A geeks guide to sports: Bundesliga

I'm starting a section where I'll be discussing sports and how they work. Because I think they're are plenty of geeks out there who are interested in sports, but just don't have the right people explaining it to them. So without further ado we're starting with the Bundesliga.

The Bundesliga is the top German league for association football/soccer. I'm using Germany and the Bundesliga because I'm more familiar with them. The other most famous ones are the English Premier League (England duh), La Liga (Spain), and Serie A (Italy). These 4 are the most popular leagues (although all 53 countries in UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations) have a league that are similar.) Most of the leagues work in a similar manner.

In the Bundesliga there are 18 teams. Unlike American sports where we divide everyone in to Geographical regions, every team plays each other twice (once at home, once away). Making the season 34 games long. The team with the most points at the end of the season (3 for a win, 1 for a tie) are the champions. No playoffs. To Americans that sounds like blasphemy, but bear with me. For every year there's also a 64 team knockout tournament going on between almost every team in Germany, not just the Bundesliga, but 2nd Bundesliga (this would be like AAA...sort of.) 3rd Liga (AA), and the regional leagues of Germany (A ball). This massive tournament is called the DFB Cup (or the DFB Pokal (DFB simiply means Deutscher Fussball Bund or the German Football Association)).

This tournament is like the countries' play offs, but they go on pretty much while the regular season is going on. So then you say, but why worry about the regular season. 2 reasons, A) If you come in the top 5 you get to play in next years international tournaments. (Champions League and Europa League. We'll get into these more later.) and B) if you get any of the bottom 3 spot you could get sent down to a lower league (called relegation). (The last and 2nd-to-last place team get sent to 2nd. Bundesliga while the 3rd to last plays the 3 best team in 2nd Bundesliga in a 2 game tournament. The winners get to be in the Bundesliga next year. The loser is sent to 2nd Bundesliga.)

This may all sound strange but I'd like you to realize that because of the multiple tournaments and weekly schedule it is possible to watch soccer almost all year round. Heck during some years you will have Bundesliga, DFB Cup, Champions Leauge, Europa Leauge, and either the European championships or the World Cup going on. (The years the European championships or World cup aren't going on, then the national teams are trying to qualify for these tournaments.) And that's just for European teams add to it the fact the MLS is going on while Europe takes it's summer break, and you really never have any point of the year when there isn't a soccer match going on somewhere.

I hope this is helped some what and feel free to leave any questions you have in the comments. And now I'm going to leave you with St. Pauli's entrance music. No, seriously this is what they take the field to.