The Ropey League

The first qualifying round of the Europa League was played today... Yes, that's right. I do realise that it's early July but the Europa League has indeed started already.


Without doubt, this competition has got to be one of the most ludicrous, bloated, long-winded tournaments in history. Starting in July, there are three qualifying rounds, a play-off round, a group stage and five knockout rounds, before two teams finally drag their weary arses to the final in May, some ten months later. The competition is now so elongated that it's made a mockery of itself, and it's no wonder top teams are reluctant to be in it.

This wasn’t too bad a tournament back in the days when it was called the EUFA Cup, but it’s now so large and unwieldy that even my local pub, The Kings Arms, are in the opening qualifying rounds. 


If a team manages to battle it's way through the qualifying rounds (two matches in each round), they then face the group stage, which is 12 groups of four teams. That's right, forty-fucking-eight teams fighting to get through to the knockout phase of the tournament.


The Group stages finally finish in December, but even then, if a team makes it through, they haven’t managed to whittle their opposition down to 23 other teams. No, because a huge bunch of Champions League losers are parachuted in, bulking the numbers back up to 32 teams again. To win the competition from the group stages, a team has to get through 15 matches in addition to their other league and cup commitments. What a slog!


The Europa League really should be looked at afresh, as it’s been horribly devalued by too much meddling. Now it's almost comical. Of course, as a trader of football, the Europa League is actually quite good for me. If there are additional matches on the goggle-box for me to trade, that’s all well and good.

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Received this comment today:

Anonymous8 July 2012 22:23
Hi, I'm really interested in football trading, but I'm afraid to start with real money. Is there a way to "practice" just like play money in online poker?

There are some clever bits of software out there that do allow you to run in practice mode, but they tend to cost money and so you may as well start-off actually using some money. You can however, practice with £2.00 stakes and, if trading, then you'll probably only be risking a fraction of that £2.00 on each trade, therefore the risk and your exposure are very small indeed. 


It's also been said before and I think it's true, that trading with real money is different to trading with fake money. You will react differently if it's real money, and that's valuable learning indeed; and if you trade large sums, the money you put into the market will go on to affect the actual behaviour of that market. Fake money can never do this.

So start small and start slowly. Don't be too eager to find an opportunity, but rather let an opportunity present itself to you. That way you'll do fine.

Oh and my last piece of advice is don't listen to people who plop blogs out onto the internet and waffle on about trading as if they actually know what the hell they're talking about. I hate those kind of people, don't you?