billsportsmaps.com

May 25, 2021

Belgium national team, UEFA Euro 2020 (June 2021) – Squad, with projected starting lineup and 15 substitutions (all 26 players).

Filed under: Belgium — admin @ 9:58 am

By Bill Turianski on the 25th of May 2021; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-Belgium Euro-2020 squad (complete lineup) (fourfourtwo.com [18 May 2021]).
-Belgium National Football team/Current squad (en.wikipedia.org).

-Euro 2020: Guardian Experts’ Network – Euro 2020 team guides part 5: Belgium (by Kristof Terreur at theguardian.com/football [1 June 2021]).




    Below: Belgium national team, 2020 UEFA Euro (June 2021) – Squad, with projected starting lineup and 15 substitutions (all 26 players)

[Note: you can click on the image below to view in a separate, scrollable screen.]
belgium_national-team_uefa-euro-2020_projected-lineup_with-15-substitutions_26-player-profiles_m_.gif
Photo and Image credits above -
Belgium 2021 kits, illustration from en.wikipedia.org. Belgium 2021 jersey, photo from adidas.com. Map of Belgium with linguistic composition, base map by ft.com; caption by billsportsmaps.com.




Photo credits for players & coach…
Belgium players during 2-0 defeat of England (15 Nov 2020 UEFA Nations League match at Den Dreef Stadion in Heverlee, Belgium), photo by Reuters via malaymail.com.
Coach… Roberto Martínez, photo by Virginia LeFour/Belgium AFP via Getty Images via cnn.com.
Goalkeeper…Thibaut Courtois (Real Madrid), photo by Real Madrid CF at realmadrid.com.
Defenders…
-Toby Alderweireld (CB/RB) (Tottenham), photo unattributed at lastwordonsports.com.
-Jason Denayer (CB/RB/DMF) (Lyon), photo by Eurasia Sport Images via gettyimages.no.
-Jan Vertonghen (CB/LB) (Benfica), photo by slbenfica.pt.
Midfielders…
-Thomas Meunier (RB/RMF) (Borussia Dortmund), photo unattributed at twitter.com/[@thommills].
-Youri Tielemans (CMF/AMF/DMF) (Leicester City), photo by Plumb Images/Leicester City via Getty Images via leicestermercury.co.uk/sport.
-Leander Dendoncker (DMF/CMF/CB) (Wolverhampton), photo unattributed at footballfancast.com.
-Thorgan Hazard (LW/RW/AMF) (Borussia Dortmund), photo by Alexandre Simoes/Borussia Dortmund via Getty Images via fearthewall.com.
Attacking Midfielders & Forwards…
-Kevin De Bruyne (AMF/CMF/RW) (Manchester City), photo unattributed at lastwordonsports.com.
-Romalu Lukaku (CF) (Internazionale), photo by Marco Canoniero/LightRocket via Getty Images via manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport.
-Dries Mertens (CF/LW) (Napoli), photo by Getty Images via calciomercato.it.
Other player-options…
-Timothy Castagne (RB/RMF/LMF) ( (Leicester City), photo by Tim Keeton/Pool/AFI via Getty Images via leicestermercury.co.uk/sport.
-Dedryck Boyata (CB/LB) (Hertha BSC), photo by Soeren Stache via sportbuzzer.de.
-Thomas Vermaelen (CB/LB) (Vissel Kobe), photo by J-League via Getty Images via gettyimages.com.
-Nacer Chadli (LW/RW/AMF) (İstanbul Başakşehir), photo by Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images via gettyimages.com.
-Axel Witsel (CMF/DMF) (Borussia Dortmund), photo unattributed at voetbal24.be.
-Dennis Praet (CMF/AMF/LMF) (Leicester City), photo by Visionhaus via foxesofleicester.com.
-Yannick Carrasco (LMF/LW/RW) (Atlético Madrid), photo by Nur Photo via Getty Images via forbes.com.
-Eden Hazard (LW/AMF/RW) (Real Madrid), photo by Javier Soriano/AFP via france24.com.
-Christian Benteke (CF) (Crystal Palace), photo unattributed at sportslens.com.
-Michy Batshuayi (CF) (Chelsea, on loan to Crystal Palace), photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images via gettyimages.com.
-Leandro Trossard (LMF/AMF/FW) (Brighton & Hove Albion), photo by Premier League at premierleague.com.
Other player-options (backup ‘keepers & 3rd stringers)…
-Simon Mignolet (GK) (Club Brugge), photo by Sebastien Smets / Photo News via Getty Images via tbrfootball.com.
-Matz Sels (GK) (RC Strasbourg), photo unattributed at madeinfoot.ouest-france.fr/photos-foot.
-Jérémy Doku (RW/LW) (Rennes), photo by Photo News via hln.be.
-Hans Vanaken (AMF/CMF/LMF) (Club Brugge), photo by Photo News via hln.be.



May 16, 2021

Norway: 2021 Eliteserien – Location-maps, with 2 charts: Seasons-in-1st-division (current clubs) & All-time Norwegian titles list./+Bodø/Glimt: the northern-most team on the planet to have won a top-flight national football title.

Filed under: Norway — admin @ 12:33 pm

norway_2021-eliteserien_map_w_oslofjord-map_seasons-in-1st-div_all-time-titles-list_post_e_.gif
Norway: 2021 Eliteserien – Location-maps, with 2 charts: Seasons-in-1st-division (current clubs) & All-time Norwegian titles list




By Bill Turianski on the 16th of May 2021; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-Norway – Summary (table, fixtures, results, stats, etc) (soccerway.com).
-Eliteserien (en.wikipedia.org).

-Norwegian Eliteserien 2021 club-by-club preview, from reddit.com/soccer by ZxentixZ (from 9 May 2021, at us.reddit.com/r/soccer).

The map shows the 16 teams in the 2021 Eliteserien, the top-flight football league of Norway, which plays from May to November. On the map-page there is also an inset-map of the Greater Oslo/Oslofjord region, which shows the 8 Eliteserien teams from that area. There is also a bit of demographic info on Norway, found at the upper-left of the map page, and below that is a list showing all 7 metro-areas in Norway that have a population above 100,000.

On the map, for each the 16 Eliteserien clubs of 2021, there are shown the following:
Location, club crest, full club name and year of origin, stadium (and its capacity), 2019 average attendance [which was the most recent season before the COVID-19 pandemic affected attendance figures], and Norwegian titles.

At the upper-right of the map-page there is a brief history of Norwegian top-flight football [fotball].

And there are 2 charts. One chart shows Seasons-in-Top-flight for the current clubs (2021 is the 77th season of top-flight football in Norway). And another chart shows the All-time Norwegian titles list (1938-’39; 1947-2020).

A couple other notes…The inset-map of Greater Oslo/Oslofjord region shows the populated areas there in a pale-red colour. The main map shows all the cities in the Scandinavian and Baltic Sea regions which have metro-area populations above 400,000. Those 15 cities are…St Petersburg (Russia), Stockholm (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denmark), Minsk (Belarus), Oslo (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Gothenburg (Sweden), Gdansk (Poland), Kiel (Germany), Riga (Latvia), Malmo (Sweden), Kaliningrad (Russia), Vilnius (Lithuania), Bergen (Norway), Tallinn (Estonia).

And the Arctic Circle is shown (see below for the reason for that).

Last season an unlikely champion was crowned in Norway: Bodø/Glimt
Bodø/Glimt are located just north of the Arctic Circle, in the small town of Bodø, Nordland, population, 52,000. (The town of Bodø is further north than Fairbanks, Alaska.) At the foot of this post, in the illustration for Bodø/Glimt, there is a synopsis of their history, which I will expand on a bit more below…

Before 1963, clubs from the north of Norway were not allowed to compete in the Norwegian Cup. That is, clubs from the two northern-most Norwegian counties of Nordland, and Troms og Finnmark, were barred by the Norwegian football authorities (the NFF, or Norges Fotballforbund. They also were barred from the Norwegian top flight.

It took until 1972 for the NFF to finally allow northern teams the right to compete for promotion to the top division. The first club from Northern Norway to gain promotion to the top flight was FK Mjølner, of Narvik, in 1972 (but they were relegated the following season). (I put Narvik on the map in case you were wondering where it is located.)

Why this long standing policy of exclusion? Well, by the 1970s, there were teams up north that were good enough – it was simply that the southern-biased NFF smugly felt otherwise. In 1975, Bodø/Glimt showed how good teams from the north were by becoming the first club from Northern Norway to win the Norwegian Football Cup.

But meanwhile, the NFF had stacked the deck against northern clubs trying to win promotion from the second tier. They did this right after the aforementioned FK Mjølner got promoted in 1972. So staring in 1973, the NFF put all the northern teams in a separate division – one of three divisions within the second tier – then made it much more difficult for the winner of that northern-subdivision. Because the other two subdivisions in the 2nd tier were comprised entirely of southern Norwegian teams, and the winners in both those subdivisions got instant promotion to the top flight. But the northern subdivision winner had to also win an extra playoff round (versus both the 2nd-place-finishers from the two southern subdivision) to gain promotion. This stilted system lasted until 1978.

This exclusionary state of affairs kept Bodø/Glimt out of the top flight for 3 years, until 1976, when they beat Odd BK 4-0 and drew 1-1 with FK Lyn. That made Bodø/Glimt the second club from Northern Norway to play in the top flight. (The only other club from Northern Norway to have gained promotion to the top flight is Tromsø IL.) In 1977, in Bodø/Glimt’s first season in the top tier, they finished in 2nd place, 8 points behind the champions, Lillestrøm.



Since then, Bodø/Glimt have won one more Norwegian Cup (in 1993), and have had a 13-year spell stuck back in the 2nd tier and 3rd tier (from 1980 to ’92), as well as a 13-year spell back in the top tier (from 1993 to 2005, including a 2nd-place-finish in 2003). Then, in the early 2000s they basically turned into a yo-yo club (3 relegations and 3 promotions since 2005). That all changed in 2019, when Bodø/Glimt turned into a competitor for the title once more, finishing in 2nd place. Then in 2020, Bodø/Glimt ran away with the title.

By winning the Eliteserien by 19-points last November, Bodø/Glimt became the northern-most team on the planet to have won a top-flight national football title. And so three years after their most recent promotion, Bodø/Glimt transformed themselves from a yo-yo club that inevitably sold off their best players in order to make ends meet, into the national champions.

In 2020, Bodø/Glimt scored an astounding 3.4 goals per game, and had a +71 goal difference. And Bodø/Glimt lost only twice all season – losing once to then-reigning champions Molde, and losing in the Europa League qualifiers to Italian giants AC Milan. Bodø/Glimt’s unusual title run has led many to call them the Leicester City of Scandinavia.

-Norway Has a Must-See Team. Barely Anyone Can Watch It. Bodo/Glimt is on the cusp of its first championship, a soccer success story built on style and innovation… (by Rory Smith on 8 Nov 2020 at nytimes.com/sport).

-Bodo/Glimt make history with Norwegian Eliteserien title win (from 22 Nov 2020, at bbc.com/football).

    Bodø/Glimt – 2020 Norwegian champions

bodo-glimt_bodo-glimt-2020-eliteserien_norway-champions_aspmyra-stadion_kjetil-knutsen_bjorn-mannsverk_k-junker_p-zinckernagel_j-p-hague_u-saltnes_i_.gif
Photo and Image credits above – Aspmyra Stadion, by Stig-André Lippert at twitter.com/[@paabortebane]. Aerial shot of Bodø harbor and airstrip, photo from nordlandssykehuset.no. Aerial shot of Bodø, by Getty Images via forbes.com. Bodø air station with fighter plane aloft, photo from wikimapia.org/[Bodø airbase]. Bjørn Mannsverk beside fighter plane, photo by an.no via origo.hu/futball. Bodø/Glimt mental coach Bjørn Mannsverk, in a session with team-coach Håvard Sakariassen and captain Ulrik Saltnes, photo by Markus André Jensen via bodonu.no. Kjetil Knutsen, photo by Marius Simensen/Bildbyrån Norway via . Kjetil Knutsen with Bodø players, photo from time24.news. Kasper Junker, screenshot from video uploaded by Furkan Buğra Yolcu at youtube.com. Phillip Zinckernagel, screenshot from video uploaded by CSN Football Videos at youtube.com. Jens Peter Hauge, photo by @imagoimages via rossoneriblog.com. Ulrik Saltnes, photo by Mats Torbergsen (NTB scanpix) via nettavisen.no/sport. Bodø players celebrate after a goal, photo from glimt.no/om-klubben.




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Thanks to all at the following links…
-Blank map of Scandinavia, by NordNordWest at File:Scandinavia location map.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Globe-map of Norway, by Rob984 at File:Europe-Norway (orthographic projection).svg (en.wikipedia.org).
-Inset map of Oslofjord region – which I drew, tracing the following maps…blank map of Oslofjord region, by Demis.nl via File:La2-demis-oslofjorden.png (commons.wikimedia.org); Demis Map Server; Map of Oslofjord, by Finnrind at File:Oslofjord.svg; + Open Street Map [Oslofjord].
-Counties map of Norway, by Furfur at File:Nye fylker – regjeringen.no.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Rankings: Norway club co-efficient: kassiesa.net; Norway national team: fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking.
-Norwegian football history: Det norske seriesystemet i fotball for menn (no.wikipedia.org).

May 7, 2021

Sweden: 2021 Allsvenskan – Location-maps, with 2 charts: Seasons-in-1st-division (current clubs) & All-time Swedish titles list.

Filed under: Sweden — admin @ 9:18 am

sweden_2021-allsvenskan_map_seasons-in-1st-division_titles-list_post_d_.gif
Sweden: 2021 Allsvenskan – Location-maps, with 2 charts: Seasons-in-1st-division (current clubs) & All-time Swedish titles list




By Bill Turianski on the 7th of May 2021; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-Sweden – Summary (table, fixtures, results, stats, etc) (soccerway.com)
-2021 Allsvenskan (en.wikipedia.org).


The map shows the 16 teams in the 2021 Allsvenskan, the top-flight football league of Sweden, which plays from April to November. On the map-page there are also two inset-maps: of Gothenburg (showing the 2 Allsvenskan clubs located there), and of Stockholm (showing the 3 Allsvenskan clubs located there). There is also a bit of demographic info on Sweden, found at the upper-left of the map-page. And below that is a list showing all 10 urban areas in Sweden that have a population above 100,000 {using data from this list: List of urban areas in Sweden by population}. And over at the top-right of the map-page are Sweden’s current football rankings… {As of May 2021: FIFA worldwide rank [national team]: #18; UEFA European rank [national team]: #13; National league-rank (UEFA): #23; Allsvenskan overall league average attendance [pre-COVID-19 pandemic]: 9,116 per game (2019).}

On the map…For each of the 16 Allsvenskan clubs of 2021, there is shown the following…
Location. Club crest.  Full club name, and year of origin. Stadium (and its capacity). 2019 average attendance [which was the most recent season before the COVID-19 pandemic affected attendance figures]. Swedish titles.

And there are 2 charts. One chart shows Seasons-in-Top-flight for the current clubs (2021 is the 97th season of top-flight football in Sweden). And another chart shows the All-time Swedish titles list (1896-1925; 1931-2020).

The map shows all the cities in the Scandinavian and Baltic Sea regions which have metro-area populations above 400,000. Those 15 cities are…St Petersburg (Russia), Stockholm (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denmark), Minsk (Belarus), Oslo (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Gothenburg (Sweden), Gdansk (Poland), Kiel (Germany), Riga (Latvia), Malmo (Sweden), Kaliningrad (Russia), Vilnius (Lithuania), Bergen (Norway), Tallinn (Estonia).



The most successful clubs, and the best-drawing clubs, in Sweden…
The club with the most seasons played in the Swedish top flight is AIK of Solna, in Stockholm. The black-and-gold-clad AIK have played 92 of the 97 Swedish top-flight seasons, and 2021 is their 16th consecutive season in the 1st tier. (AIK’s dark-blue-and-gold castle-motif crest is pretty distinctive, and looks even better on their black home jerseys.) Second-most seasons in the top flight belongs to IFK Göteborg, of Gothenburg (the second city of Sweden). The blue-and-white-striped IFK Göteborg have played 85 top flight seasons – and 45 consecutive. Those 45 straight top flight seasons for IFK Göteborg is the current best in Sweden. As for the most Swedish titles, that honor goes to the light-blue-and-white-clad Malmö FF, of Malmö, who are reigning champions and have won the title 21 times. Malmö FF is where Zlatan Ibrahimović got his start. (Malmö, which is connected to Copenhagen, Denmark, via the Øresund bridge/tunnel, is the 3rd-largest city in Sweden.)

And there you have what many refer to as the Big 3 of Sweden…AIK, IFK Göteborg, and Malmö FF. The three entered into an informal alliance in the 1970s under the partnership name ‘The Three Traditional Teams of Sweden’. And the three have produced the most players who ended up playing for the Swedish national team (although these days over 75% of the Swedish national team plays abroad). {Big Three (Sweden) (en.wikipedia.org).}

However, calling those three clubs (AIK, Göteborg, and Malmö) the Big 3 ignores a couple of significant aspects of Swedish football. Because there is one club that draws as well as, and wins as many titles as, members of this Big 3. That club is Djurgården {see next paragraph}. And also because, these days, there is one club which draws better than the Big 3 in Sweden, and that is Stockholm’s green-and-white-clad Hammarby IF. Although they draw over 20-thousand-per-game, Hammarby have only won one title, in 2001. Hammarby is a club that is traditionally comprised of more left-wing supporters than the other two big Stockholm clubs. Despite its large following, Hammarby has very often been either relegation-threatened or stuck in the second division. Hammarby used to play at the 12,000-capacity Söderstadion, in Söderort (the southern suburban part of the Stockholm Municipality). And circa 1998 to 2007, Hammarby were often playing to nearly-full-capacity there, drawing in the 10.9-K to 16.0-K range, which was still not enough to lead the country in football attendance (attendance leader in Sweden in that 10-year time-frame was either AIK or Malmö). That changed when Hammarby (along with Djurgården) moved into the new 30,000-capacity Tele2 Arena in September 2013. For Hammarby, it was a move of a only a ½ kilometer to the new stadium. In 2014, in their first full season at the new and much larger venue, second-division Hammarby won promotion, and led all of Sweden in attendance, at 20-K per game. In the following season of 2015, Hammarby, now back in the top flight, drew a record-setting 25.5-K-per game. And so now Hammarby are the best-drawing Swedish club, and drew in the 22-K to 25-K-range in the five seasons between 2015 and ’19. {2019 Allsvenskan attendances from E-F-S site}. So in that sense, Hammarby are sort of like the Newcastle United of Sweden – a club that has a huge fan base yet have an almost barren trophy cabinet and are often relegation-threatened.

And meanwhile, there is a Swedish club outside the Big 3 that draws better than one of the Big 3, and is just as successful as another of the Big 3. That club is the navy-blue-and-light-blue-clad Djurgårdens IF, of Stockholm, who were the 2019 title-winners. Djurgården have won just as many titles as local rivals AIK (12 titles each). Djurgården draws only slightly less than AIK (Djurgården drew 15.9-K in 2019, compared to AIK’s 18.9-K), but Djurgården draws better than IFK Göteborg (who drew 12.8-K in 2019). Djurgården are popularly known as the posh club of Stockholm. Djurgården played at the 30-K-capacity stadium-with-running-track Stockholms Stadion, in Stockholm’s north-eastern side, for 68 years (1936-1993). In 2013 they moved to southern Stockholm into the new Tele2 Arena (along with Hammarby). But Djurgården have not had the huge attendance-increase, like Hammarby, at the new stadium, but are drawing well nonetheless, drawing between 12.3-K and 16.2-K in the five seasons from 2015 to ’19. I think one would have to discount Hammarby for lack of titles, but Djurgården belongs in the conversation about the biggest clubs in Sweden: it really should be the Big 4.

But even that would be inaccurate, because there is another successful Swedish club with a decent sized fanbase that deserves a mention here. And that is the white-and-blue-clad IFK Norrköping, from the small city of Norrköping (population 95,000). IFK Norrköping have won the third-most Swedish titles – 13 (most recently in 2015). Norrköping have played the fourth-most seasons in the Allsvenskan – 80. From 2015 to ’19, Norrköping have drawn in the 8.4-K to 10.4-K-range, which is not bad at all for a club from a city with slightly less than 100,000 inhabitants.

At the time of this posting [Friday 7 May 2021], after 4 games, Djurgården leads the Allsvenskan, with 4 wins (including beating Malmö 3-1 last weekend).

{Here is a link to a post I made on the highest-drawing football clubs from the Nordic countries [from July 2016]. It features illustrations for the 5 Swedish clubs which had drawn above 10,000-per-game in 2015 (Hammarby, AIK, Malmö FF, Djurgården, IFK Göteborg, Norrköping).}.

{flashscore.co.uk/football/sweden/allsvenskan.}



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Thanks to all at the following links…
-Blank map of Scandinavia, by NordNordWest at File:Scandinavia location map.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Globe-map of Sweden, by Rob984 at File:EU-Sweden_(orthographic_projection).svg (en.wikipedia.org).
-Map of Gothenburg area, segment of map by NordNordWest at File:Sweden location map, 40south.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Map of Greater Stockholm, segment of map by Eric Frohne at File:Sweden Stockholm location map.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Attendance figures, european-football-statistics.co.uk.
-Football rankings, football-ranking.com.
-Goteborgs IF crest, from klubbmarken.com/goteborg.htm.

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