For six weeks, the World Cup captivated Americans and turned a whole new group of viewers into potential footy fans. And as the tournament expanded, it felt a bit like March Madness, with smaller countries bringing powerhouse national programs to the brink. And with that excitement, and the ever-exhausting process of these legal battles that have made the offseason never really “off”, what better way to escape than following one of the most contentious leagues in the world? The English Premier League kicked off yesterday with reigning champs Arsenal beating Coventry City 3-0. We've got five matches today.

To get up to speed, here is a college basketball-minded English Premier League explainer, with the closest comparison I could find to contextualize where the league stands and how the table is set.

Blue Bloods

Arsenal - UConn

UConn's five national titles span three different coaches, and the program's defining recent back-to-back titles are a standard few programs can dream of approaching. Arsenal finds itself trying to do the same this season. 

The league's best defense for multiple seasons finally won the league championship last year, and Arsenal returns with almost its entire core intact. Every other club in the league's top six is absorbing a coaching change, a roster teardown, or both. And, much like Huskies fans in MSG or taking over tournament neutral sites, Arsenal supporters will tell you about their Gunners any chance they can.

Manchester City - Duke

Duke's identity for decades had been inseparable from one man, and when Mike Krzyzewski retired in 2022 after five national titles, the program didn't reinvent itself; it handed the keys to Jon Scheyer, a handpicked successor, and kept running largely the same blue-chip minting machine. City is attempting a similar handoff, something fairly unprecedented in the sport. Pep Guardiola leaves after 10 years, 6 league titles, and City turns to Enzo Maresca, a former Guardiola assistant, to sustain what's already one of the most dominant operations in the sport.

Oh, and World Cup star Erling Haaland is there, providing the same game-breaking, freakish ability for his size that the Blue Devils have brought in year after year with guys like Zion Williamson, Cooper Flagg, etc.

Liverpool - Kansas

Kansas has won more games than any program in NCAA history and carries arguably the deepest, most continuous blue-blood status in the sport. The guy who invented the sport coached there (and has the worst record of any Jayhawks coach).

Liverpool occupies an identical tier in English football, tied for the most top-flight titles ever, with a European Cup pedigree stretching back generations, and is currently navigating rocky times. Arne Slot was fired a year after winning the league, and Andoni Iraola was brought in with more than £417 million in fresh summer spending behind him. The reloading aspect for a team struggling to get back to their former heights feels not all too dissimilar to Bill Self’s last few seasons. The program is still getting highly-touted individual stars, but how does it all fit together, and what is the long-term intentionality behind it?

Manchester United - Kentucky

Kentucky is as blue-blood as the sport gets, with eight national titles, and it still hired an alum because the program needed someone who understands BBN culture rather than an outside name trying to replace Hall of Fame coach John Calipari.

United's recent history follows a similar arc. The most decorated club in English football (until Liverpool's recent title run pulled level), drifting through managerial hire after managerial hire since Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 without ever finding the same footing. This year, they've turned to Michael Carrick, a club legend. While Kentucky's bet on Mark Pope hasn't fully paid off yet, United is a year behind Kentucky in the same experiment, hoping the insider hire brings cohesion and renewed success.

And both teams are unafraid to try to pave over their flaws with a little monetary backing. That certainly helps.

Chelsea - North Carolina

North Carolina fired Hubert Davis in March after a first-round NCAA Tournament exit and chose to bring in Michael Malone, a 2023 NBA champion who hadn't coached a college game in a quarter-century. He's also the first Tar Heels coach in nearly 75 years with no connection to the Dean Smith or Roy Williams coaching trees.

UNC is a program with immense history and resources, making an unconventional, expensive bet that an outside pedigree can fix what internal continuity couldn't. The game seemed to have passed the style of play that Williams and Davis tried to keep producing, and Malone will surely try to offer a new look for the Tar Heels.

Chelsea is bringing in another manager for the sixth time under this ownership group, betting that Xabi Alonso is the proven system-builder who can finally make years of elite recruiting add up to something sustainable.

Tottenham Hotspur - Indiana

Indiana is still recognized as a blue blood and integral brand of the sport, but hasn’t won a title since 1987 and has missed 8 of the last 10 tournaments despite elite resources and high expectations.

The head-scratching results and subsequent managerial changes mirror the Hotspurs all too well. Much like the Hoosiers in the portal era, Tottenham tried to shore up its roster this offseason with hefty-priced additions. They also hired their third manager in two seasons.

Reputable High Major Brands

Aston Villa - Illinois

Illinois went undefeated through the Big Ten in 2005, reached the national championship game, and lost to North Carolina in one of the era's great heartbreak finishes. The program has spent the two decades since trying and almost recapturing that success.

Villa's own trophy case, seven English titles and a European Cup, sits even further in the past. The club spent long stretches of the 2010s outside the top flight entirely before Unai Emery's arrival turned it back into a genuine Champions League side.

Newcastle United - Texas Tech

Texas Tech spent years as a pretty unremarkable Big 12 program before a 2019 title-game run under Chris Beard put it on the map, and it has since become one of the most talked-about spenders in college athletics, with an estimated $55 million spent across athletics in a single cycle.

Newcastle's transformation follows a similar path. A mid-table club for most of the Premier League era, Newcastle saw a rapid shift after the 2021 Saudi Arabia takeover: Champions League qualification and a first domestic trophy in 70 years followed almost immediately. Spending alone doesn't guarantee continuity, and Newcastle enters this season having just lost Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali, Anthony Gordon and more in a single free agency window.

Nottingham Forest - NC State

NC State's identity rests on two championships as a makeshift David taking down Goliath. 1974, when David Thompson's Wolfpack ended UCLA's seven-title dynasty, and 1983, when Jim Valvano's Cardiac Pack shocked a vastly more talented Houston team on a buzzer-beating putback. Long stretches of irrelevance followed, then punctuated by a flash of magic by vending machine entrepreneur and Kevin Keatts.

Forest's history includes two European Cups under Brian Clough in 1979 and 1980, a miraculous back-to-back for a club of its size, then decades of decline. Can somebody wake these former giants up?

The In-between
(7 to 10 seeds, Bubble teams)

Everton - Syracuse

Jim Boeheim ran Syracuse for 47 years on one instantly recognizable system, the 2-3 zone, building a nationally recognized brand along the way, a 2003 national title and a surprising 2016 Final Four run as a 10-seed, without ever chasing what everyone else in the sport was doing.

Manager David Moyes has built the same stubborn, locked identity across two separate spells at Everton: pragmatic and defensively organized. The program that earned hardware in the past has spent recent years just trying to stay respectable.

Leeds United - Louisville

Louisville has aggressively tried to return to its winning, nationally renowned ways ever since the scandal uprooted Rick Pitino and the program. Their road back has been arduous, but they have a clear history and the funds to become a serious threat in the tournament.

Leeds’ collapse is also one of a historic power (three league titles, a Champions League semifinal) that imploded and spent 16 years outside of the Premier League. The question remains if Leeds is as close to knocking on the door as the Cardinals are.

Fulham - Creighton

Creighton proved themselves year after year in the Missouri Valley as a good-to-great mid-major before jumping into the Big East and dutifully proving, year after year, that it belonged, albeit without winning the league outright. 

Fulham portrays a similar competence and competitiveness. The club has avoided relegation since returning in 2022 and has finished consistently solid while never quite knocking on the door of those top clubs.

The Always Good Mid-Majors
(9 to 12 seeds)

Bournemouth - Utah State

Utah State has made the NCAA tournament more often than almost any program its size over the last two decades, once a Mountain West mainstay that no casual fan thinks about until March, who has never left the picture.

That's Bournemouth's modern identity. The club found a level under manager Eddie Howe, and then Andoni Iraola, who consistently outperformed the club's budget. Now, with Iraola gone to Liverpool, Bournemouth is looking to prove that level was a program trait, not something brought in by their managers.

Brighton & Hove Albion - Saint Louis

Saint Louis has been a standard-bearer at the mid-major level, with its ability to recruit quality fits and hidden gems while maintaining its identity and analytics-driven style. A smaller club, Brighton, has consistently exceeded expectations thanks to its knack for sharp recruiting and progressive managers. While it has never finished above ninth, the club consistently punches above its weight, though it is still trying to crack its glass ceiling.

If you’re looking for a club that will play a fun style and makes the most out of what it’s got, here it is.

Crystal Palace - Dayton

One of the best-run mid-majors in recent memory, Dayton reached unbelievable heights, only to have them cut short by the pandemic. For the last five-plus years, they’ve been trying to recapture that success. Palace's first-ever major trophy, the FA Cup under Oliver Glasner, was followed immediately by a Conference League title, a similarly unprecedented peak. 

Glasner is gone, but the club’s system remains. Palace, like the Flyers, finds guys that exceed their scouting and become coveted transfer targets sooner rather than later. 

Brentford - Santa Clara

The scouting and talent acquisition skills demonstrated by Herb Sendek and his staff have been remarkable over the years. Sendek has sent four guys to the NBA, three of them drafted 19th or better in the first round. Brentford has showcased an impressive, ahead-of-market recruitment program that harkens to the talent development we’ve seen in the Bay.

Ipswich Town - VCU

The "Havoc" in Richmond has outlived every coach who's run it. Shaka Smart built it into a Final Four in 2011, Mike Rhoades and then Ryan Odom kept the identity alive for another decade, and this year, VCU handed the culture to a fourth different coach, betting that the program itself, not any one architect, is the actual asset. 

The best defensive process of any promoted club last season belonged to Ipswich’s recently departed manager, Kieran McKenna, and Gary O'Neil now has to prove that identity travels with the roster, not the architect.

The Lower Mid-Majors
(13 to 16 seeds)

Sunderland - Loyola Chicago

The Ramblers’ tournament run in 2018 came out of nowhere, reaching the Final Four after decades of missing the tournament. Then in 2021, Porter Moser’s team made another Sweet Sixteen, upsetting a 1-seeded Illinois, proving their return wasn’t just a fluke. Another year in the big dance, and Loyola Chicago has been on the outside looking in the last four seasons.

Sunderland came back in a big way, winning a playoff match and earning a Europa League qualification in year one back from relegation. We’ll see if they can avoid the fate the Ramblers faced.

Coventry City - George Mason

George Mason had a signature moment in its entire history: the 2006 Final Four run as an at-large that beat a stacked UConn team, and the program has spent every year since trying to make lightning strike again. Coventry's own high-water mark, the 1987 FA Cup, sits even further back, followed by decades in the lower divisions before this year's return. Coventry's job now is turning a Cinderella entrance into something that outlasts the pumpkin carriage ride, which George Mason hasn’t managed.

Hull City - Saint Peter’s

Saint Peter's is maybe the most March-iest March Madness Cinderella we’ve ever seen. A 15-seed with no business taking down Kentucky, then Murray State, then Purdue to become the lowest seed ever to reach an Elite Eight. You couldn’t really point to a facet of the play style or roster that explained how they found themselves playing past the second weekend. 

Maybe it was momentum, maybe it was a team playing freely. But that magic wasn’t able to be sustained once Shaheen Holloway went to Seton Hall. Hull's playoff run was similarly inexplicable. They had as long a path as possible as the sixth seed, and withstood shaky defensive numbers (their 1.7 expected goals against was the second-worst in the entire Championship) to earn a chance to move up a level. Chances are slim that they stick around, though.