Posted by Stephen Kuzner

By Stephen Kuzner - WFD Fan Correspondent

I have often found myself the past few years explaining to friends and family how European Club Football works. On the surface it seems naturally foreign, but if you look closer there are some American sporting analogies that can help. Consider this column a first step guide in converting an American Sports Fan to soccer by explaining the European Club season.

To start, take any professional club team in Europe. In our example, we'll use Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) that play in the Barclays English Premier League. What Spurs try to achieve in a given season is very similar to what a NCAA Division I Men's College Basketball Team tries to accomplish in a season. A Men's College Basketball Team has three primary goals: (1) to win their conference's regular season, win their conference tournament, and win the larger 64 team NCAA Tournament. Hence, the University of North Carolina Tarheels (UNC) set-out every year to have the best record in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), win the ACC Tournament, and win the NCAA Tournament.

Spurs have three goals as well. They set-out to win the Barclays Premiership, the FA Cup, and UEFA Champions League. Spurs winning the Barclays Premiership would be akin to UNC having the best record in the ACC, Spurs winning the FA Cup parallels with UNC winning the ACC Tournament, and Spurs winning the UEFA Champions League would be the equivalent to UNC winning the NCAA Tournament. Every country in Europe has a top flight league that would relate to each NCAA Division I Basketball Conference. All the NCAA conferences get 1 or more teams into the NCAA Tournament the same way every country in Europe gets 1 or more club into the UEFA Champions League.

This simple 3-Step analogy is your best bet. Giving deep details will be too much. Diving into the points system in the Barclays Premiership, the set-up of the FA Cup having all Tiers of English football participating via draws, or the intricacies of Champions League qualification would be to much information all at once. However, if asked, the point system in soccer is like hockey's old one, promotion and relegations is like having minor league baseball teams being promoted and relegated between the MLB, Triple A , Double A, and Single A, and Champions League qualification would like having multiple play-in games for the NCAA Tournament. Add in that the FA Cup and UEFA Champions League run during the same time as the season; and you can see that this will start to get confusing. Just parallel Spurs and UNC's three simple goals.

The same goes for preseason cups or shields. The Community Shield is the equivalent to early season tournaments in college basketball like the Maui Classic. Further, if UNC doesn't qualify for the NCAA Tournament, they'd next want to win the NIT Tournament for teams that didn't make it into the NCAA Tournament. European club football's equivalent would be the Europa League. These lesser goals are really not important to bring-up unless asked because they can just confuse things by adding too many analogies.

After you give you simple 3-Step analogy of Spurs and UNC, a question about international football will inevitably come-up like: "Is this the same as the Brazilian Team or the World Cup?" You can head-off this at the pass by saying club football is professional football and national teams are like the Olympics. The World Cup is played every four years. Players play for and get paid by their club teams, but also play for their country. Leave it at this.

So keep it easy, straightforward, and minimal. Spurs are like UNC, the Premiership is the ACC regular season, FA Cup is the ACC Tournament, and the UEFA Champions League is the NCAA Tournament. Your national team is like your Olympic team. There you go. Now, go convert some people.