2009-10 European Football Season Start Dates

By: chris | August 7th, 2009

Reminder

Perhaps it was the explosive start off the blocks to the transfer season before settling into a silent slumber, but it seems big time club football is still ages and ages away. But strangely enough, it’s precisely the opposite. Both the Champions and Europa leagues are already in full swing while Switzerland was first off the blocks for non-winter leagues on the continent this past weekend. So really, we’re already fully in football season.

The difference between this year and most, of course, is the World Cup. Many leagues have taken to starting up a bit earlier to give a bit of a break between the end of season and beginning of the biggest traveling circus on earth. Some have even lopped a whole chunk off their start time. The Eredivise, for example, kicked off last year on the last weekend of August – 30th or so – while this year they’ll begin proceedings on July 31st, which means two things:

i. A much shorter wait for the fans of the Eredivisie.
ii. Roughly half the Oranje will not be able to use ‘fatigue’ as an excuse for performing poorly in South Africa.

This all brought about some interest in when various European leagues are going to be starting and some hurried circling of calendar dates – the Danish Superligaen is Saturday, don’t forget – which then turned into a handy-dandy list of the official summer kickoffs for leagues ranked through 21st in UEFA Coefficients. Not all have released the actual fixtures, but most have released a start date.

[The grand majority came from Wikipedia & Soccerway, so argue with them if the dates are a hair or two off.]

English Prem: August 15th
La Liga: August 29th
Serie A: August 23rd
Bundesliga: August 7th
Ligue 1: August 8th
Russia Premier League: Running*
Ukraine Premier League: July 18th
Eredivisie: July 31st
Romania: August 1st
Portugal: August 15th
Turkey: August 9th
Greece: August 22nd
Scotland: August 15th
Belgium: August 1st
Switzerland July 11th*
Denmark: July 18th
Bulgaria: August 8th
Czech Republic: July 25th
Norway: Running*
Austria: July 17th
Serbia: August 15th