Italy pretty much had their way in the second half a lot of chances, most of their efforts were thwarted by the US back line and Tim Howard’s brilliance.  Being down a man there was a pretty open area in the middle of the midfield and the Italians took advantage of it.  2 of their goals were shots outside the box.  I thought we’d get at least one point after the 1st half performance, turns out the Italians class was too much for the undermanned Yanks.

Next Game: Brazil 6/18 @ 9am, ESPN360.com, ESPN2.

Who knew watching last place teams could be so much fun?  The Europeans might have it right when it comes to sports leagues and how there rewarded for good efforts on and off the field.   There is the obvious battle to finish 1^st, but there is a twist.  Teams cannot finish in the bottom 3 of the table, or they will be relegated to the lower division. 

Let’s take the English Premier League for instance.   In England the hierarchy of the leagues is: The Premier League (EPL), Championship League, League One, and lastly League Two.  There are 20 teams in the EPL, England’s top football league.    In order to stay in the EPL the team cannot finish in one of the bottom 3 positions.  The bottom 3 teams in the table are relegated to the Championship league at the end of the season.  The bad news for teams relegated is that ticket sales drop b/c the teams are playing lesser teams without the star power.   Another hit the teams take from the demotion is the lower leagues provide less funding, due to their diminished TV contracts.

Newly relegated teams receive and golden parachute for 2 years.  This Golden parachute is the money they would be rewarded with if they were still in the EPL.  The money comes from the EPL’s lucrative TV contracts.  After 2 years if the team fails to finish in the top 2 of the Championship league to get automatically promoted, the parachute money stops, and the teams are forced to drop payroll, by letting their top paid players go.  There is a playoff for the final promotion slot, with the 4 teams that finish 3-6 in the Championship league table.

This really makes the last few weeks of EPL football worth watching.  In the case for about 6-7 teams going into the last few weeks their teams future is on the line.  The EPL was won by Manchester United last week, but there are still 2 spots for teams to be relegated.  West Bromwich Albion has already claimed last place.  There are 4 teams that are fighting it out for the 2 relegation spots left.  So this last weekend of football will decide a lot.

There was a really good in depth read about this that I found last year in an issue of  American Way Magazine. 

The US domestic leagues don’t have relegations; all the teams are safe unless the city itself cannot afford to host the team.   This is where you see teams that move to another city.  Like last year when Seattle would not build the supersonics a new arena, so the team moved to Oklahoma City.  For the most part, if a team is bad they get rewarded with a better draft pick, a great opportunity to get better talent on the field/court. 

Most teams that consistently finish poorly are limited by their resources.  The MLB is everyone for themselves league when it comes to TV contract for the teams.  In NYC where the media market is huge, the Yankees and Mets have huge deals.  The Yankees even have their own network, YES.  While a team like the Kansas City Royals are forced to build from within and bring up their talented players through their farm system.  Once their players gain popularity and are no longer protected under the rules of the MLB, the team cannot afford them and they are either traded off for younger unproven talent or lost to teams that can offer them more money.  See Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye. 

The NFL has a league wide contract each team gets the same funding no matter their market making in much more fair for the lower TV markets, which causes a great deal of parody in the league.

 There are a lot of good things about each leagues structure.  For my dollar the last few weeks of the European leagues have a very interesting twist that makes for a great deal of drama.

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Nice win tonight by the way.  So far our pitching has been strong, I’m not worried about Roy after last nights performance, and it’s nice to see Wandy pitching really well out of the gate.  Keppinger a late spring signing, after Aaron Boone had to have heart surgery, knocked in the game winning, walk off broken bat single for the 3-2 win in the 10^th inning.  Baseball is all about a short memory so we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Speaking of tomorrow Liverpool FC plays Chelsea in the championship league quarterfinals.  I’m sure most people in the states don’t follow European football, but for the past 10 years or so I’ve been following as close as I can from abroad.  Fox soccer channel does a great job; I know I watch it a lot more than ESPN these days.   I’ve latched on to Liverpool, mostly b/c Steven Gerrard has been my favorite player since I’ve gotten into the EPL.    The UEFA Championship League games are really exciting, there’s some much talent on the pitch…here is how wiki breaks down the tournament. 

Luckily for me ESPN360.com has all the championship games live, so I can stream them at work.  So from 1:45 – 3:45pm tomorrow I’m in a meeting.