Compared Competitive Balance Evolution in the Dutch and the Czech Football Leagues between 1970 and 2010
Abstrakt
With the World Cup 2010 in South Africa, it is evident that football has strengthened its position of the leading global sport - as well as an influential cultural and political phenomenon. Football truly reflects the life - it promotes national identity, patriotism and emotional connection of people.
It encourages the youth to live healthily and compete fair, to raise educational and socio-economic standards. However, as common in life, progress and expansion are relative, both are expensive and give birth to countless new problems.
As one of the main negative problems, this study brands the accelerating commercialization of sports in general - and in football particularly. The influence of the said problem is documented by specific measurements which reveal a continuously growing competitive imbalance.
As examples there are three supreme national football competitions - the Eredivisie in the Netherlands and the First Czech (Czechoslovak) League in the course of the last forty years. Selected tables and figures show the trends of dynamic and static balance inside three renowned Leagues and confirm the said conclusions; the revealed trends are not marginal, but convincing, if not alarming.