billsportsmaps.com

December 23, 2022

Spain: 2022-23 La Liga – Location-map, with 3 charts: Attendance [current], Seasons-in-1st-Division & Spanish titles list.

Filed under: Spain — admin @ 10:01 pm

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Spain: 2022-23 La Liga – Location-map, with 3 charts: Attendance [current], Seasons-in-1st-Division & Spanish titles list




By Bill Turianski on 23 December 2022; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-2022-23 La Liga (en.wikipedia.org).
-La Liga – Summary: matches, table, players, etc (soccerway.com).
-Sid Lowe at theguardian.com/football [Spanish football coverage] (theguardian.com/profile/sidlowe).

The map page shows a location-map for the 20 clubs in the 2022-23 La Liga, with recently-promoted and -relegated teams noted. (Promoted in 2022: Almería, Real Valladolid, Girona; relegated in 2022: Granada, Levante, Alavés.) The map also shows the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain, and the 20 largest Spanish metropolitan areas. Those 20 largest Spanish metro-areas, with their 2018 population estimates, are listed at the top-centre of the map-page.

The 3 charts
A) A chart showing Current Attendance (up to World Cup break of November/December) plus 2021-22 finish, with teams playing in Europe noted. There are also columns listing Venue-capacities and Percent-capacities. The team with the highest percent-capacity currently is newly-promoted Girona, at 91%-capacity. Worst at filling their stadium currently is Espanyol, at 48%-capacity (the stadium is simply too large for the club’s fanbase). Overall, post-Covid restrictions, Spanish football has rebounded pretty well. There are a whole lot of teams playing to ~80%-capacity (Rayo Vallecano, Betis, Cadiz, Valencia, Sevilla, Barcelona, Real Sociedad, Osasuna, Almería, Athletic Bilbao, Real Madrid). (Attendance in Spain is not as good as in Germany, but really, no top flight league (besides the Premier League) ever draws as well as the Bundesliga.)
B) A chart showing Seasons-in-La Liga by club, with consecutive seasons listed. This is the 92nd La Liga season. Three La Liga founding members – Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Athletic Club [Bilbao] have never been relegated.
C) A chart showing the All-time Spanish professional titles list (1929 to 2021-22). There are only 9 clubs which have won a La Liga title, which is a dismally small number, and is an example of how the Spanish game is unbalanced by the near duopoly of Real Madrid/Barcelona.

La Liga will re-start on 29-to-31 December, with the 15th match-week. {worldfootball.net/competition/esp-primera-division.}



___
Thanks to all at the following links
-Blank map of Spain, by NordNordWest at File:Spain location map.svg;
-Globe-map of Spain, by Rob984 at File:EU-Spain (orthographic projection).svg;
-Map of the Community of Madrid, by Miguillen at File:Spain Madrid location map.svg (en.wikipedia.org).
-Map of Canary Islands, by Miguillen at File:Canarias-loc.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Largest metropolitan areas in Spain (2018 European Spatial Planning Observation Network figures) (en.wikipedia.org).
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Liga#Clubs.
-Autonomous communities of Spain;
-List of metropolitan areas in Spain (en.wikipedia.org).

December 12, 2022

Germany: 2022-23 Bundesliga – Location-map, with 3 Charts: Current Attendance, Seasons-in-1st-Division & All-time German Titles list.

Filed under: Germany — admin @ 10:01 pm

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Germany: 2022-23 Bundesliga – Location-map, with 3 Charts: Current Attendance, Seasons-in-1st-Division & All-time German Titles list




By Bill Turianski on the 12th of December 2022; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-2022-23 Bundesliga (en.wikipedia.org).
-World Football.net site…worldfootball.net/bundesliga.
-Official site of Bundesliga (English)…bundesliga.com/en/bundesliga.
-Deutsche Welle [in English]…DW/en/sports.

The map page shows a location-map for the 18 clubs in the 2022-23 Bundesliga, with recently-promoted and -relegated teams noted. (Promoted in 2022: Schalke, Werder Bremen; relegated in 2022: Arminia Bielefeld, Greuther Fürth.) The map also shows the 16 Federal States of Germany, and the 14 largest cities in Germany, with 2015 population figures listed at the the top of the map.

The 3 charts are
A) Current attendance (up to World Cup break of November/December) & 2021-22 finish, with teams playing in Europe noted. There are also columns listing Venue-capacities and Percent-capacities. And, as you can see, the Bundesliga is currently playing to a whole lot of full stadiums, with 12 of the 18 clubs drawing above 90%-capacity, including four clubs drawing above 99%-capacity (Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Union Berlin, FC Köln).
B) Seasons-in-Bundesliga by club, with consecutive seasons listed.
C) All-time German titles list (including the pre-1963-64/pre-Bundesliga amateur era), with current level [2022-23] of each title-winning club listed.

The Bundesliga will re-start on the 20th of January 2023, with the 16th match-week. {worldfootball.net/competition/bundesliga.}




___
Thanks to all at the following links
-Blank map of Germany, by NordNordWest at File:Germany location map.svg (Wikimedia Commons).
-Globe-map of Germany by Rob984 at File:EU-Germany (orthographic projection).svg.
-Populations of 14 largest German cities from List of cities in Germany by population (en.wikipedia.org).
-Bundesliga;
-List of German football champions (en.wikipedia.org).
-(West) Germany – List of Champions (rsssf.com).
-Attendance figures from worldfootball.net/[Bundesliga Attendance, 2022-23)].

December 2, 2022

Billsportsmaps’ 15th anniversary throwback: The North American Soccer League – 1979 attendance map with logos [first posted 24 October 2007].

By Bill Turianski on the 2nd of December 2022; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.

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NASL 1979 Map with Attendance Figures

1979 NASL (en.wikipedia.org).




[Originally posted on 24 October 2007.]
This map shows the 1979 North American Soccer League, whose heyday was in the late 1970s. The NASL averaged 13,084 per game in 1979, and hit its high of 14,201 per game in the following year of 1980. The NASL is most famous for the New York Cosmos and their star-studded roster, but the Vancouver Whitecaps were champions in 1979. The Cosmos had won it in 1977 and 1978, and won it again in 1980. The Cosmos rise (and subsequent fall) was meteoric, to say the least. Before they signed Pele, in 1977, they were playing in a rundown stadium on Randalls Island, drawing 5,000 at best. In the short span of four years, 1974 to 1978, the Cosmos’ average gate went from 3,578 to 47,856.

In 1979 the Cosmos averaged 46,690. That same season, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, and Vancouver all drew very well, between 22,000 and 27,000. Seattle, and somewhat surprisingly, Tulsa, were drawing respectable crowds in the 16,000-18,000 range. San Jose drew 15,000; Los Angeles, though fielding Johann Cruyff, only drew 14,000. Also, Chicago averaged only 8,000, a poor showing considering the size of the city and the fact that the team was competitive. In retrospect, that last attendance figure could be seen as the writing on the wall. For if a decent team, in a huge city, in middle America, couldn’t pull 10,000 through the turnstiles, then the viability of the whole project was in doubt. Especially with the high salaries of the overseas players.

Growing up in Rochester, New York, I was a devout follower of the Rochester Lancers. Opposing players dreaded the barracks-like atmosphere of their crumbling concrete stadium and its potato patch field. This gave the scrappy, Slavic-heavy Lancers squad a solid home advantage. Before game time, me and my brothers would go up to the top of the stadium and watch the traffic pulling in, trying to will more fans through the turnstiles. In 1979, Rochester had its best gate, 8,600. But it wasn’t enough to keep them alive, and after the 1980 season, the Rochester Lancers of the NASL dissolved. The NASL was dead to me at that point. It died for real, 4 years later. It had existed from 1968 to 1984. Its most vibrant period was from around 1976 to 1981. Pele, Eusebio, Rodney Marsh, George Best, Franz Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore, Giorgio Chinaglia, Trevor Francis, Carlos Alberto, and many more world football legends graced the rosters of NASL teams. The stodgy rules of the game were relaxed, with a striker-friendly 35-yard offside line, and shootouts instead of penalty kicks. The shootouts were awesome. It was a 5-second-Chinese-fire-drill, with the goal keeper usually rushing towards the shooter. The shooter then had to decide whether to elude the keeper, rifle the ball low, or chip it. Offense was further encouraged by awarding points in the standings for goals scored. So even if you lost, you could gets points in the standings.

But the league over-expanded, diluting on-field quality. The league expanded from 16 to 24 teams in 1977, and many franchises shifted to other cities. The clueless new ownership of many franchises aped the Cosmos, overspending on aging internationals and letting domestic talent languish on the bench. When the crowds fell off, the owners bolted. Some also believe that when FIFA awarded the 1986 World Cup to Mexico, instead of the US, it hastened the league’s demise. Still, the NASL ultimately contributed to the overall improvement of the quality of American (and Canadian) players, and their national teams. The US national team has been transformed from also-rans to a competitive force. And no American ever played in the English 1st Division before the NASL. John Harkes was the first, with Sheffield Wednesday, in 1990. Today, the USA is represented in England by the likes of Brian McBride, Clint Dempsey, Carlos Bocanegra, and Kasey Keller on Fulham; Marcus Hanhnemann and Bobby Convey on Reading; Brad Friedel on Blackburn; Tim Howard on Everton; Jonathon Spector on West Ham United, and Jay Demerit on Watford.


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