Bottom feeders in English soccer are in a frenzy
It’s a relegation week in England, and it’s worthy of envy.
By tonight’s closure of a 38-game season, three of the 20 English Premier League soccer clubs will be demoted into the second tier, or “Championship” group, for 2007-08, concluding just about the craziest annual fuss you ever saw.
Where American eyeballs seldom drift to the bottom of the standings late in seasons, English eyeballs monitor the great chase for 17th place because the 18th-, 19th- and 20th-place teams will plummet into soccer’s second division.
Where struggling American sports teams sink from view like sediment or an old tire, causing sparse crowds, civic ennui and allegations of tanking to land better draft picks, struggling soccer teams in England and other countries engage in a consuming yearlong psychodrama.
It’s relegation, it’s traditional, and it’s much more intense than you might think. It’s an entire, extra spectacle, handy as a dramatic device especially when the race at the top dies of clinching, as it did last Sunday to the sound of popping corks at Manchester United.
Viewed from afar, relegation can seem like some trivial gadget for demoting debris. Viewed from up close, relegation wreaks fear, envy, shame, insecurity, desperation, humiliation and class resentment -- in other words, just about everything that’s marvelous about sports.
“Relegation is a devastating thing,” Birmingham City Chairman David Gold told the Guardian, and he knows because he suffered it last spring, before his club earned promotion back to the Premiership this spring alongside two other second-division clubs.
Relegation is also costly. Given the gargantuan global TV contract for the Premiership, estimates place the cost of relegation at up to $60 million per team, not to mention how it repels prospective players.
“My life is almost taken over by thoughts of what’s going to happen [today] and how I will deal with that on Monday when I go to work,” said Mark Steele, the secretary of one of West Ham’s supporters clubs, and he knows because the club he’s supported for four decades has starred in this year’s scrap for “survival.”
His Monday forecast calls for “either a fantastic uplifting start to the week” or “a cloud over the summer months.”
Through winter and early spring, West Ham of London’s East End seemed destined for the drop, quite the melodrama given its top-tier habits, its vociferous following and its ranking as the 19th-most valuable club on Earth. After a 1-0 home loss to fellow wallower Watford on Feb. 10, Steele said, he heard fans begin to gird themselves for relegation, “for we’d seen nothing to give us heart.”
After a 4-0 road loss to fellow wallower Charlton on Feb. 24, the nation seemed to agree. Yet as the bottom of the standings jangled with the usual emotional malevolence, Charlton wound up joining Watford in sure relegation with a loss on Monday night, while the Hammers have crawled out of the crypt, spending the last three Saturdays beating Everton, Wigan and Bolton to access the treasured 17th place.
They’re among three clubs on the tightrope above the dreaded 18th place: Sheffield United, sitting 16th with 38 points and a goal difference of minus-22, West Ham, 17th with 38 points and a goal difference of minus-25, and Wigan Athletic, 18th with 35 points and a goal difference of minus-23.
One of the three will drop with Watford and Charlton into the second division, with three clubs dropping from the second division to the third, four dropping from the third to the fourth, two from the fourth to the hinterlands, and like numbers of clubs rising through each increment based on success this season.
On Sunday, Wigan will play at Sheffield United, West Ham will play at champion Manchester United, and fans of three of them will strain for normal respiration. Steele’s fan club plans a gathering, but some members have balked, preferring to absorb the fate in the privacy of home.
For an added dash of spleen, the other clubs near the drop zone may plan gatherings -- of lawyers.
That’s because the Premier League deemed West Ham guilty of illegal contracts with two Argentine players and fined the club $11 million, but did not dock any standings points for the infraction.
That stoked complaints from Wigan Chairman Dave Whelan, who told reporters, “We have some excellent and reputable lawyers who have been looking into this matter for us for a week.”
When you’ve got excellent and reputable lawyers, you have the capacity for fine spectacle. Throw in that one of the Argentine players has starred in recent West Ham matches, and you have a festival of first-rate resentment.
How does relegation actually look, then? By Charlton’s example last Monday night in East London, it looks like defiance.
As the minutes waned in a 2-0 loss to fellow London club Tottenham, supporters sang with relish the Charlton song, “Valley, Floyd Road,” mixing in renditions of “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbing Along,” and, most notably, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
Just as the players would begin a final lap to cheering, the stadium speakers played the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” On the street leaving the stadium, a boy of about 10 crooned, “Always look on the bright side of your life.”
On the two train platforms, London-bound and outbound, fans began a song to the tune of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” rewritten as, “We’ll be back, we’ll be back, we’ll be back.... “ Then an outbound train came, and one platform emptied and rode off to the second division, hoping the ticket included a return.
*
Begin text of infobox
Ups and downs
What if “relegation” existed in the NBA?
In England the worst three soccer teams in the Premier League are punished each year by being dropped into a lower-quality league and are replaced by the best three teams from the league immediately below.
If this system existed in the NBA, things might look like this:
The top 20 NBA teams would play in a Premier League, meanwhile a second group of 10 lesser teams would compete in a separate lower division.
Then each year the 16 best teams from the Premier League’s Western and Eastern Conferences would qualify for the NBA playoffs, but the four teams who miss the playoffs would be dropped into the lower division and be replaced by the best four teams from the lower division.
If “relegation” happened after the 2006-07 NBA season, these teams would be changing places.
*--*
WESTERN CONFERENCE
*--*
*--* W L PCT 1. Dallas 67 15 817 2. Phoenix 61 21 744 3. San Antonio 58 24 707 4. Utah 51 31 622 5. Houston 52 30 634 6. Denver 45 37 549 7. Golden State 42 40 512 8. LAKERS 42 40 512
*--*
*--*
9. CLIPPERS 40 42 488 10. New Orleans 39 43 476
*--*
*--* 11. Sacramento 12. Minnesota
*--*
LOWER DIVISION TEAMS:
* Portland, Seattle and Memphis
*--*
EASTERN CONFERENCE
*--*
*--* W L PCT 1. Detroit 53 29 646 2. Cleveland 50 32 610 3. Toronto 47 35 573 4. Miami 44 38 537 5. Chicago 49 33 598 6. Washington 41 41 500 7. New Jersey 41 41 500 8. Orlando 40 42 488
*--*
*--*
9. Philadelphia 35 47 427 10. Indiana 35 47 427
*--*
*--* 11. New York 12. Charlotte
*--*
LOWER DIVISION TEAMS:
* Atlanta, Milwaukee and Boston
*
Los Angeles Times
