Week # 12
The Weekly Spurs Report
Past Competitions:
6 Spurs Teams competed at our Kids & Coins Festival last weekend. The Spurs hosted 23 teams at the Fishback Indoor Training Facility for the Kids & Coins Festival on Saturday & Sunday. Thank you to all of our volunteers for making these events possible!
Upcoming Programs:
The Junior Spurs Winter Season begins this Sunday. We will be welcoming over 180 kids for the 6 week program!
Open Registrations:
Registration for Spring Grassroots, Madison Grassroots, and Dell Rapids Grassroots are all open!
https://www.sodakspurs.com/grassroots-spring-2023
https://www.sodakspurs.com/sodak-spurs-madison
https://www.sodakspurs.com/sodak-spurs-dell-rapids
This Week in Soccer:
English Premier League:
Leicester City vs. Arsenal - Saturday, 9:00am on Peacock
Manchester City vs. Bournemouth - Saturday, 11:30am on USA
Liverpool vs. Crystal Palace - Saturday, 1:45pm on Peacock
Tottenham vs. Chelsea - Sunday, 7:30am on USA
Arsenal vs. Everton - Wednesday, 1:45pm on USA
Liverpool vs. Wolverhampton - Wednesday, 2:00pm on Peacock
Relegation & Promotion - Written by Jake Weber
You may have heard the terms promotion and relegation when talking about professional soccer before. For someone used to American sports where every team is cemented in their respective leagues, it may be a brand-new concept. The basic explanation is that in most leagues the two or three teams that end the season bottom of the table are relegated to the lower division in their nation’s league system.
For example, in England, there are four divisions of professional soccer. In order from highest to lowest, it goes; the Premier League, The Championship, League One, and League Two. While each of these competitions is a unique league, they all work together as one entity commonly known as the English soccer pyramid. While there are even more semi-professional leagues below these, we will focus on these four for now. At the end of every year, teams move up or down these divisions based on their performance in their league the previous year. In the Championship, the bottom three teams are relegated to League One for the next season. Meanwhile, at the top of the table, the top two teams are automatically promoted to the Premier League. However, three teams are relegated from the Premier League to the Championship every year, so where does the third team from the championship come from to replace them? This is where the playoffs come into play. Every division in England reserves its final promotion spot for the winner of a two-round playoff consisting of the teams that finished in the four places behind the last automatic promotion spot. In The Championship these would be the teams that finished 3rd-6th.
The teams in 3rd and 6th play in a semifinal and the teams in 4th and 5th play on the other side of the bracket. The two winners then play a one-leg final at Wembley Stadium in London. This final has sometimes been called the most expensive game in sports. While there is a cash prize for winning a promotion, the reason this game is so lucrative is because of the Premier League’s media rights deals. Teams gaining promotion to the Premier League can earn over $100,000,000 in revenue thanks to the coverage the Premier League gets around the world. Losing out on this money also explains why relegation from the Premier League is so dangerous for a club.
Because of the threat of relegation and losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars, games played between teams at the bottom of the table towards the end of the year can often be just as heated as the ones fighting for the title. This year looks to be no different. With only fifteen games left to play, there are only nine points, separating the team in last place and the team in 12th. This means there are currently nine teams in the Premier League fighting against relegation. The three teams currently in the relegation positions are Southampton, Leeds United, and West Ham United.