![]() Does anybody doubt that? Does anybody really derive satisfaction from watching some superclub stroll up and smash half a dozen past some patsies every week? Teams should be rewarded for success, but not to such an extent that their domination becomes permanent. A competition, ideally, as the word suggests, would be competitive. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Īfter newsletter promotion Every team should be able to dream that, one day, with a fair wind, they could at least challenge somewhere near the topĪnd that, perhaps is not such a difficult question to answer. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. ![]() What are the first principles? What should football at its most basic level be? skip past newsletter promotion If there were a fresh start, how would we build football? It’s easy to complain, far harder to lay out a blueprint. That “even” before “fans” raises immediate concerns – what, you’re actually going to consult the people who watch your product? My, how you indulge us – but let’s take him at his word. “Even fans will have a lot of sympathy for the idea. “We want to reach out to stakeholders in the European football community and broaden this vision,” he says. So what then to do, if the status quo is unappealing and the future apparently worse? Bernd Reichart, the new CEO of the company backing the Super League is clearly on a mission to charm after the disastrous attempt to launch the competition in April 2021. And the collapsing West Coast mainline means that, in England at least, it’s almost impossible even to get to certain games, the grim mantra falling softly over the waste land: Avanti, Avanti, Avanti. Florentino Pérez, the Real Madrid president, supposedly has evidence that young people are drifting away from the game (although he has never released it) but his proposed solution to that problem is to increase the inequality.įootball hasn’t quite gone the way of English cricket, disdaining its traditional audience in the lust for growth, but with three-quarters of Premier League clubs owned overseas, nothing is certain.Īrrests at Premier League games are up 68.5% on pre-Covid times. Photograph: Christophe Ena/APĬatastrophic inequality means most European leagues are effective monopolies. Liverpool fans show their tickets as they are locked out of May’s Champions League final, amid authority-led chaos in Paris. The Swiss system the Champions League takes on from 2024 will be a mundane slog largely devoid of even the slight jeopardy still delivered by the present format. Uefa appears an increasingly shambolic body, beholden to the wealthiest clubs, unable to challenge the financial might of the elite clubs, unable even to stage football matches safely. One of the game’s great stars storms off the bench in a huff, while another denies having threatened to leave because he wasn’t being played in exactly the right way.įurther details emerge of the chaos at the Champions League final. Fatigue and a lack of preparation time will almost certainly have a negative impact on the quality of football played in Qatar. Injuries are already mounting and any further knocks in the next three weeks could rule a player out of the tournament. Before the World Cup in four weeks’ time, there are still three rounds of the league, two of the Champions League and one of the EFL Cup to come. Preparations continue for a World Cup in a country whose human rights record remains highly questionable and which has imposed extraordinary restrictions on media covering the tournament.
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