If I am disusing English football with someone, then I will only say Premier League. If somewhere in the conversation the Scottish, Russian or Ukrainian Prem Leagues come up, I’ll say Scottish and so on.

It does get pretty confusing as I follow mostly the English Premier League, although I live close to many Scottish people as well as a Celtic FC supporters bar.

I just don’t see the big deal. As long as people know what I’m talking about, I’ll continue using it. It’s not like I’m going to use it in an official context (like say, if I were to write an article for ESPN). But on forums and blogs, why not. In the same vein, I don’t quibble when someone writes French Ligue 1.

But yeah, on the subject of “The Championship”, it was a joke name in England to start with and is still a joke now. It came along with the Coca-Cola re-branding debacle. Mind you, like a smoking ban, it’s strange how quickly I got used to.

The argument that “there are other Premier Leagues” makes little to no sense, since that distinction isn’t made when talking about the various Ligas (even though the Portuguese Liga and Spanish Liga are more important than any pairing of “Premier Leagues”), nor Series A (Again, Italy-Brazil can take England and Scotland for a run every day of the week). If people call the Premier League the “EPL” because of possible confusion regarding “which” Premier League, the how come they don’t do the same thing when talking about La Liga or Serie A?

Nobody in Australia got confused when the Sydney Morning Herald released an article titled “Mixed fortunes for Premier League’s big guns” (http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/mixed-fortunes-for-premier-leagues-big-guns-20090817-en14.html), and even the usually-retarded Yahoo! Answers crowd weren’t confused when someone asked “Who will win the Premier League Title 09/10″ (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090814165051AAG0zMO), despite it being in the “UK” football section, not “England”.

If people are consistent and apply the label on the basis ” “, then yes, the English Premier League (or England Premier League) makes sense. But that means they’ve got to say that Real Madrid play in the Spanish (or Spain) Liga, and that Juventus play in the Italian (or Italy) Serie A. But if people are going to say “EPL” and the “La Liga”, I can only say that I fail to see any reason for adding the “E”.

Inara: So if you read in L’Equipe that “Dindane veut jouer en Premier League” (as was in a recent copy I picked up) you’ll be confused? What about “Tiago : Serie A ou rien” (that’s a bit older) or “Benzema : L’appel de La Liga”? Do you also get confused when you read in Benzema’s interviews that “Manchester” and “Milan” wanted him to join, or that Lyon fans should understand why he left, because you don’t turn down an offer from “le Real”? In the lack of specifier, people understand that the most common is being talked about : “Real” for Real Madrid, “Manchester” for Manchester United, Serie A for the top Italian division and Premier League for the top English division. Or at least, readers of L’Equipe are expected to be able to understand that.

It is a very well attended league and beats out Germany for the best attended second level league. But it is not 4th. Premier League, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, France and Mexico all have higher average attendances at their games for sure (that would be 8th) and one source in 2002 had them the year in 14th (although they probably passed many of them by now).

I suppose Newcastle might move them up at the end of this year but still likely 6th or so.