EVOLUTION OF COMPETITION MODELS IN EUROPEAN PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL: FROM ORIGINS TO THE MODERN ERA

Abstract

The development of any kind of sport is always closely interconnected with approaches to the planning and implementation of competitive practice, taking into account various factors that can influence it. Competitive practice in professional football in Europe has undergone significant changes since the beginning of the formation of the sport until today. Tracking the key components of competition models of different historical periods and the factors that determined them can provide a more thorough knowledge and understanding of the specifics of professional football today. The purpose is to identify and characterize the models of European professional football competitions in different periods of its development. Material and methods. To realize the goals of the work, were used materials from scientific and popular science sources of information, which highlighted important facts about the development of professional football in various European countries, in particular competitive practice in different historical periods, as well as modern sources of information that indicate the peculiarities of the functioning of modern systems of football competitions. The main scientific research method was modeling. The results. Key factors in the selection of groups and models were signs of the systematic nature of the phenomenon and prestige and status of specific competitions at different stages of the sport’s development. The historical analysis of the development of competitive practice in European professional football made it possible to establish groups of entropic models (multipositional diffuse – 1862–1887); discrete-systematic models (single-positional local – 1888–1953); systematic models (single-positional Pan-European – 1954–1978; hierarchical Pan-European – 1979–2019; hierarchical Pan-European – from 2023 onward); dis-systematic- adapted models (hierarchical Pan-European – 2020–2021); re-systematic models (hierarchical Pan-European – 2022). Conclusions. The formation of the competition system in professional football in Europe was a rather long process, influenced by various economic, social, political, and other factors. Today, the resulting comprehensive competition system demonstrates high organizational and economic efficiency, as well as relative stability in the face of negative factors (for example, social crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, intra-organizational conflicts, etc.).