The most complicated football league in the world

The Belgian Pro League is one of the most complicated league systems in the world. Three rounds of play offs, points split in half, and teams finishing low in the table qualifying for Europe.

This video attempts to explain how the Belgian Pro League works, and why the authorities might be about to change it.

Written by Kaya Kaynak, illustrated by Craig Silcock.

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#Football #Soccer #BelgiumProLeague

[none]

This is like those board games where the manual is too long to read and you decide to "let's just play it, and we will figure it out on the way"

[tywalraven]

I was expecting you to say “…unless it’s a leap year…” somewhere in there.

[timmyb]

And if no clear winner emerges from all of this, a two-man sack race will be held on consecutive Sundays until a champion can be crowned

[CoolGuy]

Me and the boys designing the league system after a night out

[alexwyffels]

The league actually used to be somehow even more complex in the past when we had Play-Off 2 (also called Europa League Play-Offs) instead of the Conference-League Play-Offs.

From 2009-2016 this would entail the teams ranked 7th-14th would be split up in two different groups of 4 teams and would have their league points reset to 0. They would play each of the teams in their group twice. In the end the winners of both groups would play eachother and then the winner of that game got to play the team that finished 4th* in Play-Off 1 (the Championship Play-Off) for a ticket to the Europa League.

Then from 2016-2019 it worked even differently. Now the 15th place team also made it to Play-Off 2 where in the past they usually had to play in relegation Play-Offs**. Then an additional 3 teams from the second division also joined Play-Off 2. These teams were the ones that just missed out on promotion from the second division into the first division but they then did get a chance to secure European Football whilst the actual champion from the second division did not get that chance (??? idk either man). So now the teams in Play-Off 2 split up in groups of 6 instead of groups of 4. They still got their points reset, still played each team in their group twice (so now 10 games instead of 6 before) and then the winners of both groups still played each other with the winner of that match getting to play the number 4 from Play-Off 1.

There was no Play-Offs and no relegation in the 2019-2020 season because of Covid.

After that Play-Off 2 started resembling the current system more. The 5th-8th ranked teams would play in Play-Off 2 with their points halved like in Play-Off 1 (which was also only 4 teams at this point, reasoning being that with 2 extra teams in the league because of the no relegation due to Covid that there would be too many games if the play-offs had more than 4 teams each). A lot of teams would not make it to any play-offs in this system.

Starting from 2023-2024 the league went back down to 16 teams and the system described in the video was put in place. Now they're going to go back to 18 teams in 2 years again because why not at this point?

*Sometimes they would play against the 5th team in Play-Off 1 instead because one of the teams in Play-Off 1 already secured European football by winning the cup (in which case the European tickets all shuffle down, I think at some point the European ticket for winning the cup would actually go to the loser of the cup if the winner secured a better European ticket by winning the league for example, but for a while now the losing finalist just doesn't get that ticket anymore and it all gets shuffled down in the league.

** Exclusively in the 2015-2016 season the team that finished in 15th place actually didn't participate in any play-offs whatsoever. Like their season just ended way before everyone else's, most playoffs have at least 6 more games, sometimes more so imagine your season ending and then every other team plays for another month and a half. I don't know why they did it in this season, to be fair I don't know why anything works the way it does in our competition.

If anyone read all that then congratulations. If you want me to do a detailed explanation of the clusterfuck that was the second division in the past I can do that as well because it was honestly even more wild than anything going on in the first division. I also didn't mention some of the shenanigans in Play-Off 3 / Relegation Play-Offs but those have also been wild at times.

[lowendcity]

Apparently it is in the Belgian DNA to make everything as complicated as possible

[mattc]

The rounding up the halved points is particularly brilliant. If it ever comes to a stage where that rounding puts them level with someone else then the first tiebreaker effectively removes the rounding up and puts them behind the other team anyway, so it was completely redundant to have done it in the first place.

[kahhengyeong]

I think rocket science is easier than trying to figure out how this league system works

[listey]

Absolutely love this one for football manager. Can basically put the reserves out for the first 30 games and focus on the Champions League. Then for the final 10 games win the vast majority and you'll dominate.

[Shendersonsports]

I'll never understand why split league systems still exist. We do it in Scotland and it's led to more issues than results. Celtic/Rangers have already run away with the title by the time the split occurs, lower-mid table teams have nothing to play for and any underdog that sneaks into the top 6 ends up getting battered. There was even an issue last season (2023/24), where Aberdeen, Hibs and Motherwell all had more points than 6th place Dundee, but finished 7th, 8th and 9th respectively because of the split. Even worse is that it cost Aberdeen a conference league spot!

[AtTheBridgePod]

Union Saint-Gilloise will still find a way to fumble a championship...

[sakura_flower]

Finally a video that explains it well😫, Im interested in the clubs and league but haven’t found a place that explains it well

[yaldabaoth]

Programming this delays Football Manager 2026 for 4 more months.

[Legend_Killer]

Say what you want about the complicated format of the Belgian Pro League, but as someone who started following the league a few years ago, they've provided some entertaining finishes to their seasons (2023 comes to mind).


As for their UEFA coefficient, they went from being ranked 14th to 8th currently, so clearly the playoff format has worked to some degree.

[Numerodl]

"The most complicated football league in the world"
Argentina: "Hold my Mate"

[ed]

Argentina makes less sense

The league has 2 seasons per year, last year it was:

2024 First Half Season ("The League Cup":
28 teams
2 groups of 14
An inter-group "Derby day" because rivals can't be in the same group (Example: Boca and Racing go to Group A, River and Independiente go to Group B)
4 per group advance to play-offs were they play straight knockout rounds in one off matches in neutral grounds
-Estudiantes La Plata won the final on pens vs Velez Sarsfield

2024 Second Half Season (The First Division):
The same 28 teams
27 matchdays in league format, were every team plays eachother once, home teams decided by draw or who played at home already in the league cup
Team with most points win, it ended up being Velez Sarsfield

They were 3 relegation spots at the start of the season, at the end there were only 2 because most of the teams in the league decided it with more than half of the season being played, because literally why not

Now look at this:
-One relegation spot is decided by an average table of the last 3 calendar years, the last place goes down (If a team only played 1 or 2 years, since it's an average their points are divided by their lesser amount of matches)
The other relegation spot is decided by just the current Calendar Year matches (League Cup Group Stage + First Division)

Yeah, this is somehow the shortest to explain only the top flight argentinian football

But hey, the league of the world champions (?)

[anotherelvis]

The Danish league start with 12 teams. After 22 games they split in to a playoff group of 6 teams and a relegation group of 6 teams.
This works fairly well because we don't have a lot of top tier teams in the country, so the best teams can just as well play each other

[belgianbv]

The thing is, it worked to get the European coefficient up and it did introduce a lot of excitement. I am actually sad they are getting rid of it.

[AlanFormula]

The Belgium Royal League imo is almost reminiscence to Bundesliga because of how intense that league is.

[DrZaius]

It was good enough that Austria basically copied it (with a bit of streamlining). It also makes sense: You now need to beat the best teams to win the league instead of just farming the bottom feeders more efficiently. Also, you want teams in Europe that do well against strong teams, not those that are simply more reliable against weaker opponents.

On the other side of the table, you can easily imagine a relegation bout being decided because a team got a cheeky 3 points against a big team that rotated because they were already champions and wanted to rest for the cup final. Now, it's the weak clubs going against each other in a far fairer fight.

Additionally, cutting points in half makes the latter half of the season tighter, more exciting. It also means that teams that suffer in autumn and winter because they have European matches aren't held back as much. For a mid-tier nation like Belgium or Austria, this is crucial because if you're in the Champions League or Europa League, you have a lot of extra effort for probably not a lot of success. If that kills your entire season, no team can ever get their club coefficient up enough to get good seeding.

It does make a lot of sense and anyone who believes it's difficult just doesn't want to understand it.