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The debate over which country currently has the strongest league is widely disputed amongst football fans. So which is the best league? Many critics believe it is the Premier League in England. Catalonians will point out to the fact that Barcelona are the current European champions and Spain is the number one ranked country in the world. iSporter Karan Mundul evaluates the best football leagues in the world.

The Germans will claim they have the highest spectator attendance. Taking all factors into consideration, I believe the following 3 tables will help evaluate the strength of each of the top leagues. The tables compares the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga,  Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1. These leagues are widely regarded as the top 5 in the world.

1. Competitiveness

The first method of evaluation is to compare the competitiveness of each league. The table below shows the number of different champions in each league in the last decade. In addition it shows the number of teams who finished within 5 points and within a 10 point margin of the eventual champions. This gives us a rough understanding as to how closely the league has been contested in the past decade.

From the table above it's clear that the Bundesliga has been the most competitive league both in terms of number of eventual champions and in terms of competition. The competition has intensified further as seen by the numbers in the last 5 seasons. The competitiveness in the French league has also gone up since Lyon's dominance over the league has ended.

2. Player Ability

The next table to look at is the player rankings. The Castrol ratings is a pretty accurate measure of player performance. The table below shows the break-up of the highest ranked 300 players from the top 5 leagues.

As seen above the English Premier League dominates this table. Spanish clubs Barcelona & Real Madrid have the best players in the world but the other clubs in La Liga are unable to attract top quality players resulting in lack of overall quality in the league. Having a fantastic group of home-grown players is not sufficient as shown by the low number of ranked players in the German Bundesliga. On the other hand the French leagues inability to hold onto their best local players is the reason why they have a low number of ranked players.

3. Performance

The last table to look at is the performance of the top clubs on the European stage over the last decade. This will allow us to gauge the approximate strength of the top teams in each league.

UCL: UEFA Champions League: Data for last 8 seasons     UEL: UEFA Europa League: Data for last 7 seasons

The Europa league is a competition that many clubs don't take very seriously and therefore the results in this competition may not be a true reflection of the strength of a club. The above table clearly shows us that the English clubs have dominated in the Champions league. They haven't won the tournament as often as they would have liked but English teams have reached the quarter final stage with regularity. Based on these results it seems likely that clubs like Arsenal and Liverpool would win titles if they played in Italy, Germany or France.

It seems England should be the top league because they have at least 4 teams that are in the top 8 in the world. They also have the highest number of ranked players playing in the league proving there is depth in Premiership football. They only fall short in the competitiveness department. With Manchester City progressing rapidly and clubs like Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool improving there is a strong possibility that the Premier League will no longer be a 2 horse race.

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