Not Quite Clear on the Concept

Yes, I Do Have an Interesting Way of Determining Champions

One of my favorite aspects of soccer is that there is this overwhelming sense of entitlement that exists independent of outcomes, as if the score is somehow incidental to the match.

This manifests itself primarily in the form of managers in their post game comments saying something like, “We deserved a point from the match,” or “We were unlucky not to get the full three points,” or some variant thereof.

Even at the top level do they not understand that there are no bonus points for possession or passes completed? It’s almost comical.

Ajax’s Beglian defender Toby Alderweireld is taking this to the next logical level. “Everybody agrees that we deserve to win the league title. We have scored the most goals of all teams and no team has been as strong at the back as Ajax.”

So let it be written. Ajax are Eredivisie champs because they deserve to be.

There is one small technicality.

They aren’t on top of the table.

With one match to play in the league, FC Twente are on 83 points, with one point back to Ajax on 82.

Okay, better context of Alderweireld’s quotes are here. And in his defense, he does acknowledge that Ajax are indeed behind Twente with just the one match to play. Still, it’s a crazy statement to make when your fate isn’t even in your own hands.

But, and we’re not trying to defend Alderweireld in the least, we don’t really understand how Ajax aren’t leading the Eredivisie at this point. They have a +83 goal difference. That’s insane. Go look at the rest of Europe. Many table topping teams are in the +30 range. Barca and Chelsea are “only” around +60 (and a good third of Spartak London’s GD is from like three matches).

So maybe someone out there with access to better history or stats than we have the time to go through can tell us: Assuming that Ajax come up short, has a team ever had a superior goal difference (better than +83) and not won their league?