Football tables, fixtures and where to watch

The football calendar

Nine of the twelve competitions here are league seasons and eight of those run on the European calendar: opening in August, breaking around the new year in most countries, and finishing in May. England is the exception to the break, playing straight through late December and early January at a rate no other major league attempts, which is why English squads look thinner by February than their spending suggests.

Brazil runs the other way. The Série A season opens in late January and closes in early December, on the calendar year, so it reaches its midpoint while Europe is still playing its opening rounds. That is the reason it carries a single year in its name rather than two, and the reason a Brazilian title race is being decided while European ones are barely underway.

The tournaments sit on top of all of it. The Champions League league phase runs from September to January with the knockout rounds through spring, so clubs competing in Europe play midweek fixtures for most of the season. The World Cup and the European Championship come round every four years, alternating, and take place in the summer when the leagues have finished. That is why a club's league form can collapse in a season when it goes deep in Europe, and why the summer after a tournament tends to produce tired starts.

How a league table turns into European football

Most clubs in these leagues will never win one. What the table decides for them is European qualification, and that is why positions four, five and six are contested as hard as first. In the larger leagues the top four take Champions League places, fifth goes to the Europa League and sixth to the Conference League, with domestic cup winners shifting those places down when they have already qualified through the league.

How many places a country receives is not fixed. UEFA ranks associations on how their clubs perform in European competition, and the allocation follows that ranking, so a strong season for a country's clubs can earn it an extra place two years later. England and Spain each hold a fifth Champions League place for the current competition on exactly that basis. Smaller leagues receive fewer places and often enter at a qualifying round rather than directly, which is why a title in the Eredivisie or the Primeira Liga guarantees less than one in England does.

At the other end of the table the arithmetic is simpler and harsher. Three clubs go down in most of these leagues, four in Brazil, and two plus a play-off in Germany. Relegation from the Premier League costs a club more than relegation anywhere else in the world, which is what makes the Championship the division it is: clubs with European trophies in their history spending seasons trying to get back.

Which league to follow

They are not interchangeable, and the differences are large enough to be worth choosing between. The Premier League is the most evenly matched: a mid-table club there outspends title contenders elsewhere, so away wins land more often than the reputations suggest. Serie A is the opposite in temperament, the most tactical and the hardest to score in, where a match can turn on one moment after an hour of very little.

If goals are the point, two leagues are clear of the rest. The Bundesliga averaged 3.24 a match last season and the Eredivisie 3.18, against 2.75 in England and 2.43 in Italy. Three quarters of a goal a game separates a German fixture from an Italian one, which over a season is a different sport to watch.

If atmosphere is the point, Germany again, for a reason you can price. A standing ticket in the Bundesliga averaged 12.27 euros last season and Dortmund's south terrace holds 24,454 people on their feet, the largest in European football. English grounds draw bigger crowds, 41,663 a match against Germany's 34,974, and charge several times as much to sit in them. La Liga is the one to choose if you want technique over speed, and it plays later into the evening than anywhere else in Europe.

The smaller leagues are worth following for a different reason. Ligue 1, the Primeira Liga and the Eredivisie develop and sell the players the bigger leagues buy, so a season in any of them is a preview of squads elsewhere in two years. And the Brasileirão is where much of that talent starts, on a calendar that puts its matches late at night in Europe and in prime time across the Americas.

Each competition on this site has a live table, a fixture list, a results archive and a round preview, and most have a guide to who broadcasts it where you live. Start from competitions or pick one from the list above.