The Beautiful Game Has a Beautiful System — And America Doesn’t
I’ve spent enough years watching English football to know something the average American sports fan would find absolutely bonkers: any club, anywhere, could theoretically reach the very top. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing in a stadium that holds 12,000 people or a field behind a pub. If you win enough games, you go up. It’s that simple.
This is the English football pyramid — an open meritocracy of 11+ tiers, all connected by promotion and relegation, running from the glitz and glamour of the Premier League down through grassroots leagues where the local builder’s firm takes on the town council. No other major sport in the world runs like this.
And after watching the 2025–26 season unfold, I’ve never been more convinced that this system is superior — wildly, fundamentally superior — to the franchise model that governs American sports.
The Pyramid in Numbers
Let’s talk about what we’re actually looking at. The English football pyramid isn’t just a league table. It’s a proper hierarchy:
Tier 1: Premier League (20 clubs)
Tier 2: EFL Championship (24 clubs)
Tier 3: EFL League One (24 clubs)
Tier 4: EFL League Two (24 clubs)
Tier 5: National League (24 clubs)
Tier 6: National League North/South
Tier 7–11+: Northern Premier, Southern, Isthmian leagues, and dozens more regional divisions feeding down to grassroots
That’s five fully professional tiers above the National League, and six more semi-pro and amateur levels below it. Every single one is connected. If you win at the bottom, you climb. If you’re rubbish at the top, you fall.
Now compare that to the NFL, NBA, or MLB. In the US, you buy a franchise for a hundred million dollars and you’re in the league forever. The expansion team never gets “promoted” because it was handed a spot from above. There is no danger of being relegated to some minor league. The St. Louis Rams could go 0–16 every year for a decade and nobody would demote them. The Charlotte Hornets have had one of the worst records in NBA history multiple times. It doesn’t matter. They stay put.
That’s not competition. That’s protectionism dressed up as sport.
Coventry City: Proof the System Works
Take this season. Coventry City won the Championship with 89 points under Frank Lampard, securing promotion to the Premier League on April 17, 2026 — three games to spare — and were officially crowned champions on April 21 after a emphatic 5–1 demolition of Portsmouth.
This was Coventry’s first league title in 25 years. Their striker Brandon Thomas-Asante netted 13 Championship goals. Lampard, one of the greatest midfielders this game has ever produced, returned to management and delivered on his promise. A mid-sized city club, with all the passion and history of a place that takes its football seriously, went out and won the second-richest football league in the world.
They earned the right to play in the Premier League. They didn’t buy their way in. They didn’t get an expansion franchise. They won every game, fought every match, and the system rewarded them with the biggest stage in English football.
Ipswich Town: The Rollercoaster That Makes It Real
Then there’s Ipswich Town. Under Kieran McKenna, they achieved something that would be impossible under any closed system: immediate promotion back to the Premier League after relegation. This is the third time in four years that Ipswich has been promoted under McKenna.
Here’s the thing that makes the English system so electric: Ipswich started this season poorly. Just three points from their opening four Championship matches. They were struggling. But because every game matters — because the threat of another season out of the top flight is real — the urgency and intensity were palpable. They rallied, they improved, and they punched their ticket back to the Premier League.
In the US system, this kind of narrative doesn’t exist. There is no “earning your place back.” There is only the draft order and the salary cap. The drama of survival and resurrection is manufactured through lottery systems and playoff brackets. In England, the drama is structural. It’s baked into every single matchday.
Wrexham: The Story That Broke America
But if there’s one story from recent years that encapsulates everything the English pyramid represents, it’s Wrexham AFC.
In November 2020 — to be precise, November 16, 2020 — Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought Wrexham for roughly $2.5 million. The club was playing in the National League North, which is literally the seventh tier of English football. Below the fully professional leagues. Semi-pro players holding down day jobs.
Since then? Three consecutive promotions in three years, from 2022 to 2025, climbing from the National League all the way up to the Championship. Phil Parkinson managed them through the ascent. The “Welcome to Wrexham” docuseries on FX has been renewed through 2029. Reynolds and Mac turned a Welsh town’s beloved club into a global phenomenon.
But here’s what matters: they didn’t skip any steps. They climbed every single rung. National League North to National League, National League to League Two, League Two to League One, League One to the Championship. Each promotion required winning. Each step was earned.
Could this happen in America? Could a semi-pro team in a mid-size city, bought by two Hollywood actors, climb a ladder of genuine competition and reach the second tier of professional sport? Not a chance. The US franchise system would never allow it. The gates are locked.
Why the Open System Is Better
Let me be direct: the English pyramid is better because it’s honest.
First, there are real stakes in every single match. In the Championship on any given day, the team at the bottom of the table could be relegated to League One, meaning a potential loss of £20–30 million in revenue. The team at the top could be promoted to the Premier League, meaning a potential gain of £100 million or more. That’s not abstract. That’s existential. Players know it. Fans know it. The tension on a rainy Tuesday night in January, when a relegation battle is on the line, is something US sports fans can’t truly understand.
Second, meritocracy matters. The best clubs rise. The worst fall. This creates a constant churn that keeps the system fresh, competitive, and genuinely exciting. New stories emerge every season. Underdogs have a mathematical pathway to glory. In the US system, the same franchises dominate decade after decade because the barriers to entry are impossibly high and the barriers to exit don’t exist.
Third, the pyramid connects every community. From a Premier League club with 60,000-seat stadiums to a National League South team playing in front of 800 people, the entire system is linked. Local derbies between amateur and semi-pro clubs matter because, theoretically, victory could eventually lead to the top. This creates a football culture that permeates every level of society in England and Wales.
The American model is designed to protect franchise owners’ investments. The English model is designed to reward sporting excellence. One is a business model. The other is a sporting ideal.
The Bottom Line
I’m not saying American sports are bad. The NFL, NBA, and MLB produce incredible athletes and entertaining products. But the franchise model — with its guaranteed spots, its salary caps, its draft systems, and its absolute refusal to let a bad team fall — is fundamentally less compelling as a competitive structure.
The English pyramid works because it’s built on a single, elegant principle: win and you go up, lose and you go down. Coventry City won the Championship in 2026. Ipswich Town bounced back from relegation to the Premier League. Wrexham climbed from the seventh tier to the second in three years.
These aren’t hypotheticals. These are real clubs, real fans, real drama, played out in real time, with real consequences. That’s the beauty of the pyramid. And until the US sports system opens its doors to genuine, unrestricted competition, the English game will remain the most compelling sports structure on the planet.
Trust me on this. It really is that simple.