never made a secret of it but i hate the way the 'big teams' play now, some seem able to appreciate the tactics and thought behind various managers, sorry, coaches but i always refer back to the heady days of televised snooker. colour television gave snooker a platform, we had players that 'went for it' and the crowd loved to watch them, the game was open and it was hard to predict a winner with some games lasting days and being decided on a final black ball... then came steve davis, a robotic style of play of only taking a shot on if sure otherwise play safe, for a while the crowd got into this new tactical kind of game and before long other players came along with the same style as steve was winning most titles...then the interest started to fade, it became fairly predictable and those exciting players became a thing of the past. now, snooker never had the following that football has but it's 'extra popularity' was quite short lived due to the way the game went and i worry the same will happen with football, more teams are now looking at this 'tappy lappy-keep ball' that games are becoming boring, crowd sounds are now added to games as they were during the no crowd days as the only time you really notice them now is when a goal goes in...we used to sing from start to finish and sometimes a bit before and after, we had football to watch that got us off our seats, i now think football has reached that 'stagnating' period and it could go one way or the other, either we end with some single professional league (maybe a north/south) with all other clubs having to go amateur or totally part time and no hope of ever making it to the big league as it becomes pretty much a closed shop or the money men will get sick of their own personal real life game of fifa and drift out of the game, this would see the 'big teams' drop like stones hopefully and the game will balance out again.
If you travel back in time to the early 1990s, the World's greatest players were all signing for the World's richest clubs. In Italy. Although they retain some of the biggest names in football in AC Milan, Juventus etc, Italian football's status has fallen a long way since then. Even before that the Colombian league, between 1948 and 1954, was known as El Dorado as the attracted a host of international names on the promise of big money. In both cases, the bubble eventually burst, and it may well do so here too. It didn't do much for the competitiveness of the league in Italy but, if handled correctly, that could be an opportunity to get football back into a healthier state.
