Most Pro Soccer Leagues Starting a New Season

The 2018-19 season for most of the world's premier soccer leagues has just begun or is about to begin in the next two to three weeks...Mexico's Liga MX regular season is already a week old.  For most of the rest there is still a short wait...but in the meantime some of the top European teams from different leagues have been playing each other in the International Champion's Cup...sounds impressive and important doesn't it? Fact check: they are only exhibition matches, held in the United States and other countries to promote more interest in the sport.  However, these games, also called "friendlies", while bringing with them most of the rosters of the different participating teams, are missing the star attractions...where are Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, and the rest?  Well, Chelsea is one of those featured teams and its manager/coach Jose Mourinho has recently complained that his best players are missing because they are recuperating from the recent World Cup, making his club appear worse than they are.  But I've seen these International Champion's Cup matches in past years when there hadn't been a World Cup and the stars were still often missing from the field.  Still, even without them it's fun to watch these matches...I noticed that since they don't actually "count" in the standings or official tournaments, there are a lot fewer spectacles of players feigning injuries to impress the officials after fouls as they writhe around on the ground with masks of agony...only to get up a few seconds later and sprint down the field...

It looks as if television will cover the upcoming soccer leagues as they did last year.  Univision, along with Galavision at times, will cover much of the Mexican soccer (in Spanish, of course) while NBC/Sports and NBC will show the English Premier League, most of whose matches take place (from our time vantage point here) on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  Germany's Bundesliga will have their games...often delayed or on replay...broadcast by Fox 1 and Fox 2 Sports.  America's Major League Soccer, which has been going on since spring and whose regular season is winding down toward the playoffs, can be seen on a number of different channels although most of their matches can only be viewed through special paid subscription...a policy I think is foolish when they are trying to stir up more interest in the sport within this country.  What teams am I following? UANL Tigres in Mexico, Leicester City and Arsenal in England, Orlando City and Portland in Major League Soccer...and Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, for no other reason than I might as well since they win the championship every year, why not?  One side note: Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the world's best soccer player and who had been playing for Real Madrid in Spain's La Liga the last few years, has jumped leagues over to Italy's Serie A and will being playing for Juventus this year.  Maybe that will help to boost that league's stature among the others after its recent decline the past few years...