Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Best League in ASEAN
A while back I did a piece about the best league in ASEAN prompted by a TV pundit who made the assumption that the Vietnamese was the best because they paid the higher salaries.
I did a Trevor Brooking and sat on the fence while many indignant Indonesians hummed and haaed.
Now, as a prelude to a revamped Asian Champions League, the AFC has looked at the leagues under its auspices and made it's own judgement.
Their view, purely ASEAN, is as follows.
1 - Indonesia
2 - Singapore
3 - Thailand
4 - Vietnam
5 - Malaysia
Singapre is probably the better run league but for sheer passion nothing beats the Indonesian league which last season saw an average of 11,700 fans attend games. To be fair the SLeague would probably have come out on top had it not suffered a match fixing scandal last season, and had it promotion and relegation.
Malaysia lurches from self inflicted disaster to PR gaffe while Vietnam's woeful showing in the ACL this year has probably, once and for all, put the admittedly spurious argument that thay have the best league, well and truly to bed.
I did a Trevor Brooking and sat on the fence while many indignant Indonesians hummed and haaed.
Now, as a prelude to a revamped Asian Champions League, the AFC has looked at the leagues under its auspices and made it's own judgement.
Their view, purely ASEAN, is as follows.
1 - Indonesia
2 - Singapore
3 - Thailand
4 - Vietnam
5 - Malaysia
Singapre is probably the better run league but for sheer passion nothing beats the Indonesian league which last season saw an average of 11,700 fans attend games. To be fair the SLeague would probably have come out on top had it not suffered a match fixing scandal last season, and had it promotion and relegation.
Malaysia lurches from self inflicted disaster to PR gaffe while Vietnam's woeful showing in the ACL this year has probably, once and for all, put the admittedly spurious argument that thay have the best league, well and truly to bed.
# posted by Me @ 10:54 AM 
