Just to recap what we learned yesterday: Manchester United’s eleven Premier League titles under Sir Alex Ferguson is a monumentally difficult thing to accomplish in a league as competitive as the Premier League; the fact that they’ve also had considerable European and domestic cup success is icing on their dominance cake. That being said, a few teams (Dinamo Zagreb, Sparta Prague, Dinamo Tbilisi, Bayern Munich, and Olympiakos) have either met or exceeded Manchester United’s domestic title win tally in the last 22 years. In most cases, that’s due to a weak league; Sparta Prague, for example, won the Czech league sixteen times, which would hint towards the Czech league not being particularly good more than anything else.
We’ll finish off the alphabet today (because I know you’ve always wanted to see a sentence like “Rosenborg is the Manchester United of the Tippeligaen” on the blog somewhere). Read on after the jump.
- Kazakhstan Premier League: This is another new league; as such, there really isn’t any dominant force that’s come out and established themselves as the heavyweights. However, FC Irtysh Pavlodar has won this four times since the league’s inception in 1992; that’s more than three other teams by one win, but it’s enough for them to get listed here.
- Latvian Higher League: Unlike their neighbors Kazakhstan, the fact that this league’s only been around since 1992 doesn’t prevent them from getting someone onto the domination list. Skonto FC, in fact, did something that’d be a lot harder if there were more than eight teams in the league: they won it for fourteen straight seasons, starting in 1991.
- Liechtenstein: Fun fact of the day: Liechtenstein is the only UEFA member without a national team. In fact, they’ve only got one professional team: FC Vaduz, who play in the Swiss league. Liechtenstein does have a cup tournament, though, which Vaduz has won 37 times. Interestingly, the cup competition’s been played 63 times…which means that the only professional team in Liechtenstein has failed to win their domestic cup 41% of the time.
- Lithuania’s A Lyga: FBK Kaunas won this league eight times since Fergie’s started out at United. Not even close to good enough, guys.
- Luxembourg National Division: Similarly, F91 Dudelange is a cool name, but their eight wins in 22 years pales in comparison to Sir Alex’s record.
- Maltese Premier League: This league’s not over for the season, but one more win won’t push Valetta F.C.’s total to eleven. They’ve won this seven times since the 1986-87 season.
- Moldovan National Division: This league formed in 1992. Since then, there have been three winners: FC Tiraspol (who won it once), FC Zimbru Chişinău (who won it eight times), and FC Sheriff Tiraspol, who’ve won it every year since 2001…giving them nine wins. This is actually a twelve-team league, too; usually someone can sneak in and break up a streak like that, but that’s apparently not how they roll in Moldova.
- Montenegrin First League: This league formed when Montenegro broke from Serbia in 2006. So far two teams have won it (FK Zeta and FK Budućnost), with a third (FK Mogren) poised to take the championship later this season. So, um, no, nobody qualifies from this league.
- The Netherlands’ Eredivisie: When most people think of Dutch soccer, they think of Ajax, Johan Cruyff, and Total Football. Unfortunately for Ajax fans, PSV has dominated this league since 86-87 in true Manchester United fashion; they’ve actually won it 13 times since then, which is more than enough to add them to the “Dominant Clubs in Europe” list.
- Northern Ireland’s IFA Premiership: Ah, lovely Northern Ireland. The IFA Premiership has been around in one form or another since 1891, making it one of the longest running leagues in Europe (if you’re allowing for reorganization). And since ’87, nobody’s won this more than Linfield FC, who’ve won six Gibson Cups over that time frame.
- Norway’s Tippeligaen: Up until this point, Sparta Prague was the most dominant club in Europe in the Sir Alex Era in terms of their league wins. And while Norway won’t produce a team to surpass Sparta Prague’s dominance, Rosenborg BK and their 16 league wins do well enough to equal it. In fact, Rosenborg has something that few other teams on these lists also have: Champions League success. Rosenborg actually made it to the group stage in the Champions League from the second qualifying round eight straight years, which was a record not beaten until (who else?) Manchester United’s participation in 2004.
- Poland’s Ekstraklasa: A huge corruption scandal hit the Polish top flight just this year, and three teams were relegated because of their involvement. One team that wasn’t caught up in the scandal: Wisła Kraków, the current holders. They’re also likely to win their seventh title in 22 years this season, making them Poland’s top winner in the Ferguson era. On top of that, they’re not dirty cheaters like the 200 people arrested for match fixing. Fun fact: Poland and the Ukraine just so happen to be co-hosting Euro 2012, in spite of the fact that Poland’s totally corrupt and the Ukraine only has one stadium approved for use.
- Portugal’s Liga Sagres: FC Porto, with a staggering 14 wins over 22 years, aren’t the best performing club thus far; that title is still held by Rosenborg BK and Sparta Prague. That being said, FC Porto have Champions League success (it wasn’t that long ago that they won it, and earlier this season they gave Manchester United a run for their money at Old Trafford before capitulating at the Estádio do Dragão). However, they’ve also had matchfixing charges brought against them by UEFA, and were temporarily kicked out of the Champions League because of it. So it may be fair to say that their 14 titles have a little bit of an asterisk associated with them.
- FAI League of Ireland: As you all noticed yesterday, the country we call “Ireland” is actually called the “Republic of Ireland” by UEFA; that’s why it’s way out of order. And, as loyal reader White Speed Receiver already told you, Shelbourne’s been the “dominant” force over the last 22 years with six title wins. One of those title wins (2001-02) was because St. Patrick’s Athletic fielded Charles Livingstone Mbabazi, who played for the club from 1999-2003, for five games without properly registering him. St. Patrick’s contended that it was clearly a clerical mistake (since the player had been with them since for two seasons already), but the Irish FA was having none of that and deducted a whopping fifteen points. If St. Patrick’s Athletic had managed to get their paperwork in on time, they’d be tied with Shelbourne in the Ferguson Era with five titles apiece.
- Romania’s Liga I: I went to high school with two Romanian girls. One was the daughter of immigrants, the other was a foreign exchange student, and both left me with an insanely favorable opinion of Romania. I’d imagine, then, that teams not named Steaua Bucureşti in Liga I have been so distracted by the quality of the women that they couldn’t be bothered to compete against the juggernauts for twelve out of the twenty two years we’re looking at. And, yes, that’s one more win than Manchester United; Steaua don’t have the Champions League pedigree of their Mancunian counterparts, though, having never gotten past the group stage. That said, they’re the only Romanian team to even get that far.
- Russian Premier League: If you count the old Soviet Top League, FC Spartak Moscow (or, if you prefer, Футбольный клуб Москва) won eleven titles in our time frame. That puts them squarely into Manchester United territory, but they’ve been a club on the decline ever since their last win in 2001, and they haven’t been to the Champions League group stage in over 12 years.
- San Marino’s Campionato Sammarinese di Calcio: This league is strictly an amateur affair; after all, there’re only about 30,000 people living in San Marino (although the 23.5 square miles of the country are divided into 43 different provinces, which seems a little excessive). However, S.P. Tre Fiori, with four wins (none of them in the last fourteen years), are this league’s Manchester United.
- Scottish Premier League: As someone who doesn’t follow Scottish soccer as closely as I could, I’d always thought that Celtic was the dominant force in the league with Rangers picking up the scraps behind them. I was surprised to find that I was completely wrong; Rangers have definitely been the Manchested United of the SPL, so to speak, winning a whopping fifteen of the twenty two titles since Fergie left Aberdeen.
- Serbian Superliga: While this is a new league, the instability in the region has actually seen three different leagues for teams to compete in during our observation window. Accounting for all of those leagues, FK Partizan has actually won eleven titles, putting them at United’s level of domestic dominance…except that, since it’s over three leagues, they aren’t really dominating the same people anymore.
- Slovakia’s Corgoň Liga: If this were being done last year, there would’ve been a three-way tie with several teams winning four titles since the league’s 1994 inception. Thankfully, ŠK Slovan Bratislava won this year, giving them five titles.
- Slovenian PrvaLiga: In the interest of full disclosure, I’m beginning to not care about the backwoods leagues in Slovakia and Slovenia, and I’d abandon the project if the next six countries weren’t cooler. No offense to Slovenia or anything, I just get it confused with Slovakia whenever I think about it. Which, quite truthfully, isn’t that often. However, I did care long enough to find out that NK Maribor won this league eight times since it’s inception in 1991. NK Maribor is also one of the first teams to play in purple that I’ve seen so far.
- Spain’s La Liga: This one’s neck and neck between two huge European powerhouses; of the 22 seasons we’re looking at, Real Madrid and Barcelona have won 18 of them. It’s Real Madrid, with 10 of those wins, that’s been the dominant club, but this league has offered something up that Manchester United doesn’t have: legitimately consistent competition. See, while Manchester United won 11 titles in 22 years, the closest team close to them is Arsenal with five wins. In England, when Manchester United falters there’s a scramble for the title; in Spain, there’s always a rival to pick up the slack and punish you when you stumble. Of course, Real Madrid doesn’t have the other things that make Manchester United’s domestic dominance so impressive (mainly, European success and sustained success under one manager); they are, though, one of the closest things to Manchester United in Europe.
- Sweden’s Allvenskan: IFK Göteborg, with seven wins, is the most dominant team of the last 22 years. That said, six of those wins happened before 1996, so their recent domination isn’t quite as spectacular. Still, I’d love for any team I’ve supported ever in anything to have been dominant thirteen years ago, so I’m not going to knock their credentials.
- Swiss Super League: Wait! A team I support DID win something in the last 22 years! As you may have gathered if you read this blog regularly, I loosely follow Grasshopper-Club Zürich out of Switzerland. So it gives me great pleasure to report that, in the Ferguson era, GCZ is the Manchester United of Switzerland. Suck on THAT, Roger Federer. You frontrunning FC Basel fans are so smug, with your new money, your recent titles, and your Champions League group stages. Don’t forget the Grasshopper, Federer. Don’t forget.
- Turkey’s Süper Lig: I have no idea why there need to be umlauts over the “u” there, incidentally; it seems like they’re superfluous. Either way, this league has found us another club that can legitimately say they’re the Manchester United of their league: Galatasaray, with eleven wins. I actually thought this league would be closer, to be honest; Fenerbahçe have only won six titles over the last 22 years, making this league a little more open than I’d realized.
- Ukrainian Premier League: Dynamo Kyiv impressively won 14 titles in our time frame, 13 in the Ukrainian Premier League and one in the Soviet Top League. Less impressive is when they were kicked out of the Champions League for two years after they tried to bribe a linesman with fur coats and jewelry in 1995. Still, since the UPL’s inception in 1991, they’ve either won it or been the runner’s up; that’s the kind of dominance Manchester United likes to see.
- Welsh Premier League: In order to prevent FIFA from disbanding the Welsh national team, Wales formed a league back in 1992. Since then, Barry Town FC (home of the sweetest football crest ever) has won the league seven times.
So, streching back to yesterday, here are the teams that have been as or more dominant domestically than Manchester United in the Sir Alex Ferguson era:
- Sparta Prague (CZE), Rosenborg BK (NOR) – 16 wins
- Rangers FC (SCT) – 15 wins
- Skonto FC (LVA), FC Porto (PRT), Dynamo Kyiv (UKR) – 14 wins
- Olympiakos (GRE), PSV (NLD) – 13 wins
- Bayern Munich (DEU), Steaua Bucureşti (ROM) – 12 wins
- Dinamo Zagreb (HRV), Dinamo Tbilisi (GEO), Manchester United (GBR), FC Spartak Moscow (RUS), FK Partizan (SRB), Galatasaray (TUR) – 11 wins
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To continue what I started yesterday: Marley dies, it’s Tessio, Rose pushes Jack off the desk to drown/freeze, Jake and Elwood pay the fee to the Office of the Assessor of Cook County then go to jail, Michael Jordan stretches out like a toon to beat the Monstars, and The Walrus is Paul.
Great feature. It’s interesting to see what happens in the less-publicized leagues.
I thought Paul was dead.
I like how Wales was consigned to forming a league so their national team maintain FIFA recognition. “Ach, Davies, we need to start a league!”
But how many titles did GCZ have?
I left that out, didn’t I? Seven. On the domination scale, they’re somewhere around fuzzy handcuffs that don’t lock.
Well, Porto´s dominance is fallacious. Sir Alex Ferguson once famously said that, “Porto buys its titles in the supermarket”. And he was correct.
More than half of the titles should not occurred had not been for the “system” implanted in Portugal by Porto´s president and his “entourage” since the beginning of the eighties, among the referees and other actors of the beautiful game. This is well known in Portugal and specially in the city of Porto.
One of the administrators of Porto is the owner of 3 or 4 nightclubs since 30 years, of so called “alterne clubs”, with prostitutes and other similar figures, in the town of Porto. Those night-clubs have been one the main reasons why the referees, presidents of clubs, judges, members of the Portuguese League and Federation, etc., have been corrupted. But don´t thing that those clubs were frequented only by portuguese. Foreign referees and others were also attracted and invited to those clubs.
There are in the YouTube phone interceptions made by the portuguese Police with many of the involved in which you could hear with which impunity these people acted. And, in fact, in court everybody was acquitted with the justification that the interceptions made by the police were illegal and did not constitute prove in court. Actually, according to the Portuguese Law, the interceptions are legal. But the judges are also corrupt. Actually, in one of the interceptions you could hear the actual President of the SUpreme PorTuguese Court, fanatic of FCPorto asking for 2 tickets for him and son for a european match, as a means of compensation for a “favour” made to the president of the club.
Well, making a long story short, the only thing I can say is that if all this had happened in ANY other european country, Porto and 2 or 3 other clubs of Porto would have been disqualified to inferior divisions and all its directors gone to prison as well as banned from football for their entire life.