Quote Originally Posted by JamesWales View Post
I think in terms of the pyramid of football, then English Football (and Welsh!) is the highest standard there is really. There can't be much in it between us and the 2. Bundesliga mind. After that I think German football does drop off a bit. It is heavily regionalised from tier 4 onwards and the results in the early stages of the German cup in the last couple of weeks suggest a bigger gulf than exists here. Quite a few 7-0, 8-1 type results
Qualification for the German FA Cup is quite odd. This from wikipedia:

"The DFB-Pokal begins with a round of 64 teams. The 36 teams of the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga, along with the top four finishers of the 3. Liga are automatically qualified for the tournament. Of the remaining slots 21 are given to the cup winners of the regional football associations, the Verbandspokale. The three remaining slots are given to the three regional associations with the most men's teams. They may assign the slot as they see fit but usually give it to the runner-up in the association cup."

So you could finish 5th in the third tier but not qualify while a village team would, hence the 0-7s and 1-8s.