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July 26, 2011

Spain: final table of 2010-11, with clubs playing in Europe in UEFA competitions for 2011-12 / Plus, map with location of clubs in 2011-12 La Liga, with attendance data.

Filed under: Football Stadia,Spain — admin @ 8:45 pm

Spanish clubs playing in Europe
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Note: to see my latest post on Spanish football, click on the following, category: Spain.
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The first chart (click on image above) shows the 7 Spanish clubs who qualified for Europe for 2011-12, including the 3 clubs which have qualified for the 2011-12 UEFA Champions League Group Stage – FC Barcelona, Real Madrid CF, and Valencia CF.
The 6 Barcelona/Real Madrid match-ups this past season produced reams of headlines, and lots of histrionics…and in the end, Real Madrid – on paper – ended up 4 points shy of the Spanish title. But the actual gulf between Barcelona and Real Madrid is probably better depicted by the 5-0 trashing that Barça gave Real Madrid in November at Camp Nou. And sure, in the Spanish Cup competition, Real did eliminate Barça and then go on to win the Copa del Rey, but that’s the same trophy (with about the value of the English League Cup) that Real Madrid could have cared less about winning 5 or 10 or 15 years ago (it was Real Madrid’s first Copa del Rey title in 18 years).

At the top, left of the chart you can see photos and stats of the 7 Barcelona players most responsible for Barça’s offensive mastery and domination in both Spain and Europe – midfield general Xavi, greatest-player-on-Earth Lionel Messi, young phenom Pedro, attacking defender Dani Alves, scoring machine David Villa, midfield wizard Andrés Iniesta, and young talent Bojan Krkić [note: Roma purchased Bojan Krkić on 22 July for 12 milion Euros].. Manager Pep Guardiola is shown being tossed up into the air in celebration [I know, the photo is from 3 seasons ago, but I think the image really symbolizes FCB's über-champion-status these last few seasons].
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That the cash-strapped Valencia were still able to win an automatic Champions League Group Stage berth is pretty impressive. So too is Villarreal’s return to the Champions League format. Villarreal proved that a club can have a long Europa League campaign and not see their domestic form suffer. El Submarino Amarillo (The Yellow Submarines), from a town of 51,000, made it all the way to the Europa League Semi-finals last season, yet were still able to keep hold of 4th place in La Liga, and that fourth CL spot. And thanks to past Champions League accomplishments (including being 2005-06 CL Semi-finalists and 2008-09 CL Quarter-finalists), Villarreal, and not Udinese, are a seeded team in the Play-off round draw, which will be on 5 August {see this}.

The 3 Spanish clubs that will be in the Europa League format are three clubs that all finished with 58 points – Sevilla FC, Athletic Club [Bilbao], and Club Atlético de Madrid [La Liga does not use goal difference as the first tie-breaker in the final standings, but rather head-to-head results]. Here is the list, which includes Sevilla and Bilbao, of teams that have qualified so far for the Europa League play-off round {see this}. Before that, Atlético Madrid must play in the Europa League Third qualifying round (1st Legs are on 28 July), and here are the match-ups – ‘2011-12 UEFA Europa League/Third qualifying round‘. Atlético Madrid will face the Norwegian club Strømsgodset IF.

[Note: to see a larger image of Sevilla FC's Art Deco mosaic at Estadio Ramón Sanchez Pizjúan, scroll down to the Sevilla section in the Photo credits below...]

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Below is the second chart, which features a location-map of the 20 clubs that will be playing in the 2011-12 La Liga, as well as attendance data of these clubs from last season – including average attendance (home league matches), percent-capacity, and percentage-change in attendance from 2009-10.

Photo credits -
Barcelona…
Photo of Xavi by Manuel Queimadelos Alonso/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here. Photo of Lionel Messi by Jasper Juinen/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here.
Interior photo of Camp Nou from ontd-football.livejournal.com/, here. Photo of Pedro by David Ramos/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here.
Photo of Dani Alves from Goalstage.com, here. Photo of David Villa by Manuel Queimadelos Alonso/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here. Photo of Andrés Iniesta by David Ramos/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here. Bojan Krkic photo from FCBarcelona.com/Photo Gallery, here.
New Barça jersey [2011-12 home jersey] from store.Nike.com.
Photo of Pep Guardioa being tossed airborne by Barça players by Tony Gentile/Reuters, here.
Aerial image of Camp Nou from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Real Madrid…
Photo of Ultras Sur (far right-wing Real Madrid supporter-group) with flags and banners was unattributed at Taringa.net, here. Exterior photo of Estadio Santiago Bernebeu was unattributed from TheOffside.com, here. Aerial photo of Estadio Santiago Bernebeu from RealMadridVideos.wordpress.com, here.

Valencia…
Photo of Valencia fans from PatCrerand.co.uk, here. Photo of Mestalla at sunset from EUtravelpictures.com, here. Aerial photo of Mestalla from Rudsoccer.om, here.

Villarreal...
Interior photo of El Madrigal from VillarrealCF.es, here. Close-up-aerial photo of El Madrigal from VillarrealCF.es, here. Aerial photo of El Madrigal from FussballTempel.net, here.

Sevilla…
Photo of interior of Estadio Rámon Sánchez Pizjuán by inkboo at Flickr.com, here. Photo of mosaic on exterior wall of Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán by Paco Alfaro at Flickr.com, here. Aerial image of Estadio Ramón Sanchez Pizjuan [with view to the east] from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
[Note: you can see a larger size image of the Sevilla FC mosaic by clicking here (photo by Paco Alfaro @ Flickr.com, here).

Athletic Bilbao...
Photo of Athletic Club Bilbao-supporter-group Albertzale Sur with banners and Basque flags from forums.PESfans.com, here [2/3 of way down page]. Photo of exterior of San Mamés from adjacent rooftop by kammourewa at Photobucket.com, here. Aerial image of San Mamés from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Atlético Madrid…
Photo of Atlético Madrid fans from LiverpoolSite.com, here. Interior photo of Estadio Vicente Calderon by FDV at es.wikipedia.org, here. Aerial image of Estadio Vicente Calderón from Peñatleticaniano.es, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘La Liga‘.
Thanks to E-F-S site, for attendances.
Thanks to Demis.nl for the base map of Spain, from Demis Web Map Server.
Thanks to FCBarcelona.com/Squad, for stats.

Comments (2)

July 22, 2011

Cyprus: Cypriot First Division – map showing clubs in the 2011-12 season, with 2010-11 attendances and all-time titles list.

Filed under: Cyprus — admin @ 5:56 pm

Cypriot 1st Division
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The population of the Republic of Cyprus is around 803,000. The population of the Republic of Northern Cyprus is around 108,000 {both those figures are 2010 estimates}. As tiny and ethnically-partiitioned as it’s population is, Cyprus is home to a league that is currently ranked #20 in Europe by UEFA [May 2011 ranking], and will be ranked at #17 for 2012 {UEFA league coefficients, here}. That league is the Cypriot First Division, which was established in 1934-35. The two clubs that have pushed up the Cypriot league coefficient the most in recent years are APOEL, who qualified for the 2009-10 UEFA Champions League Group Stage; and Anorthosis Famagusta, who qualified for the 2008-09 Champions League Group Stage.

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A brief history of the events leading up to the partition of Cyprus

Since 1974, the island of Cyprus has been de facto partitioned. This was following an invasion in July 1974 by Turkey, which was preceded by a failed coup attempt in the spring of 1974 that was backed by a Greek military junta.

At present, 59% of the island of Cyprus is under control of the Republic of Cyprus. 36% is under control of the Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is a nation that is diplomatically recognized by just one other nation – Turkey. The remaining 5% of the land area of the island is split between the UN buffer zone running across the island, and two air bases which are allocated to the United Kingdom as sovereign military bases. This is a vestige of the British Empire’s administration of Cyprus, which began after the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78). After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Britain formally annexed Cyprus.

It has been generally accepted that Greek Cypriots formed about 80% of the population of the island, while Turkish Cypriots formed about 18% (prior to Turkish settlers), with the remaining 2% being Christian minorities. In 1959, the Church of Cypress organized a referendum (boycotted by the Turkish Cypriot community), with over 90% voting in favor of enosis, or union, with Greece. The following year, 1960, Cyprus won independence after the Zürich and London Agreement between the United Kingdom, Greece, and Turkey. The UK retained the two air bases (which are shown on the map here). The Turkish Cypriot minority retained a permanent veto option within the government. By 1963, inter-communal violence had broken out, and as the 1960s went on, the violence increased. Right-wing governments in Greece, starting in 1967, fanned the flames, and this situation (which was opposed by pro-democratic elements in Greece at the time) led to the the 1973 ascension to power of an even further right military junta in Greece…and an overthrow of the Cyprus government was high on their agenda. In the spring of 1974, the President of Cyprus, Makarios III, was forced to flee the island, with a coup led by Greek officers of the Cyprus National Guard. A firebrand, the parliamentarian and Nicosia newspaper editor Nikos Sampson, who was vehemently anti-Turkish Cypriot, was put in power (Sampson lasted 8 days in power and ended up being the only person tried and convicted of crimes related to the coup). This led to the Turkish air and sea invasion in July, 1974. The island of Cyprus is still partitioned to this day. From Parikiaki, Cypriot Weekly Newspaper [the leading Greek Cypriot newspaper published in London], from 20 April 2011, ‘Greek Junta blamed for Cyprus war‘.

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Photo credits – FootyLounge.com/forums . GSP.org.cy .

The Cypriot First Division

The Cyprus top flight is called the Cypriot First Division. The league has 14 clubs in it, and, since 2007-08, has featured a second round, where the league is split into 3 groups of four (with the bottom two clubs in the first round of the season being automatically relegated). The 3 groups are named Group A, Group B, and Group C. The 4 Group A clubs compete for the championship and spots in European play. The 4 clubs in Group B compete for nothing, really. The 4 clubs in Group C compete to avoid being the third relegated club.

Nicosia is the capital and largest city in Cyprus, with a metro area population (Southern part only) of around 313,000 {2009 estimate}. There are two pretty large-sized clubs from Nicosia – APOEL and Omonia – both of whom have fan bases that can fill GSP Stadium (the stadium they share/see images above) to around 9 or 10,000 per game in good seasons, and 6 or 7,000 per game in bad seasons. APOEL, whose acronym translates from the Greek as Athletic Football Club of Greeks of Nicosia, play in royal blue-and-yellow/orange-vertically-striped jerseys. Omonia, whise full name is Omonia Nicosia Athletic club, have a 3-leaf clover on their crest that looks very much like the crest of the Athens-based Panathinaikos, and wear white with green trim. For decades, the two have been competing for being the most-titled Cypriot club, with APOEL currently having the edge with 21 Cypriot titles, including the 2011 title. Omonia have won 20 titles, including the 2010 title. The third force in Cypriot football is Anorthosis Famagusta, a club that has been a refugee from it’s home base since 1974. Anorthosis Famagusta have won 13 titles, their last in 2008. Although Anorthosis Famagusta have a crest that features the traditional Greek colors of royal blue and white, they play with a yellow and black kit. Since the Turkish invasion, Anothosis have played in several locations including the capital, and Anorthosis Famagusta now play in the third-largest city in Cyprus, Lanarca, which, with a population of just 72,000, is a pretty small municipality to be hosting 4 Cypriot First Division clubs, as it will be in 2011-12. The other 3 top flight clubs in town are two that were formed there – Alki Lanarca and AEK Lanarca – plus a newly-promoted-back club, Nea Salamis Famagusta, who, like Anorthosis, are also a refugee club. Between these 4 top flight clubs they average a cumulative attendance of around 10-12,000 per game, with the black-and-yellow vertically-striped Anothosis Famagusta able to draw between 4-6,000 per game, the green-and-yellow kitted AEK Lanarca able to draw around 3-5,000 per game, the red-and-blue vertically-striped Alki Lanarca able to draw around 1-2,000 per game, and the red-and-white vertically-striped Nea Salamis Famagusta also able to draw around 1-2,000 per game. For a municipality of less than 75,000, Lanarca is providing a pretty credible amount of support for the 4 top flight clubs it hosts.

There are only 3 other clubs that have won titles in Cypriot football that are currently active, and two of them are from the second-largest city in Cyprus, Limassol. [Limassol is on the southern coast of Cyprus, and has a metro area population of around 228,000.] The fourth-most-titled club in Cyprus is AEL Limassol, with 5 titles (last in 1968). Tied for fifth on the all-time list are Apollon Limassol, with 3 titles (last in 2006), and Olympiakos Nicosia, with 3 titles (last in 1971). Apollon Limassol play in white with blue trim and can draw between a range of from 3 to 6,000 per game. Apollon won their last title 5 years ago. AEL Limassol, who wear yellow-and-navy-blue-vertical-striped jerseys, can also draw in that 3 to 6K range, but they haven’t won a title in 40 years. Olympiakos Nicosia play with green-and-black-vertically-striped jerseys and draw in the 1-2,000 range, and haven’t won a title in 43 years.

There is one other Cypriot title-winner that is an active club, but since that club is a Turkish Cypriot club, it has not been part of the Cypriot league set-up for a long time…since 1955, and currently play in the non-FIFA-sanctioned Birinci Lig. That club is Çetinkaya Türk SK.. This club, who now play in the partitoned Northern section of the city of Nicosia, won the 1950-51 season of the Cypriot First Division.
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There are 4 Cypriot teams still alive in Europe [as of 22 July 2011]. AEK Lanarca and Anorthosis Famagusta both won their Europa League Second qualifying round ties, and will compete in the Third qualifying round along with Omonia – the match-ups can be seen here {‘2011-12 UEFA Europa League/Third qualifying round‘}. Meanwhile, APOEL won their Champions League Second qualifying round tie, and will now play Slovan Bratislava in the next round, ‘2011-12 UEFA Champions League/Third qualifying round‘}.
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Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Cypriot First Division‘.
Base map from ar.wikipedia.org, here.
Thanks to WorldTravels.com, for the Cyprus Country Map.

Comments (4)

July 14, 2011

Italy: final table of 2010-11 Serie A, with clubs playing in Europe in UEFA competitions for 2011-12 / Plus, map with location of clubs in 2011-12 Serie A, with attendance data.

Filed under: Football Stadia,Italy — admin @ 7:31 pm

Italian clubs playing in Europe in 2011-12
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(Note: to see my latest map-and-post on Italian football, click on the following, category: Italy.)
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From wsc.co.uk, on 1 Aug. 2011, by Geoff Bradford, ‘Italy’s match-fixing investigation will run and run‘.

Milan won their first Scudetto in 7 seasons under their first-year manager Masimilliano Allegri. Allegri was hired after two successful seasons at the small provincial club Cagliari Calcio. Under Allegri, the Sardinia-based Cagliari finished in 9th place twice despite minimal resources, earning Allegri 2 straight Panchina d’Oro (Golden bench) awards, which are voted on by Serie A managers. Milan hired Allegri in June 2011. Allegri shored up Milan’s defense, and a solid back four built around Centre Back Thiago Silva, plus a very good year for Zlatan Ibrahimović (who scored 14 goals and recorded 11 assists), helped Milan secure the title after 5 consecutive seasons in which the Scudetto was in the hands of their local rivals Internazionale.

The first chart (click on image above) shows the 7 Italian clubs who have qualified for Europe in 2011-12, including the 3 that have automatically qualified for the 2011-12 UEFA Champions League Group Stage – Milan, Internazionale, and Napoli. Milan won the European title most recently in 2007 (Milan have won 6 European titles). Internazionale won the European title two seasons ago in 2010 (Inter have won 3 European titles). Napoli have no European titles, although they did win the 1989 UEFA Cup. Napoli return to the Champions League-level of the European format for the first time since 1990-91, when the Maradona-less squad exited in the 2nd round of the European Cup to Spartak Moscow.

Udinese beat out Lazio for 4th place on goal difference, and now have shot at making their second appearance in the Champions League Group Stage (their first appearance was in 2005-06, when they finished 3rd in their group). But they are an unseeded team in the draw, so Udinese might end up playing a huge club like Arsenal or Bayern Munich. The draw is set for 5th August, see this ‘2011-12 UEFA Champions League/Play-off round‘, from en.wikipedia.org.

The three Italian clubs who have qualified for 2011-12 UEFA Europa League qualifiers are: 5th place finisher Lazio, 6th place finisher Roma, and 8th place finisher Palermo, who, as Coppa Italia finalists, inherited the Coppa Italia winner’s spot (from Internazionale).

Palermo play the first leg of their Europa League 3rd qualifying round on Thursday, 28 July. The draw is on 15 July, with Palermo being in the category of seeded teams {see this}.

For Lazio and Roma, they will play in the Europa League Play-off round – to see the teams qualified so far {click here}. Draw for the Europa League Play-off round is 5 August.
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One note: Juventus opens their new, 42,500-capacity stadium, temporarily being called Juventus Arena on 8 September, {see this, from Serie A official site [in Italian]}
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Below is the second chart, which shows the locations of the 20 clubs in the 2011-12 season of Serie A. Listed are average attendances (home league matches), along with percent-change and percent-capacity data, from last season (2010-11).

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Photo credits -
Milan…
Photo of Milan supporters’ giant banners at San Siro originally from UltrasMilan.it, via European Ultras.com, here. Photo of interior of San Siro by Alessandro Mogliani at en.wikipedia.org, here. Photo of Massimiliano Allegri by Giusseppe Cacaace/AFP via Sports.Yahoo.com, here.
Photo of Zlatan Ibrahimović by Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here. Photo of Alexandre Pato from OleOle.com, here.
Photo of Robinho by Claudio Villa/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here. Photo of Thiago Silva by AP via DailyMail.co.uk, here.
Photo of 2011-12 Milan home jersey from forums.hardwarezone.sg, here. Exterior photo of San Siro from Kvitters.com, here.

Internazionale…
Photo of Inter fans with giant banner in Curva Nord of San Siro by batrax at Flickr.com, here. Interior photo of San Siro from SanSiro.net. Exterior photo of San Siro from Kvitters.com, here.

Napoli…
Photo of stands at Stadio San Paolo from StadiumVibe.com, here. Interior photo of Stadio San Paolo by Inviaggiocommons at en.wikipedia.org, here. Aerial image of Stadio San Paolo from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Udinese…
Photo of Udinese fans from Getty Images via IndiaTimes.com, here. Interior photo of Stadio Friuli by Martaudine at it.wikipedia.org, here. Aerial image of Stadio Friuli from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Lazio…
Photo of Lazio fans in Curva Nord by Andrea Buratti at en.wikipedia.org, here. Second photo of Lazio fans from EuropeanUltras.com, here. Aerial image of Stadio Olimpico from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Roma…
Photo of Roma fans in Curva Sud of Stadio Olimpico from ASRomaLive.com, here. Interior photo of Stadio Olimpico during an AS Roma match by Gaúcho at de.wikipedia.org, here. Aerial image of Stadio Olimpico from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s eye satellite view, here.

Palermo…
Photo of Palermo fans from Getty Images via IndiaTimes.com, here. Interior photo of Stadio Renzo Barbera from StadionWelt.de via FussballTempel.net, here. Aerial image of Stadio Renzo Barbera by Vito Ruggiero at Panoramio.com, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘2011-12 Serie A‘.
Thanks to European-Football-Statistics site for attendance figures.
Thanks to Eric Gaba for the base map of Italy, ‘Italy topographic map-blank.svg‘.

Comments (3)

July 8, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the New York-Penn League (Class A-Short Season).

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Class A — admin @ 8:34 pm

New York-Penn League (Short Season A)

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The New York-Pennsylvania League is a minor league baseball league that is almost universally known as the New York-Penn League. Although part of the Class A level of minor league baseball, it is, along with the Northwest League, classified as a Short-Season A league. And they really are short seasons – the New York-Penn league regular season consists of 74 games played by each of the 14 teams in the circuit. By way of comparison, the Class A Midwest League plays 138 games in a season, and the Advanced-A California League plays 140 games in a season. The other Short Season A league – the Northwest League – plays 76 games in a season, and has 8 teams.

The shorter season and the player restrictions (see below) contribute to the fact that Short Season A leagues are viewed as effectively one level lower than the two Class A leagues (the South Atlantic League and the Midwest League) and two levels below the three Advanced-A leagues (the California League, Florida State League, and the Carolina League).

from en.wikipedia.org –
“Player limits and requirements for the New York-Penn League…
New York – Penn League teams may have no more than 3 players on their active lists that have 4 or more years of prior combined Major League / Minor League service, with the exception of position players changing roles to become a pitcher or a pitcher changing into a position player. Teams may get to eliminate up to one year of time of Minor League service for players who have spent time on the disabled list.
By July 1 of each year, all clubs must have at least 10 pitchers.
Maximum number of players under team control is 35, 30 of those may be active, but only 25 may be in uniform and eligible to play in any given game.”
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Last season, the New York-Penn League was the 6th highest-drawing minor league in Organized Baseball.
The New York-Penn League drew 3,490 per game in 2010, and had a better average attendance than 5 other minor leagues which are at a higher level.
Here are all the minor leagues’ average attendances for 2010 -
Average attendance of minor leagues in 2010…
International League (AAA) – 6,908 per game.
Pacific Coast League (AAA) – 6,120 per game.
Texas League (AA) – 5,264 per game.
Eastern League (AA) – 4,663 per game.
Midwest League (A) – 3,787 per game.
New York-Penn League (A-Short Season) – 3,490 per game.
South Atlantic League (A) – 3,306 per game.
Carolina League (A-Advanced) – 3,256 per game.
Mexican League (AAA) – 3,232 per game.
Southern League (AA) – 3,188 per game.
Northwest League (A-Short Season) – 2,920 per game.
California League (A-Advanced) – 2,237 per game.
Pioneer League (Rookie) – 2,158 per game.
Appalachian League (Rookie) – 865 per game.
[Arizona League, Gulf Coast League, Dominican Summer League and Venezuela Summer League attendances not available]
[Numbers from Baseball-Reference.com].

Part of the reason for the popularity of the New York-Penn league with fans is that some franchises in the league have relocated to certain areas in the last decade…well-populated areas that have enough people that basically have embraced the lower-minor-league fan experience. Specifically, those areas are Greater New York City; Greater Boston, MA; and Greater Washington, DC/Baltimore, MD. The teams that now sit at the top of the NY-Penn attendance list each season are the Brooklyn Cyclones (a New York Mets farm team), the Staten Island Yankees (a New York Yankees farm team), the Lowell Spinners (a Boston Red Sox farm team), and the Aberdeen Ironbirds (a Baltimore Orioles farm team). All 4 of these ball clubs regularly draw over 5,000 per game, and Brooklyn and Aberdeen drew over 6,500 per game last season. The Brooklyn Cyclones play in Coney Island and drew 7,147 per game to their MCU Park (MCU Park in Brooklyn, from en.wikipedia.org,{see this}. That was good enough for the 15th best attendance in all of minor league baseball in 2010 [list of all 334 teams' attendances in minor league baseball in 2010 {click here} (Ballparkdigest.com}.Those are astounding numbers for a league that is 5 steps below the Major Leagues. Over half of the 30 Triple-A ball clubs didn't draw that well in 2010...18 Triple-A teams drew below that 5,300 per game figure that these New York-Penn teams drew above...
The Brooklyn Cyclones (7,147 per game at MCU Park/15th best in MiLB).
The Aberdeen Ironbirds (6,548 per game at Ripken Stadium {see this}/22nd best in MiLB).
The Staten Island Yankees (5,806 per game at Richmond County Bank Ballpark {see this}/34th best in MiLB).
The Lowell Spinners (5,446 per game at Edward A. LeLacheur Park {see this}/44th best in MiLB).

And the success of teams like this has blown away the received wisdom that minor league baseball teams cannot survive within close proximity to Major League Baseball teams. With the low prices of an outing to a NY-Penn League game, the opposite is pretty much true now. For example, why pay an arm and a leg to see a game at the elitist and over-priced Yankee Stadium, when a fun and affordable outing at the Staten Island Yankees or the Brooklyn Cyclones ball park can be had for a fraction of the cost. Besides, you can just see the next Yankees or Mets game on television anyway.

The only loser in this state of affairs are the small towns and cities that have lost New York-Penn League teams in recent years, like Geneva, NY; Watertown, NY; Oneonta, NY; Utica, NY; and Pittsfield, MA. But the fact is, if there are larger crowds to be had elsewhere, you can't criticize the franchises for pulling up stakes and seeking greener pastures. Most of the municipalities that lose lower minor league teams find replacement ball clubs in independent minor leagues from outside the Organized Baseball set-up. Personally, I hope that the current smallest municipality with a ball club in the New York-Penn League, the Batavia Muckdogs, does not fall to the same fate and relocate, but that is because Batavia, whose population is only around 16,256 {figure from 2006} is nearby my home in Rochester, NY, and I have seen around 15 or so Batavia Clippers games (that was their old name before 1997) and Batavia Muckdogs games. And I have had a blast each time, and have never spent more than $25 per game there (including ticket), no matter how much I ate and drank. Now that's value. [The only reason the Batavia Muckdogs, the oldest member of the New York-Penn League [with a team consecutively since 1961] have not moved elsewhere is that Rochester Community Baseball, Inc. which runs the Triple-A ball club the Rochester Red Wings, took over operation of the Muckdogs two seasons ago. The Rochester Red Wings are the second largest sports franchise in North America that is completely supporter-owned – the largest being the NFL’s Green Bay Packers.]
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Photo credits -
Aberdeen IronBirds/Ripken Stadium…Photo from LittleBallparks.com, here.
Brooklyn Cyclones/MCU Park [formerly Keyspan Park]…Photo from Uncle Bob’s Ballparks 56 site, here.
Hudson Valley Renegades/Duchess Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye Satellite view, here.
Staten Island Yankees/Richmond County Bank Ballpark…Aerial photo from Skyscrapercity.com, thread, ‘Little Ballparks‘.

Auburn Doubledays/Falcon Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Batavia Muckdogs/Dwyer Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Jamestown Jammers/Russell Diethrick Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Mahoning Valley Scrappers/Eastwood Field…Photo from DigitalBallparks.com, here.
State College Spikes/Medlar Field at Lubrano Park…Photo from State College Spikes’ page at MiLB.com, here.
Williamsport Crosscutters/Bowman Field…Photo from ExplorePAhistory.com, here.

Connecticut Tigers/Dodd Stadium…Photo from CollegeBaseball360.com, here.
Lowell Spinners/LeLacheur Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Tri-City ValleyCats/Joseph L. Bruno Stadium…Photo from U.W. Marx Construction Co. site, here.
Vermont Lake Monsters/Centennial Field…Photo from LittleBallparks.com, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘New York-Penn League‘.

Thanks to David Kronheim at NumberTamer.com. Attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)

Comments (7)

July 1, 2011

France: final table of 2010-11, with clubs playing in Europe in UEFA competitions for 2011-12 / Plus location of clubs in 2011-12 Ligue 1, with attendance data.

Filed under: Football Stadia,France — admin @ 9:02 pm

France: Ligue Un clubs playing in Europe for 2011-12
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Note: to see my latest map-&-post of Ligue Un, click on the following: category: France.
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This post has 2 charts – one chart, above, that features all 6 clubs from France that qualified for Europe in 2011-12; and the second chart, further on down, which includes a location-map of the 2011-12 Ligue 1 season and attendance data for the 20 clubs.

The chart page, which you can see by clicking on the image above, shows the 6 clubs in France that will play in Europe in 2011-12, including the 2 clubs – Lille OSC and Olympique de Marseille – who have automatically qualified for the lucrative promised land of the UEFA Champions League Group Stage. Lille won their first title in 57 years. And by winning the Coupe de France title, Lille became the 16th French club to win the double. Lille’s Rudi Garcia bucked the stereotype of the ultra-cautious, clean-sheet-obsessed French manager by having Les Dogues play with an attacking style. And so for the second straight year, Lille had the most goals scored in Ligue 1. Featured on the chart page is top scorer in the league, FW Moussa Sow, a Senegalese international, who netted 25 times. There are also photos of 3 other Lille players instrumental in their scoring onslaught…Côte d’Ivoire international FW Gervinho (who scored 14 times and accumulated 10 assists); MF Yohan Cabaye (9 assists); and Belgian international MF Eden Hazard (8 assists) [note: Cabaye was transferred to Newcastle United this off-season]. If I had more room, I would have added a photo of Lille’s goalkeeper Mickaël Landreau, whose shot-stopping ability was crucial to Lille’s title run. The photo of Rudi Garcia (who played for Lille as a midfielder from 1982 to 1988) was taken right after the final whistle had blown after Lille’s final match, in Paris, and Lille had clinched the title with a 2-1 win over PSG.

I have included an architects’ rendering of Lille’s new Grande Stade Lille Métropole, projected for a summer of 2012 opening, as well as a photo of the ongoing construction of the ~50,000-capacity stadium. So after the 2011-12 season, Lille will finally say good riddance to the inadequate and running-track-scarred Stadium Lille-Métropole, which only held 17,700. This, combined with the fact that Lille finally won a national title in the modern era, may signal a bit of a shift in the balance of power in French football…because if Lille can continue their fine form and regularly fill that new stadium, Les Dogues won’t have to sell players like Yohan Cabaye and (possibly) Eden Hazard, and Gervinho – because all that ticket revenue will allow Lille to afford such top-shelf talent.

Below is a graphic depiction of the formation, in 1944, of Olympique Sporting Club Lille Métropole, featuring old club crests – Click below for a larger image…

Old Lille OSC crests from this page at the following site: http://uefaclubs.com

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Below: attendance data from 2010-11, and location-map of clubs in the 2011-12 Ligue 1 – Click below for a larger image…

Photo credits -
Lille… Photo of construction on new stadium (Grande Stade Lille Métropole) from LilleMetropole.fr, here. Architect’s rendering of Grande Stade Lille Métropoe from Info-Stades.fr, here. Background art of architect’s rendering fromSkyscrapercity.com/thread, here. Interior photo of Stadium Lille Métropole from AgoraFoot.fr, here.

Photo of Moussa Sow by Bob Edme/AP via GreenwichTime.com, here. Photo of Gervinho from Goal.com, here. Photo of Yohan Cabaye by Alex Livesey/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.om, here. Photo of Eden Hazard from RhazesFootballCrazy.blogspot.com, here.

Photo of Rudi Garcia from Getty Images via DayLife.com, here. Photo of new 2011-1 Lille home jersey from FootballFashion.org, here. Aerial photo of Stadium Lille Métropole from http://demeraux.jerome.pagesperso-orange.fr/Topf.html [Collection of Postcards of French football stadiums].

Olympique de Marseille… Photo of main stand at Stade Vélodrome with fans spelling out ‘O-M’ with placards by Fred GLLS at Flickr.com, here. Exterior photo of Stade Vélodrome at night from Football-pictures.net, here. Aerial image of Stade Vélodrome from Projets-architecte-urbanisme.fr, here.

Olympigue Lyon…Photo of Lyon ultras at Stade Gerland from Lyon v. Schalke UEFA CL match [14 Sept. 2010] by S. Guiochon/Le Progres via UltrasSpirit.com, here. Photo of the interior of Stade Gerland from Ticket$football.com, here. Aerial image of Stade Gerland from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Paris Saint-Germain…Photo of PSG ultras Boulogne Boys by ngari.norway at Flickr.com, here. Exterior photo of Parc des Princes by psgmag.net at Flickr.com, here. Aerial photo of Parc des Princes from Bouygues.com, here.

FC Sochaux…Interior photo during a match at Stade Auguste Bonal from fan-de-stade.skyrock.com, here. Interior photo of Stade Auguste Bonal by Arnaud 25 at en.wikipedia.org, here. Aerial photo of Stade Auguste Bonal from Skyscrapercity.com/thread, here.

Rennes…Interior photo of Stadee de la Route de Lorient by Kuso at en.wikipedia.org, here. Exterior ground-level photo of Stade de la Route de Lorient from FussballTempel.net, here. Aerial photo of Stade de la Route de Lorient from Skyscrapercity.com/thread, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘2010-11 Ligue 1‘.
Thanks to E-F-S site, for attendances.
Thanks to European football Club Logos site at http://uefaclubs.com/html/Lille-OSC.html.
Thanks to Demis.nl, for the base map of France, Demis Web Map Server.

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June 26, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the Midwest League (Class A).

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Class A — admin @ 3:57 pm

Midwest League
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The Midwest League is a Class A minor league baseball league. [Class A is four levels below Major League Baseball, with leagues classified as AAA, AA, and A-Advanced above it.] Despite its lower-minor-league status, the Midwest League as a whole outdraws 4 other leagues above it – the higher-placed leagues the Midwest League outdrew last season were the Mexican League, the Carolina League, the Southern League, and the California League. The Midwest League is one of 2 Class A leagues (the other being the South Atlantic League). The Midwest League now has 16 teams – its ranks were increased by two in the off-season, with the Bowling Green Hot Rods and the Lake County Captains both moving over from the South Atlantic League.

In 2010, the Midwest League averaged 3,787 per game. That made the Midwest League the fifth-highest-drawing minor league.
For the record, here are all the minor leagues’ average attendances for 2010 -
Average attendance of minor leagues in 2010…
International League (AAA) – 6,908 per game.
Pacific Coast League (AAA) – 6,120 per game.
Texas League (AA) – 5,264 per game.
Eastern League (AA) – 4,663 per game.
Midwest League (A) – 3,787 per game.
New York-Penn League (A-Short Season) – 3,490 per game.
South Atlantic League (A) – 3,306 per game.
Carolina League (A-Advanced) – 3,256 per game.
Mexican League (AAA) – 3,232 per game.
Southern League (AA) – 3,188 per game.
Northwest League (A-Short Season) – 2,920 per game.
California League (A-Advanced) – 2,237 per game.
Pioneer League (Rookie) – 2,158 per game.
Appalachian League (Rookie) – 865 per game.
[Arizona League, Gulf Coast League, Dominican Summer League and Venezuela Summer League attendances not available]
[Numbers from Baseball-Reference.com].

The Midwest League was established in 1947, as the Illinois League, a Class D minor league, with six teams from southern Illinois. [At the time, Class D was the lowest level of the minor league system, before re-organization in 1963, and would be equivalent to the Rookie League level of modern Organized Baseball (or the 6th level below MLB).] The six original teams in the Illinois League were from Belleville, Centralia, Marion, Mattoon, Mount Vernon, and West Frankfort (all in the southern half of the state of Illinois). Today, none of those locales have teams in the Midwest League (or any other minor league in Organized Baseball), although some of these franchises still exist, like, for example, the Mattoon, Illinois franchise, which moved to Keokuk, Iowa in 1958; then to Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin in 1963; then to Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1984 – before finally settling in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1993.

The oldest current member of the Midwest League which has remained in the same location is the Clinton LumberKings, who were formed in 1954 as the Clinton Pirates. The Clinton ball club has had affiliations with a dozen MLB franchises, starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1954-58), and currently is affiliated with the Seattle Mariners (since 2009). The second-oldest ball club in the modern-day Midwest League which has never left its original location is the Quad Cities River Bandits, who were formed in 1960, as the Quad Cities Braves. [The term Quad Cities is the popularly-used name for the five-city metropolitan area of Davenport, Iowa/Bettendorf, Iowa/Rock Island, Illinois/Moline, Illinois/East Moline, Illinois - and which straddles the Mississippi River in southeastern Iowa/northwest Illinois.] The Quad Cities River Bandits have had affiliations with 7 MLB ball clubs, and are currently, since 2005, the fourth-highest minor league farm team of the nearby St. Louis Cardinals.

The third and fourth-oldest teams in the Midwest League which have remained in the same location are two Iowa-based ball clubs – the Burlington Bees and the Cedar Rapids Kernals. Both these teams joined the Midwest League in 1962 from the Three-I League [Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa League] which had just disbanded in January, 1962. Actually, in terms of actual ball club longevity regardless of league, these teams are the oldest in the current Midwest League because the present-day Burlington ball club was formed in 1947, and the present-day Cedar Rapids ball club was formed 2 years later in 1949. Burlington has been affiliated with 13 MLB franchises, but were Independent prior to joining the Midwest League in 1962, when they had a one-year affiliation with the Pittsburgh Pirates, followed by a 12-year affiliation with the Kansas City Athletics/Oakland Athletics. As of this season [2011], the Burlington Bees are back within the Oakland Athletics’ farm system. The Burlington Bees had the lowest average attendance in the Midwest League in 2010, drawing just 971 per game to their rather out-of-date ballpark. Granted, Burlington is a pretty small municipality that frankly has no business calling itself a “city” (as its Wikipedia page does), seeing as how it has a population of around 26,800 {2000 figure}. I don’t know what the situation is with the Bees, but it would not surprise me in the least if this team is the next Midwest League ball club to move to greener pastures. By comparison, the Cedar Rapids Kernals don’t have near the problems drawing fans that Burlington does, due to its size {~255,000 metro-area population in Cedar Rapids} and a relatively new ballpark (opened in 2002), but still, Cedar Rapids drew only 12th-best in the Midwest League in 2010, averaging 2,585 per game.

The fact is, aside from Kane County, all the best-drawing teams in the Midwest League are in the Eastern Division, which means teams from locations outside the original Iowa/Illinois/Wisconsin region of the Midwest League; and, including Kane County, all the best-drawing teams are from locations that the Midwest League expanded into in the last 20 years. In other words, the reason the Midwest League has such good attendance numbers in relation to its relatively lower-minor-league level is that, with a few exceptions (like Burlington and Clinton), the league and its franchises have opted to relocate to municipalities which offered a larger fan base, and in doing so, the teams were able to secure new stadiums in those locales. One example is the aforementioned Fort Wayne Tin Caps (the nickname is a Johnny Appleseed reference), who drew third-best in the league last season, pulling in 5,735 per game. Other examples can be seen in the Dayton Dragons, the Kane County Cougars, the West Michigan Whitecaps, the Lansing Lugnuts, the Lake Country Captains (located east of Cleveland), and the Great Lakes Loons (located in central Michigan). None of these teams existed 20 years ago, and the impressively-drawing Dayton Dragons are just 11 years old, while the Lake Country Captains and the Great Lakes Loons teams are just 9 and 7 years old, respectively. These teams have nice new ballparks and draw very well, all drawing over 4,000 per game last season.

The highest-drawing ball club in the Midwest League is the Dayton Dragons. Dayton drew 8,535 per game in 2010, which was the 5th-highest average attendance in all of minor league baseball last season (!). {See this list (from BallparkDigest.com) of all minor league teams’ attendances from 2010.} The Kane County Cougars, of Geneva, Illinois drew second-best in the Midwest League in 2010, with an average attendance of 6,244 per game. The Kane County Cougars are within the loosely-defined area known as Chicagoland, and are 34 miles west of the city center of Chicago.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts on minor leagues recently, a trend with minor league farm teams is for the parent-club Major League team to place one or more of their minor league teams relatively close to where the big league team plays – and no better example of this can be seen than in the Dayton Dragons’ case. Because Dayton is just 49 miles north of Cincinnati. The prevailing wisdom in the era that spanned from after World War II right up to the early 1990s was that minor league teams couldn’t survive when placed less than 60 miles or so from a Major League team. The few exceptions to this rule-of-thumb were with San Jose, California; with Toledo, Ohio; with Pawtucket (ie, Providence, Rhode Island); and with Reading, Pennsylvania – all four of which were/are less than 50 miles from San Francisco, Detroit, Boston and Philadelphia, respectively. Dayton, Ohio is a good example of how this thinking has changed. Dayton is a pretty large city {Dayton metro-area population is currently around 841,000}. But Dayton did not have a minor league baseball team for almost half a century! Between the years 1952 and 1999, there was no baseball team in Dayton {see this, from Baseball-Reference.com}. It’s impossible to prove whether the people who ran baseball back then were right about this “zone of exclusion”, as it were. Because back in the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s, it wasn’t so expensive to see Major League Baseball games, so the lesser prices that a theoretical minor league team would charge in a near-to-an-MLB-team market like Dayton might not make a difference to the average fan there. But these days, with the high cost of attending Major League Baseball games (especially when factoring in the price gouging that goes on with parking fees and the price of concessions in MLB venues), it makes economic sense for, say, a family of 4 from Dayton, Ohio, to not make that expensive trip to down the road to Cincinnati to see a Cincinnati Reds game, but stay right in Dayton, and see the Dayton Dragons, featuring some future Cincinnati Reds prospects. And all for about one-fourth of the cost, at least. With the case of the Kane County Cougars, well, despite the fact that the team is not affiliated with either of the Chicago MLB teams 35 miles or so to the east the Cougars still draw over 6,000 per game. The fact of the matter is that attending minor league baseball games is a fun, relaxing and very affordable recreational activity. And now in many more areas of the United States, people who live within easy driving distance of a Big League ball club have the option of going out to a ball game without spending an arm and a leg.

From the Midwest League page the of MiLB site, ‘History [of the Midwest League]‘.

Photo credits -
Bowling Green Hot Rods/Bowling Green Ballpark…photo from RaysProspects.com, here.
Dayton Dragons/Fifth Third Field 9Dayton)…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Fort Wayne Tin Caps/Parkview Field…photo from In.gov/visitindiana/blog, here.
Great Lakes Loons/Dow Diamond…photo from the Great Lakes Loons’ page at MiLB site, here.
Lake County Captains…Aerial image fron Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Lansing lugnuts/Cooley Law School Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
South Bend silver Hawks/Stanley Covaleski Regional Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
West Michigan Whitecaps/Fifth Third Ballpark (Grand Rapids)…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Beloit Snappers/Harry C. Pohlman Field…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Burlington Bees/Community Field…Photo from LittleBallparks.com, here.
Cedar Rapids Kernals/Veteran’s Memorial Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Clinton LumberKings/Alliant Energy Field…Aerial photo by Michael J. Kearney, at en.wikipedia.org, here.
Kane County Cougars/Elfstrom Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Peoria Chiefs/O’Brien Field…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Quad Cities River Bandits/Modern Woodmen Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Wisconsin Timber Rattlers/Time Warner Cable Field at Fox Cities Stadium…Photo from this April, 2009 article at OnMilwaukee.com, by Andrew Wagner, ‘Deal with Brewers paying off for Timber Rattlers‘.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Midwest League‘.
Thanks to David Kronheim at NumberTamer.com. Attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)

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June 18, 2011

England: final table of 2010-11 Premier League, with clubs playing in Europe in UEFA Competitions for 2011-12 / Plus, map with locations of clubs in 2011-12 Premier League, with attendance data.

Filed under: 2011-12 English Football,Eng>Premier League (Eng-1st Level),Football Stadia — admin @ 5:00 pm

Below: final table of 2011-12 Premier League, featuring the 8 clubs that qualified for Europe in the 2011-12 UEFA Champions League and in the 2011-12 UEFA Europa League…

Final table of 2010-11 Premier League featuring English clubs playing in Europe in 2011-12
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On this post, there is a chart, which you can see by clicking on the image at the top of this post, as well as a list of attendance data and a location-map, which you can see by clicking on the image 10 paragraphs down…

From DailyMail.co.uk, 2011-12 Premier League fixtures in a club-by-club guide, {click here}.
‘2011-12 UEFA Champions League‘ (en.wikipedia.org).
‘2011-12 UEFA Europa League‘.

The chart page shows the 2010-11 Premier League final table, with the 8 English clubs playing in European competitions for 2011-12 featured. For 2010-11 Premier League champions Manchester United, I have included photos of 4 key players – top scorer in the league Dimitar Berbatov, first-season sensation Javier Hernandez (who had 13 goals), Wayne Rooney (shown scoring his bicycle-kick goal that won the Manchester derby), and Premier League Player of the Year Nemanja Vidic. If I had more room, I would have shown a photo of Nani {his page at en.wikipedia.org, here}., whose 9 goals and league-leading 14 assists contributed to Man U’s title-run. There was another player on Manchester United who was in the leaders of assists, and that was Wayne Rooney who had 11 assists along with his 10 goals. Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson is shown in a photo just as the final whistle blew at Blackburn and Manchester United had clinched their 19th English title, which surpassed the 18 titles won by Liverpool, and makes Manchester United the all-time most-titled club in England.

The top three clubs – Manchester United, Chelsea, and Manchester City – have automatically qualified for the 2011-12 UEFA Champions League Group Stage.

The 4th place finisher, Arsenal, must get through a Play-off round tie to advance to the much-coveted and highly lucrative Champions League Group Stage. The draw for the 2011-12 UEFA CL Play-off round will be on 5th August. As instituted last season, all the teams who have qualified for the UEFA Champions League Play-off round will be split into 2 sections…one section for champions and one for non-champions. Each match-up will thus comprise one team from the champions section versus one team from the non-champions section. The Non-champions section will be seeded. As it stands now, Arsenal is in the set of seeded teams, along with Bayern Munich, Lyon, and Villarreal, with Udinese as-yet un-seeded. Here is en.wikipedia’s page on the 2011-12 UEFA Champions League, set at the Play-off round procedure, and the Group Stage set-up {click here}.

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp might not have wanted the bother of it (and the possible damage to league-form that comes with a Europa League run), but 5th place finisher Tottenham Hotspur will be playing in Europe this season. Spurs are in the 2011-12 UEFA Europa League Play-off round {a link to that information is 6 paragraphs down). Harry says he’ll play youngsters, so we’ll see how that goes.

8th place finisher Fulham is back in Europe two seasons after their brilliant 2009-10 Europa League campaign, where they went all the way to the final (losing 2-1 to Atlético Madrid in AET). That Europa League run saw the West London-based Cottagers – an unassuming club with no major titles, less than 2 dozen seasons in top flight football, and a ground that cannot be expanded past its current capacity of 25,700 – take the scalps of some pretty big clubs in Europe, including Juventus, Hamburg, Wolfsburg, and Shakhtar Donetsk. Fulham qualified for Europe then by a 7th place league position in 2008-09. This time, Fulham gets in as the highest-ranked team from the Fair Play table not yet qualified for any European competition (which is another way of saying that Fulham were one of the least-penalized teams in 2010-11). Fulham will enter the first qualifying round of the 2011–12 UEFA Europa League. That means a late June/early July two-legged-tie. Fulham will play the Faroese club NSÍ Runavík. The 1st Leg will be on 30 June, in Runavík, Faroe Islands, with the 2nd Leg on 7 July at Craven Cottage. {Europa League First qualifying round, all match-ups {en,wikipedia.org)}.

13th place finisher and 2010-11 FA Cup finalist Stoke City qualified for European play by inheriting Manchester City’s spot as FA Cup winner. Stoke will play in a Europa League Third qualifying round tie. The draw for the Europa League Third qualifying round [incl. Stoke City] is set for 15 July, and the 1st Leg of the match-ups are to be played on 28 July…here is how the teams to be playing in the third and final qualifying round are shaping up – {‘2011-12 Europa League Play-off round}’. Stoke City played in Europe in 1972 and 1974 {see this {‘Stoke City FC in Europe’)} (from en.wikipedia.org).

Finally, the just-relegated Birmingham City will play in the Europa League Play-off round. The Blues definitely had a mixed-bag of a season, seeing as how they won just their second ‘significant’ title ever – beating Arsenal 2-1 to claim the 2010-11 Football League Cup title…only to fall through the trap-door of relegation on the final day of the Premier League season. In the middle of the Blues’ season, a riot was had. This from the BBC article linked below… ‘Sadly, thousands of Birmingham supporters chose to celebrate the win by charging the length of the field to taunt their Villa counterparts, sparking a predictably angry reaction, with police forced to move in as flares were thrown.’ This occurred in a 5th round League Cup match in January . So I am saying bad karma might have contributed to Birmingham City getting the drop.

For Birmingham City, this will be the fifth time the club has played in Europe, but not since the days of the old Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, last in 1961 {see this (‘Birmingham City FC in Europe’)} (from en.wikipedia.org).

The draw for the Europa League Play-off round [incl. Birmingham City and Tottenham] is set for 5 August, and the 1st Leg of the match-ups are to be played on 18 August…here are how the teams involved are shaping up – {‘2011-12 Europa League Play-off round‘}
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Below: attendance data from 2010-11, and location-map of clubs in the 2011-12 Premier League…

On the map page, 2010-11 average attendance (from home league matches) is shown for the 20 clubs which will be playing in the 2011-12 Premier League. Percent capacity and percentage change from 2009-10 average attendance is also shown. The map shows locations of the 20 clubs.

Photo credits on chart page -
Manchester United…Statues of Bobby Charlton, George Best, and Denis Law from Getty Images via news.BBC.co.uk, here. MUFC fans in green and gold photo from Getty Images via DailyMail.co.uk, here. Interior photo of Old Trafford from CNNconsumernews.com, here. Aerial photo of Trafford and Old Trafford from http://thesoccerwallpaper.com/theatre-of-dream-stadium/.

Photo of Dimitar Berbatov by Alex Livesey at Getty images Europe via Zimbio.com, here. Photo of Javier Hernandez by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here. Photo of Wayne Rooney from Football-news.org.uk, here. Photo of Nemanja Vidic by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio.com, here.

Photo of Alex Ferguson after Blackburn victory in May 2011 from Goal.com, here. Photo of new Manchester United 2011-12 home jersey – from Transatsports.com, here..

Chelsea…Photo of part of West Stand and part of Matthew Harding Stand by travelbadge R-in-circle s.com at Panoramio.com, here. Photo of Chelsea fans in the Matthew Harding Stand by cyberdees at Flickr.com, here. Exterior photo of Stamford Bridge with hotels in foreground from Ted’s Premier League Blog/Aerial photos of Premier League Stadiums [2009] (scroll three-quarters of the way down the page for photos).

Manchester City…Photo of moment’s silence for Malcolm Allison from PA via YesMakeItNow.blogspot.com, here. Interior photo of City of Manchester Stadium (aka Eastlands) from Football-Wallpapers.org, here. Aerial photo from TheSun.co.uk, here.

Arsenal…Photo of fans with Arsenal flags at Emirates Stadium by World of Good at Flickr.com, here. Exterior, gound-level photo of Emirates Stadium by Lumjaguaari at en.wikipedia.org, here.Exterior aerial photo of Emirates Stadium from ByrneGroup.co.uk, here.

Tottenham Hotspur…Photo of fans with flags at White Hart Lane from FootballQS.com, here. Interior photo of White Hart Lane from Soccerway.com, here. Aerial photo of White Hart Lane by Captain Snaps at Flickr.com, here; Captain Snaps’s photostream at Flickr.com.

Fulham…Photo of interior of Craven Cottage from EPLtalk.com [unattributed], here. Photo of cottage [rear of building] and entrances at Craven Cottage from Into A Far Country blog (frozenheads.net), here. Aerial image of Craven Cottage [facing east] from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Stoke City… Photo of Stoke City fans at FA Cup 6th round tie at Britannia Stadium from PA via uk.eurosport.yahoo.com, here. Photo of West Stand at Britannia Stadium from PremierFootballBooks.co.uk, here. Photo of Sir Stanley Matthews statue outside Britannia Stadium by tothe92.co.uk at Flickr.com, here. Aerial image of Britannia Stadium from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Birmingham City…Video image of the December 2010 St.Andrews’ Carling Cup riot from Sky News via DailyMail.co.uk, here. Photo of interior of St. Andrews by pinder22 at Flickr.com, here. Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view [view facing west], here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Premier League‘.
Thanks to E-F-S site for attendance figures.

Thanks to Jeremy at Albion Road.com. Albion Road site can be found in my Blogroll here at ‘Football Club Guide’. This summer, Albion Road is featuring these Clubs playing in Europe charts that I have been putting together. France’s Ligue Un is coming up next in this series (Ligue 1 2010-11 Top of the table/clubs playing in Europe to posted here on Saturday 2 July.

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June 13, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the Eastern League.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Double-A — admin @ 7:04 am

Eastern League (baseball)

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The Eastern League, established in 1923, is one of 3 Double-A minor leagues in Organized Baseball. Double-A is two steps below Major League Baseball. {You can see my map of all 3 Double-A minor leagues, with 2010 attendances and all 30 teams’ MLB affiliations, in this post, here.}. The Eastern League was historically centered in New York and Pennsylvania, and by the 1930s, the league had expanded it’s range to include teams from cities in New Jersey and Connecticut. The present-day Eastern League has teams in 9 states – in the Northeast, in Pennsylvania [with 4 teams], New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and Maryland); plus one team in in Ohio; and one team in Virginia.

For it’s first 15 season. the Eastern League was originally known as the New York-Pennsylvania League. [That name has actually been used for 3 different minor leagues, starting with the New York-Pennsylvania League (I) that existed for just one season in 1891; while the current New York-Pennsylvania League (III) is almost universally known as the New York-Penn League and is a Class A-Short Season League.]

The charter members in 1923 of the league that the present-day Eastern League evolved from – the New York-Pennsylvania League (II) – were ball clubs from Binghamton, NY; Elmira, NY; Scranton, PA; Wilkes-Barre; PA; Williamsport, PA; and York, PA. A team from Harrisburg, PA entered the league the following season of 1924. Binghamton and Harrisburg have (different) ball clubs in the present-day Eastern League. The longest-running current team in the Eastern League is the Reading (Pennsylvania) Phillies, who began playing in the league in 1967. Reading also is the team in the Eastern League with the longest-running continuous affiliation with the same Major League team, the Philadelphia Phillies. 2011 will be the 45th-straight season of the Philadelphia/Reading partnership. This 45-year run is tied with one other MLB/minor league partnership for the longest currently in Organized Baseball – the other being between the Class A Florida State League ball club the Lakeland Tigers and the Detroit Tigers.

Throughout it’s first 10 seasons, the New York-Pennsylvania League (II) was a Class B league (equivalent to the fourth level below the Major Leagues). In 1933, it was upgraded 2 levels (by-passing the A-1 level), to a Class A league. In 1938, when the Scranton ball club moved to Hartford, CT, the league changed it’s name to the Eastern League (III). [The "(III)" is there because there was a minor league called the Eastern League (I) that existed in the Nineteenth century from 1884 to 1886 (it merged with two other leagues to form the precursor-league to the present-day Triple-A league the International League). The second Eastern League (II) was what the International League was called between 1892 and 1911.]

The modern-era Eastern League moved up a level and became a Double-A level league in 1963, when Organized Baseball did an overhaul of it’s league-level classifications. The Double-A Eastern League of 1963 was a 6-team circuit comprised of these ball clubs (with MLB affiliations noted)…Binghamton Triplets (Kansas City A’s), Charleston [West Virginia] Indians (Cleveland Indians), Elmira Pioneers (Baltimore Orioles), Reading Red Sox (Boston Red Sox), Springfield [Massachusetts] Giants (San Francisco Giants), York [Pennsylvania] White Roses (Washington Senators).

From 1958 to 1993, the Eastern League fluctuated from 6 to 8 teams. In 1994, the modern-day Eastern League began when the league expanded to 10 teams and 2 divisions, with the addition of new ball clubs in Portland, ME and New Haven, CT. New Haven lost their team when the franchise moved to Manchester, NH in 2004. The most recent shift saw the Norwich, CT team move to Richmond, VA in 2010. That team, the Richmond Flying Squirrels, led the Eastern League in attendance in their debut season last year, drawing 6,626 per game.

Besides Richmond, the Eastern League features several other teams that draw above 5,000 per game these days – the Reading Phillies, the Portland Sea Dogs, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the New Britain Rock Cats, and the Trenton Thunder. Another good-drawing ball club in the Eastern League, particularly for the small size of it’s municipality, is the Altoona Curve. Altoona, Pennsylvania only has a metro-area population of 126,000, yet the Altoona Curve is able to draw over 4,000 per game. Granted, Altoona’s Blair County Ballpark {Bing.com/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here} is next door to an amusement park (Lakemont Park), and you can see the roller coaster that looms behind right field, but it is pretty impressive for a town smaller than 150,000 to regularly draw over 4,000 per game for minor league baseball.

As a whole, the Eastern League averaged 4,663 per game last season.

Click on image below for list of Eastern League statistics – 2009 average attendances; 2010 average attendances; teams’ metro areas and metro area populations; age of teams and length of time the team has had their current MLB-affiliation; and Eastern League titles…

Photo credits -
Binghamton Mets/NYSEG Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
New Britain Rock Cats/New Britain Stadium…Aerial image from bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
New Hampshire Fisher Cats/Northeast Delta Dental Stadium…photo by David Sailors/Corbis, at Flickr.com, here.
Portland Sea Dogs/Hadlock Field…photo from http://www.projectballpark.org/boston/hadlock.html.
Reading Phillies/First Energy stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Trenton Thunder/Mercer County Waterfront Park…photo from SwinglePrints.com.

Akron Aeros/Canal Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Altoona Curve/Blair County Ballpark…Photo from Baseballparks.com, here.
Bowie Baysox/Prince George’s Stadium…photo from LittleBallparks.com.
Erie SeaWolves/Jerry Uht Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Harrisburg Senators/Metro Bank Park…Aerial image from bing.com/maps/Bird’s eye satellite view, here.
Richmond Flying Squirrels/The Diamond…Aerial image from bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Eastern League (baseball)‘.
Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, ‘Eastern League (AA) Encyclopedia and History‘.

Attendances from NumberTamer.com, [ NumberTamer.com ] pdf, ‘2010 Minor League Analysis / 2010 Minor League Att‘ [attendances by league begin at page 29 in the pdf].
Thanks to the Biz of Baseball site, for 2009 attendances, here.

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, here, for Eastern League total attendance numbers.
Thanks to the MiLB/Eastern League site, for this article, .’History – Eastern League History (1923-Present)‘

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June 6, 2011

Germany: final table of 2010-11, with clubs playing in Europe in UEFA competitions for 2011-12 / Plus, map with locations of clubs in 2011-12 Bundesliga, with attendance data.

Filed under: Football Stadia,Germany — admin @ 5:17 pm

Top of the table -2010-11 Bundesliga/German clubs playing in Europe for 2011-12

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From When Saturday Comes.co.uk, by John van Laer, from 6 June 2011, ‘A good year for the underdog in the Bundesliga‘.
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This post is part of a new category I have started up…it will be listed in my Categories section under ‘UEFA-Clubs that qualified for Europe’. There is a chart page with illustrations, and on another page there is a map with attendance data.

Basically the chart page shows the final table of the league, with all clubs who have qualified for UEFA European competitions featured. In other words, the charts will feature all the clubs from the given country who have qualified for Europe – in either the UEFA Champions League Group Stage (in this case, 1st and 2nd place finishers in the 2010-11 Bundesliga – Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen)…or the UEFA Champions League qualifying rounds (in this case, Bayern Munich)…or the UEFA Europa League qualifying rounds (in this case, Hannover 96 and Mainz, plus Schalke 04). Usually that will literally mean the clubs that finished at the top of the standings, but in the case here, FC Schalke 04 will be playing in Europe despite finishing 14th in the league, because Schalke won the DFB-Pokal title (ie, the German Cup title).
2011-12 UEFA Champions League, Round and draw dates {here (en.wikipedia.org}.
2011-12 UEFA Europa League, Round and draw dates {here}.

On the right-hand side of the chart page are stadia photos and club information for all the clubs who have qualified for Europe. The title winner gets twice the space for photos, and I have included the three Borussia Dortmund players who accumulated the most goals and assists.- Parguayan national Lucas Barrios, and two young German midfielderrs who racked up a decent amount of goals and assists last season, Mario Götze and Kevin Großkreutz. If I had more pixel-space I would have shown more Dortmund players who were key to the club’s surprise championship, like the Japanese striker Shinji Kagawa, and the German-born Turkish international and midfield wizard Nuri Şahin. I did include a photo of the Dortmund manager, Jürgen Klopp, showing off the silverware. Plus I stumbled across Dortmund’s snazzy new 2011-12 home jersey, so I tossed that in too.

One note about Dortmund’s manager Jürgen Klopp…before getting the Dortmund job, he made his name bringing Mainz up to the Bundesliga (for the first time) 6 seasons ago…and now Mainz has continued to punch above their weight after Klopp’s departure (in 2008), with the small club from Rhineland-Palatinate having qualified via league placement for Europe for the first time (Mainz have been in Europe before – getting a UEFA Cup qualifying spot in 2005-06, via the Fair Play draw). And Mainz are about to move into a new, ~33,000-capacity ground, so Mainz supporters are living the dream right now. I included a photo of the new ground, the Coface Arena, under construction. It is scheduled to open in July – {here is a Skyscrapercity.com thread with more photos}.
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The second gif, below, shows the locations of the 18 clubs in the 2011–12 Fußball-Bundesliga season {which will begin on the weekend of 5th to 7th August, see this}. Listed are these 18 clubs’ 2010-11 average attendances, their 2010-11 percent capacity, and their percentage change in average attendance versus the previous season. The two promoted clubs, Hertha Berlin and FC Augsburg, are included in the list. [Note - Borussia Mönchengladbach beat VfL Bochum in the promotion/relegation play-off, so there are only 2 clubs promoted to Bundesliga for the second straight year].

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I will make posts like this for the 5 biggest leagues in Europe. Coming up soon, in addition to Germany’s Bundesliga, there will be Top of the table charts for England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, and France’s Ligue Un.
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Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘2011–12 Fußball-Bundesliga‘.
Thanks to Demis.nl, for the base map of Germany, Demis Web Map Server.
Thanks to E-F-S site, for attendance figures.
Thanks to IconArchive.com for the Champions League icon.
Thanks to Dale for the idea {here, comment #5}.

Photo credits on chart page -
Dortmund… Photo of full south stand (Die Südtribüne) from FootballWallpapers.tv, here. Photo of Dortmund fans in stands with banners from Bundesliga.de, article on English fans of Dortmund, ‘ “We’ve always had a soft spot for Dortmund” ‘. Photo of yellow pylon by Mdortmund at en.wikipedia.org, here.
Lucas Barrios photo from Getty Images via UEFA.com, here. Mario Götze photo from BVB.de, here. Kevin Großkreutz photo from forums.soccerfansnetwork.com, here. Jürgen Klopp photo from digibet.info.com, here.
New 2011-12 Dortmund jersey image from BVB09shop.de, here. Aerial photo of Signal Iduna Park from SpainTicketBureau.com, here.

Leverkusen…Aerial photo of BayArena from nrw-tourism.com. Exterior photo of BayArena by H005 at en.wikipedia.org, here. Photo of Leverkusen fans with banners from Spox.com,here.

Bayern…Photo of Bayern fans with banners from Getty Images via Telegraph.co.uk, here. Close-up photo of exterior lighted panels of Alianz Arena by Marco Döhr at Panoramio.com. Exterior photo of Allianz Arena from MIMOA.eu [free architecture guide], here.

Hannover 96…Photo of Hannover fans with scarves by Maabpaa at Flickr.com, here. Photo of interior of AWD-Arena by hack man at flickr.com, here.Aerial photo of AWD-Arena from this site: http://www.lasan-hienvuong.com/Tuc%20Cau/Images/.

Mainz…Photo of new stadium (Coface Arena) under construction from coface-arena.de, here. Interior photo of Stadion am Bruchweg from DieBundesligaUK.wordpress.com, here. Aerial photo of Stadion am Bruchweg from StadiDelMundo.blogspot.com, here.

Schalke 04…Photo of Schalke fans with banners at Veltins-Arena from Skyscrapercity.com thread, here. Interior photo of Veltins-arena from StadionWelt.de, here. Aerial photo of Veltins-Arena from official site of the facility, http://arenapark.gelsenkirchen.de/Umfeld/default.asp

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May 30, 2011

Wales, 2 maps – Welsh football clubs in the English football league system (6 clubs) / Plus, 2011-12 Welsh Premier League.

Filed under: Wales — admin @ 7:24 pm

Please note: there is a more-recent post on Wales that I have done (Wales national football team/2016 Euros Qualifiers/November 2015)…
click on the following…
Wales national team – starting line-up (Best XI) from match which clinched their qualification for the 2016 Euros in France. (Wales starting squad from 10 October 2015, Bosnia 2-0 Wales [match-day which saw Wales automatically qualify for the 2016 UEFA Euros tournament].) 17 players + coach are profiled.
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Photo credits – Photo of dawn mists at Rhossili Bay, Gower Peninsula, Swansea from WelshWales.co.uk . Panoramic view of Swansea by Slawomir Purzycki at Panoramio.com . Clifton Hill in Swansea photo by by Slawomir Purzycki at Panoramio.com, here . Swansea Castle and BT Tower photo by Slawomir Purzycki at Panoramio.com . Brandy Cove photo from Wallpaperstravel.com .
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Welsh football clubs that play in English leagues

Note – On the map page (which you can see by clicking on the image above). are the locations of the 6 Welsh football clubs in the English football league system. Their club crests there are sized to reflect 2010-11 average attendance (of home league matches). At the right on the map page are profile boxes of the 6 clubs, which include club info, 2010-11 kits, and photos of their football grounds. [Note: for each club, the lists of seasons spent in each Level have been updated to include the 2011-12 season which will begin in August.]

Welsh Football Clubs in English Leagues

There are 6 Welsh football clubs in English football leagues. 1 Welsh club has just won promotion to the Premier League for the 2011-12 season – Swansea City AFC.
From Guardian.co.uk, from 30 May 2011, by Kevin McCarra, ‘Swansea reach Premier League thanks to Scott Sinclair hat-trick‘.
From EPLtalk.com, by The Gaffer, from 31 May 2011, ‘Swansea City Breathe Much-Needed New Life Into the Premier League‘.
From Pitch Invasion.net, from 31 May 2011, by Tom Dunmore, ‘Wales In The English Premier League: A Potted History Of A Cross-Border Anomaly‘.

This is the first time a Welsh club has made it into the Premier League [ie, since 1992-93], and the first time since 1982 that a Welsh club has been in the English top flight (that was when Swansea City ended their sole two-season spell in the old English First Division).

1 Welsh club is in the Football League, in the League Championship [the 2nd Level] -Cardiff City FC.

The other 4 Welsh clubs playing in English leagues are in Non-League football…2 are in the Conference National [the 5th Level] – Newport County AFC and Wrexham FC.
One is now in the Conference North [a 6th Level league] – the just-promoted Colwyn Bay FC.
And one is now in the Western Football League Division One [a 9th Level league] – the just-promoted Methyr Town FC.

The reason for Welsh football clubs being in the English football leagues, and not in a Welsh league, goes back to the late Nineteenth Century, when it was far easier for, say, clubs from southern Wales to travel to play clubs in southern England and the Midlands than it was to travel to the northern half of Wales, because of the lack of prominent road and rail infrastructure between North and South Wales. So a Welsh league concept never caught on back then. The main reason why there is a Welsh football league system today has to do with FIFA. From en.wikipedia.org/Welsh Premier League page…
…{excerpt} ‘The league was formed in October 1991 by Alun Evans, Secretary General of the Football Association of Wales (FAW), as he believed that the Welsh international football team was under threat from FIFA. Wales, along with the other three home nations (England, Northern Ireland and Scotland), had a permanent seat on the International Football Association Board (IFAB) and it was thought that many FIFA members were resentful of this and pressing for the four nations to unite into one combined side for the whole of the United Kingdom.
The new league was formed for the 1992-93 season. At the time, Wales was almost unique in world football in that despite the FAW being a FIFA member it did not organise a national league. Traditionally, the strongest teams in Wales had always played in the English leagues. Aberdare Athletic, Cardiff City, Merthyr Town, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham have all been members of the Football League.” {end of excerpt}

This led to a dispute between the Football Association of Wales and the Non-League football clubs from Wales that wished to remain in English league system.

The Football Association of Wales did not attempt to coerce the 3 professional clubs then in Wales who played in the English Football League – Cardiff City, Swamsea City, and Wrexham – into joining the new League of Wales. But they did insist that the the amateur Welsh clubs playing in English Non-League football join the new Welsh league system. 8 of those Welsh clubs in English Non-League football did not wish to join the new League of Wales…Bangor City, Barry Town, Caernarfon Town, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport County, Newtown and Rhyl. They were dubbed the ‘Irate Eight’. 3 eventually changed their stance and joined the League of Wales. Those clubs were Bangor City, Newtown, and Rhyl. The other 5 were forced to play their home matches for the 1992-93 season across the border in English venues, and became known as the Exiles [which is in fact the nickname now of Newport County, and that word appears on their crest]. For 3 seasons, North Wales club Colwyn Bay played their home matches 83 km. (51 miles) away, at Northwich Victoria’s ground in Cheshire (located south-west of of Greater Manchester). Newport County played way over in northeast Gloucestershire, in Moreton-in-Marsh, which is 214 km. (116 miles) away from Newport, South Wales.

Barry Town joined the League of Wales a year later, for the 1993-94 season, while the other 4 exiled clubs – Caernarfon, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, and Newport County – again played their home matches in English football grounds. After a third season of this (1994-95), a court ruling in 1995 allowed the four still-exiled clubs to return to their Welsh football grounds. But Caernarfon instead chose to join the League of Wales. That left Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil (now called Merthyr Town after being re-formed in 2010) and Newport County as Welsh members of English Non-League football leagues. Those 3 clubs, along with Cardiff City, Swansea City, and Wrexham, make up the half-dozen Welsh football clubs which to this day play in English football leagues.

From TwoHundredPercent.net, from 23 July 2010, by Rob, ‘Diagnosis: Merthyr‘.

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The 2011-12 Welsh Premier League

Click on the image below, for a map of the 2011-12 Welsh Premier League, with 2010-11 average attendances, and list of title winners…

Welsh Premier League 2011-12

The Welsh Premier League
The League of Wales began play in 1992-93. In 2002-03, the name of the league was changed to the Welsh Premier League. For sponsorship reasons, the league is officially known as the Principality Building Society Welsh Premier Football League. Originally there were 18 teams in the league. There are now 12 teams, following a re-vamping after the 2009-10 season. Most of the league’s clubs field part-time professional squads (the two full-time professional teams in the Welsh Premier League [as of 2011-12] are Neath FC and The New Saints). One club is promoted from and relegated to the two feeder leagues…one covering South Wales (and which is called the Welsh Football League), and one covering North Wales (which is called the Cymru Alliance).

Current champion is North Wales-based Bangor City FC. This is Bangor City’s 3rd Welsh title. Bangor City also had the highest average attendance in league matches, drawing 754 per game to their Farrar Road Stadium, in Bangor. Bangor, in the ceremonial county of Gwynedd, has a population of around 21,700 {2008 estimate}. Despite being the club with the largest fan base in the Welsh football league system, Bangor City’s squad are part-time professionals.

The most-titled club in the Welsh league system is currently in the second tier – the South Wales club Barry Town, who last won the Welsh championship in 2003, but were relegated the following season while under financial duress. Barry Town have won 7 Welsh titles. Barry Town even had a spell in the third division, but have been in the second tier since 2008-09, and were in a relegation battle in 2010-11, finishing in 13th, one spot above the drop in the Welsh Football League Division One.

The second-most titled club in the Welsh league system are The New Saints, who were previously known as TNS (full name – Total Network Solutions Llansantffraid FC). The New Saints/TNS have won 5 Welsh titles, most recently in 2010. The club had merged with Oswestry Town FC in 2003, and in 2006 they shed the sponsorship part of their name. Now known as The New Saints of Oswestry Town & Llansantffraid Football Club, the club represents two towns that straddle the border between Montgomeryshire, Wales and Shropshire, England. The club actually plays in England, in Oswestry, Shropshire at Park Hall. The New Saints are one of the few full-time professional clubs in the Welsh league system [note: the only other club I could find that currently lists itself as full-time professional is Neath FC].

3 clubs – Aberystwyth Town, Bangor City and Newtown – have played in all 19 seasons of the League of Wales/Welsh Premier League. 3 other founding members – Afan Lido, Llanelli and Porthmadog – are in the Welsh Premier League currently [2011-12], after being relegated and then promoted back. Afan Lido was the promoted club for 2010-11. Afan Lido FC is one of two clubs currently in the Welsh Premier League that come from the South Wales town of Port Talbot, the other being Port Talbot Town FC [Port Talbot is the home-town of 3 brilliant actors - Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, and Michael Sheen, and has a population of around 35,000.]. Afan Lido won promotion as the highest-placed club in 2nd Level Wales that had successfully applied for promotion, after finishing in 2nd place in the South Wales-based Welsh Football League. The first place club in the 10/11 WFL, Bryntirion Athletic, did not apply for promotion at the start of the season, so they could not gain promotion; meanwhile, none of the top finishers in the North Wales-based Cymru Alliance had applied for promotion. In Wales, it is usually stadium infrastructure deficiencies which prevent clubs from applying for promotion; or which causes clubs to be denied for promotion. Basic financial problems within a club can also result in relegation, as was the case in 2010, with the relegation of the club with the second-largest fan base in the Welsh league system, the two-time Welsh champion Rhyl FC. Two seasons ago Rhyl, as reigning champions, had finished in 4th but were denied a license for the 2010-11 season and thus sent down to the Cymru Alliance, because their finances were a mess {see this, from BBC.co.uk, from May, 2010, ‘Rhyl FC’s Welsh Premier appeal fails FAW test‘}.

The Welsh Premier League is currently ranked by the UEFA Coefficient for leagues {see this} at 46th out of 53 national leagues in Europe [ranking as of May, 2011], which puts Wales league football, strength-wise, between Estonia and Armenia.

From the DailyPost.co.uk, fro 26 March 2010, by Dave Jones, ‘Welsh Premier League attendances are a concern‘.

From Two Hundred Percent.com, from 27 Aug.2011 and 7 Sept.2011, by Neil Mace, ‘Dipping a Toe Into the Welsh Premier League‘.
‘A Welsh Premier League Odyssey, part two [Port Talbot]‘.
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Photo credits on main map page -

Colwyn Bay/Llanelian Road…Photo of Llanelan Road ground with hill in background by Matthew Wilkinson at Flickr.com, here. Photo with cows on hillside by Matthew Wilkinson at Flickr.com, here. Aerial photo from ColwynBayFC.co.uk, here.

Wrexham/Racecourse Ground… Interior photo from WikiStadiums.org, here. Photo of Mold Road Stand with The Kop (terrace) in foreground from Soccerway.com, here. Aerial image of Racecourse Ground from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Merthyr Town/Penydarren Park …Photo from behind goal by Foo-med at en.wikipedia.org, here. Main Stand photo from Tims92 site, ‘Merthyr Tydfil – Penydarren Park‘. Aerial image from Bing.com/map/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Swansea City AFC/Liberty Stadium…Exterior photo of Liberty Stadium from 100 Football Grounds Club, http://100groundsclub.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-matchday-242-liberty-stadium.html. Tims92, ‘Swansea City – Liberty Stadium‘. InterestingPhoto.com. Close-up photo of stands from Fullflow.com, here. Aerial image of Liberty Stadium from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Newport County/Newport Stadium… Photo with running track in foreground from Photobucket.com [link was broken/I took a screenshot of the Google search page]. Photo taken during an Exiles match by Owain Vaughn at en.wikiedia.org, here. Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Cardiff City/Cardiff City Stadium…Interior photo with crowd by Phil Tucker at Flickr.com, Phil Tucker’s photostream @ flickr.com. Interior photo of empty stadium from Cardiff Blues.com, Cardiff Blues and Cardiff City FC sign stadium contract. Exterior photo from Cardiff City FC.co.uk, Cardiff City Stadium. Aerial photo from Colorcoat-online, Cardiff City Stadium, project summary/gallery.
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Photo credits on Welsh Premier League map page -
Aerial image of Bangor city’s Farrar Road ground from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Main Stand photo from WelshPremier.com site, ‘Farrar Road’s days are numbered‘ (12 May 2011). Rooftop photo of Farrar Road ground from TheOnlinemail.co.uk, here.

Thanks to Soccerway.com, for attendance figures (League and Conference clubs).
Thanks to King’s Lynn Town FC Supporters Trust site TheLinnets.co.uk, for Colwyn Bay attendance figure, ‘Average Attendance – Evo-Stick Premier Division‘.
Thanks to the Toolstation Western Football League site, for Merthyr Town attendance figure, ‘Toolstation Western Football League – First Division Attendance Statistics‘.
Thanks to the Zamaretto League [Southern Football League] site, for 2009-10 Merthyr Tydil attendance figure, ‘[Zamaretto League] Premier Division Attendances 2009-2010‘.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Football in Wales‘.
Thanks to unofficial Welsh premier League site, Welsh-Premier.com/League History.
Thanks to Demis.nl, for the base maps, Demis Web Map Server.

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