Just to add to Danny’s post, and we just talked about this on the show, but…

This English soccer pyramid is absolutely MIND-BOGGLING when looked at in chart form. Is there any other country in the world that could possibly have such an extensive array of domestic leagues???

Let’s do some math..

In the first 8 divisions of English football, there are a total of 16 teams. If we assume (wrongfully, of course) that each league has 20 teams…we have a whopping 320 teams. But after that is where it gets really funky.

The 9th division alone has 14 leagues. With our assumption, we are looking at about 280 squads…JUST IN THE NINTH DIVISION! That is astounding.

With 15 more leagues in the 10th division, and 300 more teams, we are looking at (320+280+300) 900 soccer teams in the top 10 flights of English play.

NOW. In the 11th division, there are 47 leagues (when does it become overkill???) Most of these lower leagues average about 15 teams. So, simple math tells us we have about 705 teams in the 11th division. Goodness.

There are 24 flights of play in English Football, and up to the 17th there are about 40 teams in each flight, which means about 600 teams are in every one. Tabulating the divisions we haven’t talked about yet, that gives us another 3,600 teams. And this is not including the bottom 7 levels of play.

SOOOO our grand estimate, of all of the soccer teams in the top 17 levels of English play is…

drumroll please.

5,205 teams. That’s a lot.

Now each team must field at least 11 players on the pitch. Who knows about the status of reserves and bench players in the lower leagues, so for now let’s say that 5,205 teams need 11 players each. That comes out to 57,255 players. And you know it’s more than that, because many teams carry more than 11, plus we did not account for the lower 7 divisions. I think it is safe to round up to 60,000 players, and we would still be supremely short of the actual number of footballers.

Wow. (That’s just about the only math I’ve ever enjoed doing. Thank you FA)