Discussion forum

Klaus, all,
are we doing any polls for 2018 expansions or are we done for the moment with the number of ftbll comps?

Not really many leagues left but potential candidates would include:

French Cup
Czech Rep.
South Korea
China
Greece
Romania
Sweden
Chile
Colombia?

Personally, I wouldn't really fancy increasing the number of leagues but some rotation system (least popular 1-2 leagues per season are out and enter the poll for the next year) could be nice and refreshing? Like we did with Greece.

Or an 'expulsion poll'? Least popular 4 domestic leagues and a set minimum of voters? One comp goes out. Popularity measured based on real players on the most recent gameweek and not players registered.

Currently it would be Japan (43), Mexico (48), Ukraine (52) and Brazil (53) and my clear negative character there, Japan. Feels more like a guessing game for me in its first season on here with a lot of unexpected away wins (35%).

And there are only three in the whole set that I wouldn't really miss, Japan, MLS and EFL League One. My replacements would be Czech Rep., Greece and S.Korea (which I would probably get fed up with later on same as with Japan :))

ok...meaningful silence...so I assume no need for a poll this year!

thx,
c.

What will happen, if we'll expand contests (Czech Rep., Korea, China, Sweden, ...) without any polls and expulsions?

30-50 participants, who want to play, is not bad. They are also people.

It's more exciting with polls and expulsions...

But what does it mean?
No polls and expulsions = no expansions?

Sergey,
I'm not in charge of expansions. I deal with polls and polls are about giving some extra twist and fun to otherwise bored people. :)

So no poll doesn't mean no expansions, this is basically Klaus' decision. No poll means no fun and I believe our various elimination polls in the past were quite well received by players on here.

I want to get rid of the 'Best of the Rest' prediction game (unless someone takes over). Too much work.

I think we should add two more football leagues (one European and one non-European). I don't care how the polls will look like. Maybe we should give Greece and Chile a 2nd try.

Ok, so polls are back in town!

Starting with one European berth (which is easier)...

I'd propose 7 best leagues still withouth coverage on here, based on ELO rating (6 best league teams score points) plus one outstanding Big-5 domestic cup (French Cup).

https://prediction-game.com/information.php?SM=RREF

Elimination Poll 1 (two go through to the Final):

French Cup -
Czech Rep. 16
Croatia 17
Norway 22

Elimination Poll 2 (two go through to the Final):

Greece 13
Romania 15
Sweden 19
Israel 20

If French Cup doesn't qualify as league we could go for 1 league plus French cup (if FC is the final poll's winner).

Any other suggestions?

For Non-European I'd go with two Elimination Polls:

(1) Asia and Africa (2 go through to Final)

United Arab Emirates
S.Korea
China
Saudi Arabia
Iran
Egypt
Tunisia
R.South Africa

(2) South America (2 go through to Final)

Bolivia,Colombia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay

Have I missed any notable league?

Maybe the Botola Moroccan League ? With the likes of Raja Casablanca and Wydad Casablanca (Playing in this year's CAF Champions League final).

I took 2-best from CAF 5yrs ranking plus added S.Africa (which I think was 4 or 5 but we've always had some RSA represnetation on here). Wydad are doing fine this year but I think Egypt and Tunisia are traditionally the best.

But what the hell do I know about African leagues? :)

For AFC, the leagues selected are top-4 (without Japan) plus Iran who I think are normally stronger than their current rank suggests.

On South America, some stats that can help you decide about your expansion picks:

Number of Copa Libertadores Final appearances by league:

1.Argentina 33
2.Brazil 32
3.URUGUAY 16 (Penarol 10, Nacional 6)
4.COLOMBIA 10 (Atl.Nacional 3, Once Caldas 1, America Cali 4, Deportivo Cali 2)
5.PARAGUAY 8 (Olimpia 7, Nacional 1)
6.CHILE 6 (Colo Colo 2, Cobreloa 2, U.Catolica 1, U.Espanola 1)
7.ECUADOR 4 (LDU Quito 1, Barcelona 2, Ind.del Valle 1)
8.PERU 2 (Universitario Lima 1, Sporting Cristal 1)
9.BOLIVIA 0
9.VENEZUELA 0

ASIA:

CL/Club Championship Final Appearances:

1.SOUTH KOREA 17 (8 different teams!)
2.SAUDI ARABIA 12
3.Japan 8
4.IRAN 7
5.CHINA 5
6.UAE 4

AFRICA

1.EGYPT 20
2.DR Congo 12
3.TUNISIA 11
4.Ghana 11
5.Morocco 7
6.Algeria 7...

South Africa 4

Interesting fact on Coupe de France...The competition is open to all clubs in French football, as well as clubs from the overseas departments and territories (Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, New Caledonia (winner of 2017 New Caledonia Cup), Tahiti (winner of 2017 Tahiti Cup), Réunion, and Saint Martin).

The Overseas teams are drawn against opponents from the French League structure who...have applied to potentially travel overseas. 11 overseas teams will play in R7 this November. 5 of them will host French teams and 6 will travel to France for their matches.

Ligue 1 teams join in Round of 64, a playoff round which is though still divided into 4 sub-groups to ensure primarily that each group has an even balance of teams from different levels, and secondarily to achieve optimum geographical proximity.

Two semi-final polls on the European leagues expansion are on! You have two votes in each poll. Top-2 choices will go through to the Final to compete for one expansion berth for Europe.

If the French Cup is the ultimate winner, it's going to be decided at a later stage if to add French Cup only or French Cup plus the best domestic league too.

The polls will be active until 18 October (Sat.) morning.

Voted the nordic leagues. We need SUMMER leagues. Czechs, Croatians, Greeks are good ones, but we have already over 20 autumn-spring comps. And only 4 or 5 summer comps. The french cup is interesting, but the first round will be a booky ones cause few of us know these little teams from 10th french division. Can you pronounce their names?

You mean RC Rannée-La Guerche-Drouges or Sud Nivernais Imphy Decize? Beautiful names in my opinion :)

Realistically, we would probably be talking of Round 8 to start with. Or even Best-64.

The issue with Nordic leagues is that they may be summer ones but they are not very good. Norway has Rosenborg only and Sweden has no decent team at the moment IMO (even though I love Sweden and I support many sport teams from there). When you look at Greece or Czech Rep. there are at least 3-4 teams that are usually in the mix in Europe. But maybe it's just my sentiment.

The existence of 3 or 4 good teams , who play regularly in Europe, doenst make one league interesting. It is the predictability. We have Scotland - not a strong league, but with 2 or 3 teams who regularly play in UEFA tournaments. But the league is so predictable. Every round we know the outcome of 4 out of 6 games. Two teams beat everything alive in the league.

I want Norway or Sweden cause there the teams are more equal. The outcome is not always clear as Scotland. A lot of surprise results. They dont have a UEFA tourn. teams? Yes, its true. But these UEFA teams will not make our coms more interesting. It is like predicting the result/outcome/ of Barcelona's game this round - 99 % of us will give a Barca win. But what will be predicting Odd Grenland - Valerenga? Malmo - Djurgarden?

Iliyan, it shows how peoples opinions on what is predictictable and what isn't differs. For example, year to year I find the Scottish Premier League much more difficult that say the German Bundisliga or the Primera Division. You'll probably find that difficult to believe especially as I'm Scottish and should have a better grasp of who should be beating who in my own country's league. :-) I would say Celtic are the only team who could be relied upon to win most weeks of every season. Rangers used to be up there too and probably will be again but that might take another five years. The others come and go year to year.

6 more days to vote in the poll...

So the Final 4 for Europe is:

Norway, French Cup, Sweden and Romania.

Greece is really unpopular around here!

Pls make your choice. 2 weeks to vote.

Interesting...Norway beat French cup in the previous poll but now it's getting 'zip' votes while the French cup is convincingly in the driving seat at 65% after total 23 votes.

Norwegian league's fans all went offline?

We had two votes in that poll, so it would appear that Norway was literally everyone's 'second choice' pick, but nobody's actual favorite.

Thanks Deeko on behalf of the proud people of Norway. Your vote will not be forgotten. :))

Final few days of voting. The poll closes Saturday morning.

It looks pretty much settled for the moment.

Assuming French Cup will win, there will be a decision to take (by Klaus :)) if we add just this one Euro comp which is not a 'domestic league' per se, or we add the Cup and best domestic league in the poll (currently Sweden) as well.

On Sunday, we are going to start Non-European league expansion elimination polls.

(1) Asia and Africa (2 go through to Final)

United Arab Emirates
S.Korea
China
Saudi Arabia
Iran
Egypt
Tunisia
R.South Africa
Morocco

(2) South America (2 go through to Final)

Bolivia,Colombia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay and Copa Sudamericana

..And exactly the same decision to take. If Copa Sudamericana wins, do we take CS only or CS plus best domestic league in the final poll?

WINNER:
Coupe de France

OPTIONAL (as Best domestic league):
Allsvenskan_Sweden

Tomorrow starts the World expansion poll.

Perhaps you can start a poll on whether we should have a poll?

But first a poll on whether to have a poll on whether we should have a poll, to be completelely sure we need both polls, i.e. a poll and a poll on whether to have a poll.

It's really funny. Maybe, you really think that there are so many experts in Swiss, Austrian, Turkish, Danish, Bulgarian, Polish league? Even Russian league isn't so famous for others. And you want to add in this list Czech Republic, Croatia, Norway, Greece, Romania, Sweden, Israel. In best case some people know about 2-3 teams from every country, maybe 4. It's all - the prediction based only on coefficient from some sites without real understanding of force of teams. Idiotic predictions with absolutely random result.

Alexey, It depends largely on you what you are going to take away from a given game. Some people just follow odds without giving much thought but others (like me for instance but I want to believe there's more players) take this chance to learn something about the comp, looking into the history, past stats, H2H, season and matchweeks previews etc. And after a few seasons you can develop a sense of a given league even though you don't have much chance to watch the matches. A perfect example is me predicting the BUL league.

I do a lot of this pre-reading stuff for rugby comps and AFL and suddenly they became my favourite comps to predict. I don't deny I have my own pool of 'mechanical prediction' leagues but luckily it's just a few comps as I don't find it fun at all just to play for the sake of playing.