Discussion forum

Pls vote!

The Final Poll playoff chart will look as follows:

Europe's 1st : World's 3rd
Europe's 4th : Europe's 5th

Europe's 2nd : World's 2nd
Europe's 3rd : World's 1st

Michal do you guarantee that if I take the trouble to vote the winner will actually win ? :))
Klaus- hope your back gets better soon, have suffered from lower back trouble myself so I can feel your pain.

It takes just a second to vote. No trouble really. :) But seriously. ... depends on who's going to win 8)

Just wanted to check if there has been a surge in Uruguayan sign ups recently ;-)

The poll will be open until the end of August.

Strange...Uruguay and Mexico both in the top-3 with 25 and 17 votes respectively while Paraguay and Columbia still with ZERO votes?

hi michal I can only think that people that might/would vote for Columbia and/or Paraguay checked the poll result before they voted and saw that these teams were on zero and therefore had no chance of winning the vote and therefore voted for two teams that they would hot have voted for in the first place far be it for me to say but perhaps the poll result should only be viewable after someone has voted thus you might get a fairer and more true reflection of peoples intentions

hi michal I can only think that people that might/would vote for Columbia and/or Paraguay checked the poll result before they voted and saw that these teams were on zero and therefore had no chance of winning the vote and therefore voted for two teams that they would hot have voted for in the first place far be it for me to say but perhaps the poll result should only be viewable after someone has voted thus you might get a fairer and more true reflection of peoples intentions

oops sorry for duplicate reply

Ideally, there should be some way of making people voting for a league to actually participate in that league afterwards :))

4 days left to vote and change the fortune...

Uruguay seems to be well in control. The Best of the Rest (World) lost momentum and fell to no.4 (non-qualifier) at the expense of Mexico and CONCACAF Champions League. Japan doomed to 5th place with really no progress in the past weeks.

Still... you can re-allocate your votes and contribute to some last-minute surprises...

Early next week the Pre-selection poll (Europe) will be launched.

Still 12 days to vote.

Uruguay well in the driving seat but there's a tight competition for the remaining two qualifying places between CONCACAF Champions League, Best of the Rest (World) and Mexico. Perhaps Japan have some slight chances of making it to top-3 but they need a few more votes from the fans.

Pls note that with some of the comps clearly out of contention there will now be of course a possibility to redirect your original choices anytime before 31 Aug to some of the top-5 contenders if you wish. I will definitely do so with my S.Korean pick...

The Final Poll playoff chart (after pre-selection world):

Europe's 1st : CONCACAF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Europe's 3rd : Europe's 5th

Europe's 2nd : MEXICO
Europe's 4th : URUGUAY

Coming up after the break... :)

Czech Rep,
Romania,
Croatia,
Cyprus,
Israel,
Denmark,
Belarus,
Sweden,
Spain (II),
Italy (II),
France (II),
England (III),
Italy (Cup),
France (Cup).

The poll will be open until 30 Sep.

How about a surprising poll final URUGUAY vs. ENGLAND (III)? :))

Actually, I really had doubts whether or not to put Football League One as an option as I could expect that it would have a high chance of winning thanks to big British representation on here. Still, it is only a third-tier league (Probably, following the same route, Polish second-tier could get to top-5 on Polish votes but no one reasonable would even propose to include it in our expansion list).

Anyway, a decision is a decision and England (III) is now doing very well in our poll.

Another observation, Greece was just lucky to sneak through in the poll at the expense of Denmark last season. Denmark is struggling this time and may not even make it to top-5 although of course there's still the whole month of voting ahead of us.

Can't understand why anybody would vote for England (111} or Spain (11) ( which is full of reserve teams ) ahead of Sweden or even Romania...would rather to do Faroes or Andorra than either of them

I've just re-checked and realised I'm actually one of those who voted for Spain II (I already forgot about it :))

I think it used to be the case with B teams playing in Segunda but now it's more like B teams playing in third tier (only Bilbao B are in Segunda). It doesn't mean of course that more B teams may not play in Segunda again some time soon...

Currently, however, there's a big representation of teams with decent Primera (and even European) record like: Numancia, Alaves, Osasuna, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Almeria, Cordoba, Elche, Mallorca, Oviedo, Albacete, Gimnastic and Tenerife. Last season it looked even better (add: Betis, Gijon, Las Palmas and Racing Santander). So for the time being at least it looks, let's be fair, a bit more attractive than Faroe Islands and Andorra ;) By the way, I think Andorra teams play within...Spanish league system, FC Andorra for instance is somewhere around 5th tier Spain.

FC Andorra is the only team playing in Spain, Michal.
The other ones (like Santa Coloma, who we regularly see in the first round of the CL qualifiers) play in the Andorran league.
If they were all playing in Spain, they wouldn't have a Champions League spot in the qualifiers :)
It's the case with the clubs from Liechtenstein. They all play in Switzerland.

Right, I picked a wrong sample for my analysis :)

Interesting fact, apart from FC Andorra there is another team called Andorra CF that also plays in Spain. But this time it is perfectly ok though as it comes from the city of Andorra located in the Aragon province of Teruel :)

49 players from Lithuania for EuroBasket...would they participate in a Lithuania football prediction league ?

Let's be honest, the only 2nd tier leagues which deserve to have a prediction game are Championship and 2.Bundesliga. In my opinion these are the only 2 leagues where is played a good football. Ok, maybe Ligue 2 also deserves a place, but is a big difference from them to the leagues above.

Do we need to expand it ? Are we adding comps just for the sake of adding them ? Quality over quantity etc. From my own point of view the only expansion I would join in the football comps would be if a world cup qualifying one for Asia/Australasia etc

Although I have just looked at the poll and I see many have voted so I am in the minority perhaps.

It's marketing. You need to add something new each season. Otherwise people will get bored with what they already have. I'm not a big fan of further expansions myself but when you look at what comps we start to cover in other sports, I say football deserves new comps too.

But an idea could be, if we get to a dead end with expansions, to close the list of permanent comps for good and leave just one extra slot which would be filled with a new league every season on a rotation basis. E.g. one season it would be Sweden, the next one no Sweden but Uruguay in its place etc.

Would agree with leaving 1 or even 2 spots open each season, to be filled on a rotational basis. Even for marketing purposes, u dont want to just add leagues.

Some competitions get cetain people. For example look how many Lithuanians signed up for Eurobasket, they are players who won't play any other game. I think it's a chance for everybody to have some preffered games. As an example, for me, even if it is a big competition in the world, I'm not a fan of NHL, while I like very much the handball competitions, which doesn't attract many people at all here. It's also the way I've found this site almost 3 years ago, I was looking for a handball prediction game for the World Champs, and from that time, I've played games for almost every sport. So I don't think it's such a bad idea to bring new games.

Do we know though that the Lithuanians that signed up for EuroBasket would not compete in a Lithuania football game.? There are quite a few South Africans but no football prediction league for them. We are big family on here and should be looking to provide what each member likes. For instance I don't know the first thing about handball but don't have a problem with it being included...and I play the prediction game...badly :)). Loop wants a Romanian football prediction game...so why don't we have one ?. There are something like 26 different nationalities playing the Ukrainian game...that is brilliant if you ask me. We can't just be going down the route of having 3 English football prediction leagues because there are so many English members that the games get adopted easily on any poll.

There is no problem adding a League One prediction game to the list. I'm sure it will have more than 100 players participating.
A lot of the admins are British and they are doing most the work (checking and entering the kick-off times). Especially Leslie.

To my knowledge, and i know a few Lithuanians myself, local ftbll league isn't too popular. They are all crazy about basketball. A good test could be to watch if our new LT friends register for comps like Champions League or Premier League. If not, chances that they would enroll for LT league would be really slim.

Fair enough folks , don't have a problem with whatever game is chosen , will no doubt participate anyway. My point is though that there is no point in putting any English division into the poll as the sheer volume of British members will see it selected ahead of others.

A single remark Deeko: I didn't say I want a Romanian football league:))

Yes you did, you spoke when you voted for one :)

I actually remember a discussion where it was me convincing Andrew that the Romanian league would be nice to have on here.

My enthusiasm for the RO league has cooled down since then, following the UEFA licensing problems for numerous teams (making no. 8 in the table qualifying for Europe) so this time I passed my vote to Czech Rep. However, if the Ro had any chance to make it to top-5 in our poll (which doesn't look likely), I would gladly support it with my vote:)

Two more days to vote.

Now it's England III, Sweden, Spain II and two domestic cups (ITA and FRA) going through to Quarter Finals.

Denmark and Czech Rep. need your votes.

I feel like I owe something to Denmark so I will support them with one of my votes right now...

On a side note, there are 28 votes for leagues which are effectively out of contention so if these were re-allocated last minute that could change the whole picture :)

Poll result is predicable and boring....where do we stop in England... National League south ? Essex Sunday league ? :)))
Being a socialist, I accept the outcome but how tedious.

We are talking about the good old 'demand-supply' principle. If there are enough people willing to play a game then why not create it? C'm on, we have US college basketball and curling here...

BTW, I think Uruguay seems like a strong contender, too.

Yip demand/supply ...how many non Brits voted for England(3) ?
Only having a bit of a wind up here, a wee debate but really amazes me why we have 2nd divisions or in this case perhaps a 3rd division when there are decent enough leagues like Denmark, South Africa,Sweden, Ireland , Hungary , Czech Rep, Uruguay...a few played March/October which would give us more all year round football predictions.
Never mind will just have to do some research on the form of Port Vale and Fleetwood...might come in handy :)))

Four. One is my close family :) I havent voted for England 3 myself but since I was raised on Match and Shoot! magazines which I would ocassionally get from my dad's friend in London, to me even England 4 means more than...Denmark (Denmark had a pretty poor league when I was a kid ) :)

I am surprised that the Capital Cup ( League Cup ) and/or the Scottish FA Cup weren't in the poll

Hi Darren, I think I had published the proposed list well before the poll was actually launched and heard no objections. I'll put these two on my list for next season.

A lot of leagues Scotland , Ukraine, Switzerland...erm ..Poland are poor but we play them. Wouldn't open my curtains to watch an England 3 match if it was played in my back garden :)
The big club s are only interested in the Carling Cup to pretend they had a decent season if they are rubbish in the league or in Europe. As for the Scottish Cup...if Celtic don't win , there's a conspiracy somewhere :)))

I guess the poll is available until 1st october, right? Should we start to do our re-distributions? Maybe we'll have at least one first league there, not just 2nd tier ones.

Final hours of voting! Except for clear no.1, competition for places 2-7 is still very tight.

If I'm allowed to make a little lobby, I'll propose for the players who voted for somebody which clearly won't make it to vote for Czech republic, I think it's the best league who really has chances to make it.

So the line-up for QFs is as follows:

England (III) vs. CONCACAF Champions League
France (Cup) vs. Denmark

Italy (Cup) vs. Mexico
Sweden vs. Uruguay

Time to start!

QF1: England 3 vs. CONCACAF Champions League

Voting ends on 23 Dec.

This is a tough 'match' to start with....2 very strong contenders for a variety of reasons...would have been a very acceptable final.

The seedings were based on the number/distribution of votes in the previous round so I believe they are still fair.

The other three QFs are: France(Cup) - Denmark; Italy(Cup) - Mexico; Sweden - Uruguay

This time I'm going for Denmark. I think I owe them something after my last year's campaign for Greece in the final poll :)

I have 2 that I will be supporting in their quest for recognition on this fantastic website...if they end up meeting it will be decision time.

Current poll result 20:19.
Michal, which PG will qualify for the semi final in case of a draw? ;-)

We'll extend the deadline and wait for a 'golden vote' :)

I said this one was fit to be THE final ;-)

Easy answer to that...if a poll is a draw, Klaus has the casting vote.

Maybe a poll on that? ;)

In case I'm not able to look at the poll's results on Dec 23, 11:59pm, anyone who will be incidentally logged in on that day/hour, pls doublecheck the poll results so that we have a few witnesses later if there are any doubts... :)

If they are level, is there any reason why they cannot go forward as a joint bid as I would be happy for both games to be added if I am honest

I may be wrong but I think people like the 'elimination game' flavour around our polls.

Pls remember that the CONCACAF Ch.League came only third in the World Zone (after Uruguay and Mexico) so, while I don't deny it may in fact be the most interesting from these three and some people may like to see the current poll as a premature final, the hard facts are that it's no.1 Europe vs no.3 World (and not like no.1 vs. another no.1) and my feeling is we shouldn't apply any preferential rules here allowing both to go through.

Hopefully, by X-mas there will be one clear winner. :)

36 hours to change the fortunes! League One now comfortably in the driving seat (30-24).

The final day of voting. The CONCACAF CL needs 5 votes to get level with League One. :)

England III (League One) wins QF1 by 30 votes to 25 and qualifies for the semis!

Interesting how on the last days I've seen some votes from people I didn't ever see here in any game. I propose to make a pool with some amateur league from England vs UEFA Champions League, there is a massive lack of players every year there anyway. I'm sure that the amateur league would win it.

Has the poll been rigged Michal ?
Anyway think we have a winner...don't believe there is any point in continuing.

I do remember a huge amount of 'Uruguayans' suddenly appearing on the site in a previous round so it may not be a done deal quite yet Deeko ;-)

I realise there's a controversy over whether or not it makes sense to go as low as third-tier comps while we still miss some potentially interesting tier-1 leagues.

However, looking at the medal stats (with English players winning 3x more medals than the 2nd country in the ranking) that I published a few days ago, I now believe even more that it may be better to have a comp that will attract reasonable interest than to have a comp which may finally get even lower in popularity than last year's winner, Greek League.

So if it's voted by majority, so be it! ;)

The majority rules...the majority of voters are English...

So true with the rules of majority (of voters and not majority of players) as we are now sadly experiencing in Poland...

It's now QF2: Dannish league vs French cup. The winner will play League One (ENG) in the semis.

Deadline: 12 Jan (11:59 pm)

...and Denmark wins!

So it's now League One vs. Denmark in the no.1 semi-final!

QF 3 poll is up and running!

Italian cup vs. Mexican league

Pls vote! Deadline 28 Jan (Thu.) 11:59pm

Just as a reminder, QF4 will feature Sweden vs. Uruguay.

One more day to vote and a very interesting situation there right now! Both comps with 25 votes each.

Is there any GOLDEN VOTE out there? :)

ONE MORE VOTE PLS !!!!

Current score: MEX 26 - ITA 26 with 70 minutes left to vote...

Thx Klaus :) But you clicked the wrong button :))

Caramba!

Mexico! 27 votes to 26

Pls vote:

Sweden (League) vs Uruguay (League)

Deadline: 16 February (Tuesday) at 11:59 pm.

The winner of this encounter will play against Mexico in the sf.

In the other semi-final, League One (England) will compete vs. Denmark (League).

Did you know, by the way, that...

Nacional and Penarol Montevideo currently hold top-2 places in the Copa Libertadores All-Time points table.

Both teams also jointly hold the record for most CL participations (42 each).

The times of glory seem to be gone though as none of the two has won the Copa since 1988!

The only other team from Uruguay with a double digit of Copa Libertadores participations is Defensor Sporting (14; ranked 41. in the all-time points table).

As for the Swedish League...

The top-2 teams in the All-Time Swedish league medal table are obviously the most known two, i.e. MALMOE FF and IFK GOETEBORG.

The other teams with notable league medal records are: IFK Norrkoeping (title holders), AIK Solna, Helsingborgs, Elfsborg Boras and Djurgardens Stockholm.

By the way, all seven are still in a very good shape as the years go by, all of them managing to finish in top-8 of 2015 season.

What's happening with the dark horse Uruguay? I thought they were going to fight hard vs. League One in the final and now they are trailing by 13 votes vs. Sweden...

Don't worry 'they' have now voted within a minute of each other. ;-)

What happened to Sweden overnight ?... :)

Argentine Primera Division starts tonight... a lot of logins from South America.
Interesting. If Sweden vs. Uruguay wasn't the 4th quarter final, Sweden would easily win.
I'm fine with Uruguay, but Mexico is much bigger prediction game market ;-)

Honestly, I'm starting to feel now like we gave up too soon on the Chilean league, which had been run for several seasons but was eventually discontinued due to (as far as I remember, correct me if I'm wrong Klaus) problems with unstable kickoff times.

The question now is how does that relate to our current plans with Mexico or Uruguay? In other words, is Chile any different in this department than MEX/URU?

I have a soft spot for Chilean league as I was quite successful in it in my early prediction-game years... :) and would be happy to see Chile back rather than new leagues from Mexico and Uruguay.

c.

It's interesting though how it happens so that ARG league attracts massive attendance from Argentina (and Uruguay) but at the same time only few people play in Copa Libertadores?

I was just about to mention that for some reason we have never taken into account Copa Sudamericana (an equivalent of Europa League) as a prediction-game option and we perhaps should add it to next expansion poll series but on the other hand, looking at Copa Libertadores popularity numbers I'm not so sure...