What is it that makes the top flight and the lower-leagues in football so different? Obviously we are talking about the elite league and the non-marquee leagues, but is it something more that makes them so distant, not only in the records but in the eyes and the hearts of fans and audiences alike?
Well, lower-leagues in football are deemed to live in the shadow of the top leagues. League 2 for example, is certainly far less popular and far less watchable than the Premier League, not only because the EPL is the EPL -and we all know what this means! – but also because secondary leagues eventually offer much less of a spectacle and much less of an interest.
And this does not only concern the fans or the spectators, it also concerns the sports bettors as well, who love to bet on football, but they love to bet on good, exciting and unpredictable football. So, even if all bookmakers listed at Allbets generally promote lower-league betting, they will hardly ever manage to have a good response if these lower-leagues themselves don’t do something to improve their games.
It might sound like a personal perspective, but it is becoming more and more widespread that the problem is that lower leagues or the less popular leagues are playing lower quality football in the first place. In case you wonder why, you should probably check an ordinary football match between lower league clubs. Of course this is not the rule and it does not mean that every club in such leagues is incapable of giving a good performance. But for the most part, this happens a lot.
The problem begins with the obvious thing that goes on in the minds of footballers when it comes to manifesting a good game. For them a good game is one that is risk-free and keeps the opponents away from scoring goals. There is much defense and very little offense. There is much prevention and little pursuit. There is much conservatism and little progressivism in the way they are spending their minutes on play.
There is so much risk-aversion and so much emphasis on preserving a low score that it almost feels predictable. Watching such a game is far from giving the thrill of the sport itself. And this is not because you can really tell what’s going to happen, but because you can’t really tell so.
Meanwhile, everyone who loves the sport simply feels bad for the fact that they don’t actually enjoy a football match between clubs of lower leagues, but at the same time they can’t really support such matches with their active interest. And those of football-lovers who do enjoy lower league matches, they most probably do so because they are either deeply immersed in the sport or the league itself or because they have other interests in doing so.
Besides the football style, another thing that is also very different as you go down the leagues is the actual time you get to see football. In the EPL the ball is in play, on average for 58 minutes per game, which means that we have the pleasure of watching actual football played for almost 64% of the regular time. Lower leagues like League 2 can go on average with as low as 48 minutes per game, which reduces the football played to almost 53% of the regular time. That’s a lot to lose!
There are continuous stoppages, a very large number of throw-ins and delays which are owed to the fact that everything happens slowly. So slowly, that sometimes you get to miss the action!
So, unless the lower leagues get more serious regarding the style and the type of football played on the field, they will never become as popular and as exciting to watch as their first tier counterparts. They need to do something, because after all football is football and whenever a good match is on, everybody wants to watch it!
