yep, 4th to 3rd and 5th to 4th are really tough, but you have to bring them together at some point so its fine

lol'd at tercera
sounds like a gigantic gutter of teams with like 100+teams every year trying to go up

its a bit weird from my perspective to see one level of football so bloated with teams, is that even competitive? ^^
our "pyramid" stretches more towards the bottom

well, without actually knowing, i would suspect that within the the "tercera", there are huge performance differences between the teams (like in our league system when it comes to amateur football), with usually the teams from densely populated and areas close to significant 1st and 2nd tier teams being stronger on average...

yeah sure, thats why i asked about competitiveness on that one level, the difference just there must be huge, much more than it is here
our 4th level has only 90 teams and i guess spain wont have more better teams than we do ^^

Well in Segunda B you already get a mix of professional and semi-professional teams, so that obviously hurts the overall quality of the league. But over all it's not that bad.

It kind of depends on which group you are, because the 4 groups of Segunda B are divided geographically. Mallorca will fall into the toughest group (East coast and Baleares), where we will face teams like Elche (they are relegating with us), Hércules, Barça B (unless they promote in the ongoing playoffs), Atlético Baleares (unless they promote in the ongoing playoffs; I already talked about them, they are our local rivals and have a sick squad for the level they are in), Alcoyano, Valencia B, maybe Nástic (if they relegate from Segunda), Lleida, etc. Most of these clubs have spent many seasons in the top 2 levels. There will still always be some really random teams, but for the most part the games are hard. Other groups are more imbalanced, but for the most part you don't get too many utter shit teams.

In Tercera the level of competitiveness greatly depends on each group. Like I said, each group is locked to a region of Spain, and obviously the groups of the Madrid region or Catalonia are way better than the groups of Murcia or Rioja, for example. All clubs are semi-pro at this level.

In the 5th level (Regional Preferente) you start seeing amateur clubs (again depending on the region... I think there aren't any amateur clubs in Madrid, for example). But below that it's mostly amateur clubs no matter what region you are in and the over all level competitive level drops significantly in all regions.

This post was edited by zarkadon on Jun 5 2017 01:25pm

Well, if we look at the Tercera group of Madrid it's somewhat close in quality to Segunda B, but other groups are shit and most of the time when they manage to get a team promoted to Segunda B they struggle big time.

what do you mean by that, are there only the big teams and whatever teams they have from pro level to amateur level? no pure sunday league clubs? ^^
here everything blow 3rd level is considered amateur, the only pro team blow will be 1860 munich next season lol, but they arent really an example

our system is also geographically locked from 4th level and below, but somehow reading your post makes me think that it doesnt hurt the competitiveness as much

I have friends playing in the 5th level here in Madrid earning around 500€ a month. It's like a (bad) part-time job, so it's considered semi-pro. Truly amateur clubs, that don't pay their players anything, I don't think there are any in the Madrid group of the 5th level. But in other groups there are a lot of amateur clubs.

Over all it goes like this:

1st and 2nd level: 100% professional (semi-pro teams aren't allowed).
3d level: the good teams are professional and the rest are semipro.
4th level: 100% semipro (professional clubs are allowed, but I don't think there are any because it's just too expensive at that level; and amateur clubs are not allowed).
5th level: mostly semipro, but you also get amateur clubs, especially in the weaker regions.
6th level: almost every club is amateur and only the most competitive regions pay their players (I think that if they do it's more like a bonus, rather than a wage).
7th-10th levels: 100% amateur clubs (it's not compulsory to be amatuer, but it's impossible to pay players at this point... in fact in the lowest tiers it's usually the players that pay for their license and to keep the club alive).

Liga Munincipal: it's outside the pyramid and only the big cities have it. It's utter crap with 50 year olds playing and such. Only 100% amateur teams can enter.

that sounds more familiar, its very similar here
a friend of mine just got promoted to 4th level with his team and will be working less on his normal job next season, these guys easily make 1xxx+ a month
5th level is where money gets involved, depends on sponsoring though
i played on 5th level for a year at my childhood club and picked up 300€ a month, plus 30 bucks per point in the league and another 15 when you played at least 5 minutes ^^
thats quite alright for a 20 year old student at the time

one thing that ruins competetion a bit are the terms that the football associations impose on amateur clubs
especially from 5th to 4th level and 4th to 3rd (thats why competition is kinda stationary there with many teams being regulars there for years)
in the 5th level hamburg league, the 4 times in a row champion did not promote to 4th because they cannot afford it
you almost need pro conditions which 95% of the clubs dont have

if you talk to older people the amount of sponsoring and therefore money has overall reduced though on amateur level, companies dont seem so generous anymore and attendance has decreased
more and more people rather watch the more and more stretched matchdays of pro football

i guess that must be a problem in spain as well, with so many different kickoffs

Hmm, I see. I don't know of any cases where a club had to refuse promotion because of them being unable to meet the league requirements (maybe in some region I haven't lived in, idk). It does happen in other sports like basketball, handball, etc (or in women's football), but football works out ok for the most part. And that's because if a semipro club promotes to Segunda, where being pro is a must, the difference in income they'd make after promotion is so big it's worth it to go make change into a proclub (even if you need to go into debt to get the money, it pays off by the end of the season). I remember Mirandés struggled a bit with this a few seasons ago, but as expected they found financial sources to loan them money and it was all good. Amateur clubs promoting to the 4th level and being unable to convert themselves to semipro isn't something I've heard of (again, maybe in some regions, idk)... it's unlikely because like I said many 5th level clubs are already semipro and that makes a huge difference.

About sponsors... yeah, it's hard to find serious sponsors in the lower levels. Some poor clubs will find sponsors that give them a small amount just for the love for the sport, which might be enough to cover the expenses the club needs to survive without the need of players paying to be part of the club, but definitely nowhere near what's enough to what's required to pay the players or turn the club into a semipro one.

Football culture here is different than in Germany though. There you guys have good attendances in the semipro or amateur leagues, but here it's really weird to see people going to a 5th level game unless they are friends/family of the players. Might be because you guys have a lot of cities in Germany, while here we generally have a couple of big cities per region and lots of small towns orbiting them... and the people of those towns usually just support the team of the nearby city (which will almost certainly play in one of the top 3 tiers), or a big club on a national level like Madrid, Barça or Atlético.

that kind of transformation does not happen here, only when a club has a potent long-term sponsor and i havent ever heard that some club would loan money to do that, i am almost shocked to hear such a thing ^^
sounds weird, but its some kind of being in the right place at the right time thing here
the sponsor that paid us back then vanished after a season, everyone except the homegrown players was gone and we got relegated twice in 3 years
that same guy went to a different club, two promotions in a row and they dropped back when he left again

regarding normal sponsoring for amateur clubs...it feels like times have changed a lot when you speak the older guys
especially middle class and local companies, that were happy to throw a few thousand into their local team are now fighting for every cent on the market

yeah, sunday league football can attract quite a crowd here, the team i mentioned earlier that got promoted to 4th level has had 800-1000 people on average
i played for that club in the u19 and even we had something like 400-500 per game
in the city most clubs always have some people attending, aside from wags and friends ^^
and outside the big cities its almost tradition for many to go to the local sunday league club for beer, food, company etc

but clubs have been complaining in recent years that fewer people are coming
and from next year onward i think its getting worse with the kick-off times in bundesliga at 1.30 pm on sundays (sunday noons had no games on purpose for the sake of amateur football)
i can only speak for hamburg, but when they have a sunday noon game, who will then go to our games?

at my club, easily three quarters wouldnt come or perhaps watch that game in our club house
it really sucks that grinding more and more money out of professional football will have an effect on those who just want to have some fun