Tuesday 28 February 2017


In this post I take a look at the most geographically widespread national division in Europe and one of the smallest. From my forthcoming book 'CROWDED HOUSES.'

RUSSIA'S SECOND TIER

If any country has good reason to operate its second tier on a regional basis it’s Russia. Admirably though this level has operated nationally and before that USSR-wide since 1970 on all but a few occasions. The few pre-war seasons were the same but as the game expanded it became regionalised in 1946 and stayed that way, sometimes with as many as ten divisions, for almost a quarter of a century. Even shorn of the former Soviet republics the distances involved in travelling are vast. Stretching from Kaliningrad on the Baltic to Vladivostok, close to the Chinese border, it traverses over 4,500 miles. To give that some kind of perspective, those two cities are farther apart than London is from Nairobi, Mumbai or Minneapolis.

The initial Russian First League as it was then known was even more of a mess after the break-up of the USSR than the top flight as all existing second tier teams were ‘promoted’ to the top division. The first two seasons were regionalised (no crowd figures available) with clubs from what had been the third and fourth tiers in Soviet days taking part, before a national league was formed in 1994.

The effects of the break-up were apparent immediately. Although the final Soviet seasons had shown the same drop as the top flight nevertheless the set-up was strong enough to have produced an average of close to 12,000 in 1987. The first national post-Soviet season saw that fall to less than 4,000. Steady progress saw that number almost hit the 9,000 mark by the turn of the century before dropping to level out between 4-5,000.

The change in the season from calendar year to ‘western’ has been disastrous at this level. Gates in 2015-16 were only half the size of the first season after the changeover. Crowds can occasionally climb over 15,000 but many matches are watched by as few as 150. The occupancy rate is just 18.15%. This is another tier plagued by financial problems. Six of the 2014-15 participants withdrew or folded that season, including once big names Rotor Volgograd and Alania Vladikavkaz.

2015-16 AVERAGES WITH % OCCUPANCY RATE IN BRACKETS
7367 (24.06) Fakel Voronezh
6524 (32.54) Arsenal Tula
‪4594 (31.23) Baltika Kaliningrad
‪3169 (20.77) Sokol Saratov
‪2751 (18.97) Tom Tomsk
‪2395 (48.38) Gazovik Orenburg
‪2218 (12.61) Volga Nizhniy Novgorod
2216 (14.58) SKA-Energiya
‪2129 (20.87) Luch-Energiya
‪2068 (9.19) Yenisey Krasnoyarsk
‪1987 (15.22) Tyumen
‪1861 (50.99) Torpedo Armavir
‪1695 (13.49) Sibir Novosibirsk
‪1600 (6.96) Shinnik Yaroslavl
‪1500 (8.57) Volgar Astrakhan
1050 (37.38) Tosno
993 (5.58) Raidan Baikal Irkutsk
‪863 (13.81) KAMAZ Naberezhnye Chelny
852 (30.05) Zenit 2
733 (27.15) Spartak Moscow 2


SEASONAL AVERAGES NATIONAL LEAGUE
1978                 10523
1979                 11344
1980                 11761
1981                 9628
1982                 7571
1983                 7340
1984                 8535
1985                 6838
1986                 5712
1987                 11993
1988                 10388
1989                 8881
1990                 6562    
1991                 6481    
1994                 3724
1995                 4858
1996                 4718
1997                 5390
1998                 5907
1999                 8619
2000                 7279
2001                 8850
2002                 7373
2003                 6999
2004                 5130
2005                 5378
2006                 4523
2007                 4448
2008                 4259
2009                 4916
2010                 4423
2011-12             4881    
2012-13             3347
2013-14             3392
2014-15             2729
2015-16             2446


The third tier Russian Professional League is understandably split into five regions. Numbers fluctuate. There were sixty-two clubs in 2015 and while many played before crowds of less than 100 it’s still possible to see decent gates among the top teams with the occasional five-figure crowd recorded.

In 2015 the West division had a high of 7,800 and an average of 1,131. In Ural-Povolzhe it was 7,000 and 1,227 and in the East 5,100 and 1,834.

Best supported was the Centre division with a high of 11,500 and an average of 1,874 while the worst off was the South (also the largest number of teams), which had a high of 3,500 and an average of just 833.

Below that the pyramid extends to ten regional divisions in the Russian Amateur League, which despite the name contains a number of semi-professional outfits.

SAN MARINO
While Russia operates two national divisions that straddle continents, San Marino – with an area of not quite 25 square miles and a population a little over 30,000 – splits its league into two zones. Attendance information is non-existent other than for Sammarinese sides in UEFA tournaments and their solitary participant in Italian football. The Stadio Olimpico national stadium holds 5,115. The record attendance is 4,900 v England (NOT the famous match in which San Marino took the lead) in a World Cup qualifier in March 2013.

UEFA tournaments give an indication of how well supported Sammarinese clubs are in big matches but not domestically. In 2016-17 the three games played by the San Marino representatives Tre Penne (Champions League) and La Fiorita and Folgore/Falciano in the Europa League drew 743, 402 and 319 respectively.


One club – the imaginatively named San Marino – plays in Italian football. Currently in the fourth level Serie D, they have played in the third tier on several occasions, the last time being in 2014-15. Over the past decade their averages have varied between 303 and 438. As they are the only professional team in the country it’s safe to assume that domestic Sammarinese crowds will be well below this level.

Wednesday 22 February 2017


Another extract from my forthcoming book 'CROWDED HOUSES,' an account of the rises and falls of attendances in European club football.

HUNGARY
Hungary was one of the few countries to continue to operate a ‘normal’ league for much of the Second World War and an average of 5,337 in 1942-43 for example wasn’t a bad figure at all under those circumstances. Indeed it’s higher than anything Hungary has seen this century.

Hungary’s great days internationally were in the decade following the war when they were generally considered to be the best side in Europe if not the world, despite a controversial loss to West Germany in the 1954 World Cup Final. At club level Hungarian sides were considered on a par with all but the very best in Europe and the fearsome Népstadion (now the Ferenc Puskás Stadion) in Budapest was a venue that filled opponents with both awe and dread.

Much of this came to a crashing end with the failed uprising of 1956 and many of the country’s best players – on tour with Honved at the time – headed by the legendary Puskás himself, decided not to return home and took their boots elsewhere on the continent.

But for a few more seasons Hungarian clubs still had much to offer and Vasas Budapest reached the European Cup semi-finals in 1958, drawing a possible national record 105,000 to the Népstadion for their second leg 2-0 win over Real Madrid. Considering the almost hopeless nature of their task, having lost the first leg 4-0, that was a tremendous exhibition of support in what is now a bygone and unlikely ever to return era. The reasons it’s only a ‘possible’ national record is that exact figures aren’t available and some claim that 104,000 for Hungary v Austria in 1955 is the record holder.

In 2000-01 a mere 800 saw Vasas play Latvians Ventspils in the UEFA Cup. Along with a similar crowd at an MTK Budapest tie in the same competition in 2007-08 that was the lowest ever for a Hungarian side in Europe and demonstrates starkly just how far Hungarian football has fallen from those dizzy heights of the 1950s.

In the league that halcyon era produced some incredible crowds. In 1955 – Hungary’s best attended season - the biggest crowd was 98,000 for Ferencváros v Honved. Ferencváros averaged 51,615 that season as Hungarian football experienced a boom that put even that of England in the shade. Crowds rose by an astonishing 350% in the top division between 1946-1955. For fifteen years the average never dropped below 10,000. Even the tragic 1956 revolution didn’t dampen enthusiasm though the league itself remained unfinished that year.

Decline though was just as rapid with gates more than halving between 1963-1971. And the drop began before club and international football seriously declined. Ferencváros won the Fairs Cup in 1965 defeating Manchester United in the semi-final and Juventus in the final. A year later the national team produced one last hint of a return to the glory days when they reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup, defeating holders Brazil along the way. But by then gates had dropped by almost 3,500 inside two years with almost another 2,000 missing the following season.

Hungarian authorities tried various methods to turn the tide. Top league numbers changed. The season was altered between Spring-Autumn to Summer-Spring more than once as Hungarian football struggled to find a format that would welcome back lost support.

Nothing worked for long. Periods of stabilisation and even modest increases were followed by sharp falls in support. It’s now over forty years since Hungary’s last five-figure average and almost twenty since it last hit 5,000. By 2015 the average barely touched 2,500 – the worst ever recorded – and Hungarian records go back to 1920. Although 2015-16 saw a modest uptick in gates they were still appalling. The only real reason for the minuscule rise was another change in format from sixteen clubs to twelve, adding one or two more home matches to the better supported sides. Only two top division games (both Ferencváros home matches) drew five-figure gates, 17,489 and 11,267 respectively. Ferencváros' average of 7,737 was more than twice that of any other club. Taking them out of the equation the biggest crowd of the season was just 4,580. Twenty-five of the 188 league matches were watched by under 1,000 spectators, three of them (all MTK Budapest homes) by fewer than 500 with 316 the lowest of all. Even that was a vast improvement on 2012-13 when Egri averaged 392 and drew three gates of less than 100 – 67,62 and 56. Average occupancy is 24.62%.    
The great boom of the 1990s and early 21st century passed Hungary by. It took the authorities a long time to accept the world had moved on from the vast uncovered but primitive terraces of the 1950s but finally they stirred from their slumber and at last Hungary entered the age of the all-covered, all-seated modern world. Twenty new grounds have been built this century, fifteen of them opening within the past five years. Coupled with the revival in fortunes of the national side whose qualification for Euro 2016 saw Hungary take their place at a major finals for the first time in thirty years, maybe, just maybe, some light has been spotted at the end of the tunnel.

Whether that light leads to a path out of the long darkness Hungary has experienced or is that of an oncoming train is something only the next few years will tell.   

2015-16 AVERAGES WITH % OCCUPANCY RATE IN BRACKETS
7737 (35.10) Ferencváros
3505 (41.46) Diósgyőr
3010 (14.80) Debrecen
2822 (20.90) Újpest Dózsa
2797 (32.31) Szombathelyi
1989 (14.06) Videoton
1927 (21.41) Vasas Budapest
1825 (36.77) Békéscsaba 1912
1711 (27.26) Honved
1699 (44.52) Puskás Akadémia
1303 (21.19) Paksi1964
778 (8.64) MTK Budapest

SEASONAL AVERAGES NEMZETI BAJNOKSÁG I
1946-47            4637
1947-48            6360
1948-49            6634
1949-50            7288
1950                 5625
1951                 8447
1952                 10104
1953                 11015
1954                 13365
1955                 17151
1957                 17007
1957-58            14612
1958-59            14636
1959-60            16656
1960-61            15225
1961-62            13245
1962-63            14173
1963                  13881
1964                  16046
1965                  14715
1966                  11967
1967                  11359
1968                  9425
1969                  8363
1970                  8676
1970-71             7059
1971-72             6147
1972-73             7221
1973-74             8173
1974-75             8721
1975-76             10088
1976-77             8817
1977-78             8082
1978-79             6555
1979-80             7647
1980-81             6995
1981-82             7028
1982-83             9578
1983-84             7935
1984-85             7811
1985-86             7580
1986-87             7720
1987-88             7977
1988-89             6995
1989-90             5825
1990-91             5728    
1991-92             5531
1992-93             5550
1993-94             5366
1994-95             5852
1995-96             4951
1996-97             4454
1997-98             5775
1998-99             4872
1999-2000         3688
2000-01             4157
2001-02             3944
2002-03             3384
2003-04             3406
2004-05             3272
2005-06             3134
2006-07             2754
2007-08             2929
2008-09             2952
2009-10             3115
2010-11             2812
2011-12             3858
2012-13             2844
2013-14             2992
2014-15             2504
2015-16             2602

The second tier has gone much the same way as the first with attendances now counted in hundreds. In 2015-16 the highest crowd was 4,300 with one gate of 90 the lowest. And while details are nowhere near as complete for this tier as they are for the first, figures clearly show that for many years average attendances were as good or better than current top flight ones. While there were always quite a few sub-500 crowds this division could, at times, draw crowds approaching 20,000 for big matches. Today, the occupancy rate is down to 15.89%. Format changes are more complicated than the top level, as this division has also been regionalised on several occasions with the number of regions varying between two and four. As with all such cases the averages here represent all matches in the division irrespective of number of clubs or regions.

2015-16 AVERAGES WITH % OCCUPANCY RATE IN BRACKETS
1794 (20.18) Zalaegerszegi TE
1530 (59.51) Mezőkövesd-Zsóry
1367 (50.63) Gyirmót Győri 
1125 (52.97) Kisvárdai
867 (38.53) Balmazújváros
693 (20.16) Szolnoki MÁV
614 (13.64) Soproni VSE
383 (7.66) Soroksár
383 (5.21) Siófok
360 (6.29) Ajka
343 (28.49) Budaörsi
337 (3.35) Dunaújváros
334 (27.83) Szigetszentmiklós
330 (3.67) Vác
327 (16.19) Aqvital Csákvár
260 (17.33) Szeged 2011

SEASONAL AVERAGES NEMZETI BAJNOKSÁG II
1958-59            2782
1959-60            2632
1960-61            2522
1961-62            2734
1962-63            2582
1963                 2669
1964                 2768
1965                 3339
1966                 2874
1967                 2434
1968                 2333
1969                 2622
1980-81            1546
1982-83            3073
1983-84            2896
1984-85            2411
1985-86            2058
1986-87            2120
1987-88            1970
1988-89            1580
2011-12             453      
2012-13             502
2013-14             773
2014-15             774      
2015-16             690

Nemzeti Bajnokság III is currently in three regions and contains what are – by Hungarian standards – several famous names from years gone by. Reserves also operate at this level. Attendance figures appear only sporadically but they seem to have followed the same familiar downward spiral. In 1966 the average was 1,329 with 5,000 the highest for the season though with many crowds in the 100-500 range. By 1999 the average was down to 579 with no gates higher than 2,000. In 2015-16 the average dropped to 339 though the high was a pretty incredible 10,125 between Csepel and Ferencváros II. There were no second tier crowds bigger than that and only two in the top flight. On the other hand there were fifteen sub-100 gates with 42 the very rock bottom.

The Hungarian pyramid is extensive but below the third tier it goes haywire. From twelve clubs in the top league to sixteen in the second and forty-eight spread across the third, the Megye 1. fourth tier explodes into twenty regional leagues containing over 330 clubs.