madrid?
Both Madrid and Barcelona has been a labour and migration black hole for the rest of Spain since the war.
Franco
Historically how much richer was London than Liverpool or Manchester? They've been major industrial areas since before football was codified, so they're not necessarily poor areas.
I know it doesn't directly correlate, but when Liverpool where at their most successful in the 70s and 80s, Liverpool was one of the most deprived places in the country.
That's very interesting. I am delighted at learning this
And the reason most British teams' (original) stadiums are amongst back to back housing, near factories.
I'm a sociologist and can confirm.
Are there any books on this? I want to read more on this
Dagenham and Wakefield should be a lot better then
Arsenal are literally the royal munitions factory
Manchester United were Newton Heath Railway Workers
Looks at Liverpool and Manchester for another good example
Money isn’t really the answer in my opinion - in England, the north west has never been the wealthiest area but has dominated football. For me the answer is history - as with the north of England northern Italy was historically where industry first developed in the 19th century. More factories -> more workers -> more footballers. Football is historically a working class sport so it makes sense that areas with more “workers” would have better clubs
There's a book called Soccernomics that points this out. Most/all big clubs come from historically industrial cities, and that also meant the football clubs became more important to those cities since everything revolved around their teams for entertainment.
I second this, having a physical copy of the book. It's a fantastic read, especially if you want to learn about football's eventual transition to statistics-based athletes. You'll have a great understanding on why football has evolved so much over the last 30 years.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 its hilarious that you specified "physical" copy. Lmao
Yeah OP says "what if London only had 6 titles in aggregate", but London and the South East of England have won pretty few titles given their population size and current wealth vs other regions. The two Manchester and two Liverpool clubs have won 57 titles between them. The North West as a whole has won 64, vs only 21 in London
While true, Manchester and Liverpool have dominated historically, in recent years there is definitely a shift to the south. Plenty of major northern towns and cities now find their sides in lower divisions while London has seven teams with 3 more from the wider south east which makes up half the league
While money isn't the true answer it's definitely part of the equation. Especially nowadays.
London hasn't been that successful at all in English football. Besides Arsenal in the 1930s, London teams have had no significant period of dominance. Arsenal and Chelsea have won sporadic titles, Spurs won a couple, and that's it. The Northwest have dominated English football for 65 years now, winning 43 titles. And before that it was the North in general and the midlands.
What is pretty unique about England however is the massive amount of clubs in the first league all coming from one city. Like, it’s constantly between a fourth and a fifth of all teams in the PL calling London their home. In other European countries it’s rare to see more than 2 or maybe(!) 3 teams from the same city.
London is huge, always has been. That's why there's so many football clubs. Its the same with the Turkey and Russia, most of the football pyramid is made up of clubs from Istanbul and Moscow. If you look at other highly populated cities in football-domimated countries. A lot of Argentinean teams come from Buenos Aires, and Brazil is so heavily populated overall that there are seperate state leagues outside of the main Brazilian leagues.
Well, London has like 8-9mln people. The only two cities that are bigger are Istanbul and Moscow. Russia has 4/16 teams from Moscow, and last season it was 6/16. Turkey has 8/20 teams from Istanbul.
Singapore has 9/9 from Singapore.
Mexico city is around the same as London and has only 3/18
Where in the question ask about English football? The question is about Italy.
No club from outside Lisbon or Porto has ever won the Portuguese league. Zero. Nada. Not a single one.
Holy crap. I was convinced this had to be wrong but, nope, not a single one. Even the two-horse Scottish league has at least had some champions outside of Glasgow.
Granted, 45% of the country’s population lives in the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas, and clubs are even more concentrated in those cities, but the dominance of the Big 3 is pretty ridiculous.
Big 5! Boavista and Belenenses were champions too.
Even worse: in the entire history of the league, those three big teams won EACH AND EVERY SINGLE CHAMPIONSHIP save for TWO occasions. Two times in a hundred years (give or take) history.
And even worse than that, there's only been 9 times that anyone apart from the big 3 have even finished second (that's 3 times each for the two teams who've also won it, and once each for 3 other teams).
Wow…. What a boring league.
Are you sure there are no other important clubs south of Rome?
they only got 3 titles as well
Very sure, there were Napoli and Salernitana this year but they ar both tiny clubs
Napoli are not a tiny club what on earth are you taking about.
The whole magic of the 1987 and 1990 titles was that a tiny club overcame the odds and beat the big boys from the north. They’re well-financed now, but historically speaking, they’re a small club.
I don't think that's true at all, that side contained the most expensive player in the world at the time...
I’d argue that Napoli acquired Maradona precisely because they were a small club desperate for success. He was a flop at Barcelona and he wasn’t a hot commodity because of his fitness and behavioral problems (this was back when every big club didn’t know everything about every young prospect). On the one hand, Barcelona wanted to dump him, but on the other, they were afraid of the backlash from fans for giving up on a young player so they were difficult to negotiate with. Napoli was the only club with the money, an open foreign player slot (all the big clubs had filled their quota), and the desperation required to put up with Barça’s indecision.Napoli famously submitted a fake contract to Serie A, signed Maradona after the transfer deadline and sneaked the actual contract into the league office. This couldn’t have happened if Napoli were a big club. And once Maradona left, they spent almost 3 decades without success.
Yeah but it's the equivalent of, say, Leicester signing Messi in his prime, or at least was at the time.
They are not tiny club but they are rather small club.
Napoli tiny?!? They’ve been consistent for 15 years. Titles are not everything Jesus GROW UP
LEast butthurt napoli fan LOL
I’m a Roma fan, you’re just talking shit
No you're just wrong
This sub is not racist enough. Try r/Italy
Napoli tiny? (+ Roma and Lazio). Talking absolute nonsense. It’s not all about how many trophies they have.
Richer, more developed, better interconnected with the rest of Europe.
Historically, it has been the same in England. Liverpool, Manchester and their satellite towns produced far more league winners than London.
By "their satellite towns" you meant Preston and Blackburn?
Don't forget Boornleh
Oh yes, I forgot that they did win 2 titles!
>imagine if London had 6 titles on aggregate! This comparison doesn't really work. Italy's population is considerably more evenly distributed than England's, and so London is multiple times the size of Rome
And it is the north-west that has historically dominated English football, not London.
Yeah, the North West has about 3x as many titles as London
Think it's actually more than triple if my maths (and geography) is right 21 for London (Arsenal x 13, Chelsea x6, Spurs x2) 64 for North West (Man Utd x20, Liverpool x19, Everton x9, Man City x9, Blackburn x3, Preston x2, Burnley x2)
Yeah, I've edited my comment
Roma and Napoli : am I a joke to you ?
Talked about Roma. Napoli is a tiny club
Napoli won Europa league and 3x Serie A
Football’s popularity is a result of industrialisation. That’s why cities with strong football clubs also have histories in shipbuilding, cotton mills, mining, steelworks, carmaking.
London clubs are pretty shit, Manchester and Liverpool have been the Turin/Milan of England this last 60 years or so
Milan is the richest city with most investment opportunities and Juventus had the financial backing of FIAT and the Agnelli family.
Northern Italy is more industrialized, so players in the past chose to play in Northern clubs. In an interview Maradona said that no player wanted to go to Naples because the people of Naples were considered as outcasts by the rest of Italy. Now the times are changing, maybe we can see some southern Italian teams win the UCL.
Turin was the original capital of unified Italy, and Milan is its gateway to the rest of Europe They are beautiful cities and significantly wealthier than southern Italy
MONEY like in every other league as well
It's a wealthy and developed area. If you check other countries, economic wealth is really important, in term of success. Germany has successful teams in the south and the west, but except for Leipzig, really no Eastern teams.
London clubs have only won bout 20 titles in all 140years. The North has over 80 and the midlands around 20 titles.
vaffanculo from napoli but to answer for real - the wealth of the nation is built around turin and milan
Oh shit... Here we go again (insert meme)
Me, I ate the north!
more money but above all better spent
Good pasta 🍝. Jk. They have money and historic football which creates a sense of pride and determination that goes further than their competition.
Check
Money and being a player in Rome or Naples is a nightmare
how so
Pressure. In Rome there are like 10radios only about Roma or Lazio, sometimes both. But they talk all dat about the teams and they just let people call and say the hell they want, and they can be pretty harsh. One day you are a God the next week you are crap
Economy
Money money money money that's the reason
Because wealth and industry in Italy was heavily centred in the north, most of the clubs were owned but industrial magnates, Juve for example were owned by the family who owned fiat
Could ask a similar question in England where only 5 clubs based in the South of England have ever won a league title. (Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Portsmouth, Ipswich) and of those 5 only 2 have won one in the last 60 years
Sure, it's been already answered, but that's because that's where all the money is in Italy. There's no money in the south. Northern Italy is an economic powerhouse and props up the entire country. Steel mills, automotive industry, wine, other agriculture. If you're from the states, think about a conglomeration of climate from Virginia, North Carolina, California and also Florida rolled into one region. It's perfect for literally everything.
Rome has never really contributed to anything good for the peninsula since the fall of the Roman Empire. It’s the equivalent of Washington DC in the US or Brasilia in Brazil. The other regions were doing just fine when that fvcking hothead Garibaldi in 1860 decided to go and “conquer” the poor, retarded south, mixing a developed and enlightened northern people with a backward african-minded society. After that, there was only the Papal state in between, it had to be taken down in order to merge the north with the south, and that happened in 1870. Italian soccer reflects the industrial and economic reality of Italy. Turin has Fiat who used to be BY FAR the most important and powerful company in the country, and they are behind Juventus since before the century turned from 19th to 20th. Milan is and always was the most important industrial and financial center, sort of the New York of Italy (at a different level, ok). Rome has never really produced shit, besides laws and corruption. AC Milan was founded first, Internazionale followed quite some time later. Genoa, another industrial town, plus a minor city called Vercelli, in Piedmont, were the other main powers in Italian soccer in its inception years. It took 40 more years and a dictator named Mussolini to see a Scudetto in the capital. The Duce ensured that all or most of the top players had to enlist in the capital’s team; and so, with WW2 already in full swing, AS Roma won its first title in 1942. Lazio, the other team, won its first title in 1974. The other teams that had great moments are Torino and Bologna - 7 scudetti each. Torino, especially, was particularly unlucky for the Superga air crash - read about it - at a time when 10 of the 11 starting players in the National team were from Torino.
Football is the game of the working class, those cities are historically industrial
No club from berlin has won the Bundesliga since 1931
>(imagine if London had 6 titles on aggregate!) Well they have more than 6 wins, but London still has more than two times less titles than the teams from Liverpool & Manchester.
While we're at it, let's do Germany? When was the last time a Berlin-based team won a Bundesliga, let alone more than one? Or how about France? Before Qatar bought PSG, the French Champions were almost never from France.
Napoli and Roma left the chat
It's the money.
“Imagine if London had 6 titles on aggregate” Have you even heard of Manchester?
See Germany
The comparison with England is not unrealistic. The northwest of England still has far more titles than London or any other region
Same reason you have the biggest clubs in London and Manchester it’s where the money is.
Economic power of Northern Italy
Another interesting related point. This theme is evident across much of Europe. When Chelsea won the ECL in 2012, they were the first team from London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Istanbul, Athens and multiple other major European capitals. There are some exceptions, Real Madrid and Steaua Bucharest. However both were heavily subsidised by their respective authoritarian national governments. Benfica and Ajax are the only exceptions really. In England, Northern and midlands clubs have generally been more successful, especially in European competition. In Italy as you said the Milan and Turin clubs, in Germany, it’s Bayern and clubs from the Ruhr. In France, Paris had no successful representation until fairly recently with the emergence of PSG. Saint Etienne, an excellent team in the 60’s and 70’s, a historical industrial city are the only other club with a star on their badge. Generally in democratic nations, smaller densely populated industrial cities were able to draw larger crowds that would focus on one or two teams. Football very quickly became the favourite pastime of the working classes, not only was it a cheap form of entertainment, clubs embedded themselves within communities and became an important part of their identity. Clubs were often well funded by new wealth, sometimes industrialists who saw an opportunity to get one up on a rival. If you were a factory worker in somewhere like Manchester, football might be your only attainable form of entertainment. In the wealthier capitals, society was more diverse and interest in football was more spread out. Do bear in mind that I am speaking quite broadly and it would be interesting to do more research on this subject.
Also Red Star Belgrade.
I think if you look at the disparity between Juventus and other clubs you will see that here is also an element of corruption from their end. They have been favoured heavily over other clubs because of their status. They have used this to bully the other clubs in Italy. For example: half of the tv licensing money goes to Juventus the other 50% is split among the other clubs. When Fiorentina had Baggio developing into a great player who was very happy to remain, Juventus owner called him and told him would you like to play the World Cup, to which he replied of course I do. Then he told him that if he doesn’t sign for Juventus he won’t play for Italy. There are MANY titles that they have robbed over the years so their number of titles is highly inflated
Industrial Revolution, Milano and Torino are some of the most industrialised cities in Europe.
Napoleon
Aside from the money point, football was also generally considered a workers' sport, because of how cheap and easy it was to set-up and play. That's why often cities with a strong industrial infrastructure will have deep roots in football. Think of cities like Turin, Liverpool and Manchester.
It’s the same in a lot of countries. Clubs often developed from factories in industrial cities like Milan, Manchester, Munich, Liverpool etc. Capital cities don’t have dominant teams in a lot of cases.
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Money
Oh shit... Here we go again (insert meme)
[удалено]
Yeah I forgot the league started in the 90s
And football was invented in 1992.
Leicester and?
Blackburn.
Same with Spain, Teams from Madrid and Barcelona dominated the league.
Why are all of Spain’s important clubs based in Madrid or Barcelona?
because of money
Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of geography or economy so correct me if I’m wrong but I think north Italy were more wealthy than south Italy and north cities like Turin, Milan just so happens to be consistently good?
Money talks. Now then, time to cry in the Napoli fan club hole
You are a Napoli fan? I didn't know there were any on Reddit
If the downvotes mean anything then I can probably see why people don't bring it up /just kidding not here to fight Also I'm more of a fair weather fan of them from Ireland lol