If this was their Politics thread, he’d have loads to say. But football matters - nah. You do have a point re City/Newcastle stuff. I like the football City play, but not the means they have got access to the money/players. I wish in all honesty the Super League thing would have happened - and the all ****ed off into their own arses. When they then realise that it is a closed shop and actually pretty boring, then let them suffer. Football as we know and love it (obviously not everyone, and for the pedantic prick on here, that was a generalisation) would be back where it belongs. I’m old enough to recall the early 80’s and the league gamer v Liverpool came on the telly - was a major thing then as footies was very rarely live iirc (we won 2-0 I think, Wallace overhead kick). But that was teams pitting their wits properly, although some teams had more money than others, the gulf wasn’t ridiculous like it is now. Even in the Championship next season, it isn’t really a level playing field with the money side of things. Doesn't sit right at all really. Then again, you also open up a wider debate over where any teams money is derived from, and id imagine lots of clubs are far from Snow White.
Please don't mention any of this this to Citeh's fans. If they're anything like a friend of ours it's a religious thing with them and simply cannot understand why people don't fall over backwards to like them. Any suggestions that somewhere in their rainbow view of life that could possibly be questioned about their Club, is met with derision. They do play attractive football, they are better than anyone else at the moment but how many billions have been spent on getting one European Championship won? Perhaps as suggested elsewhere a super league might have given the rest of us a break!! My local Southern League team in comparison have just been relegated on the grounds that a stand for supporters has not been built because the District Council and local Town Council can't get their act together. That's the real world of our wonderful game.
I might have misheard, but pretty sure BT called it the ‘greatest story in football’ at one point yesterday just after the final whistle. Don't know if anyone else heard that.
State and oil sports washing across the board needs to be called out whever it occurs be it football, F1 or horseracing and I understand due to expand into American sports.
Pretty sure Americans have been sports washing the past atrocities of their government by adopting cute names such the Redskins for their sports teams.
I left out golf but talking about the petro dollar expansion. The level of sponorship and parliamentary lobbing by the gambling industry also needs mentioning. Short reply, busy in the garden potting on my bush tomatoes, planting more spring onions and thinning out the carrots, roses need dead heading to. A glass or two of cold beer on the terrace will go down well when the jobs are done. Gardening music.
That seems like a perfectly good reason to back City's success. And Utd, I hate them too. People whinge on about City's spending but Utd and Chelsea have both spent similar amounts since City's owners took over in 2008. All over1 billion each. They've all spent huge amounts to win their titles but no one seems to mention their success being bought as much as they do City's. As for their owners, personally I haven't criticised Newcastle, Chelsea or City and while governments do billions of pounds worth of trade with these countries nor will I criticise them. As much as politicians would like sport to do their jobs for them in my view it should start with governments. I will though call out the likes of Lewis Hamilton and the England football team for publicly taking the knee, making a big statements mainly about racism, but also inclusivity and equality. And how they need to educate us. From Gareth Southgate's open letter " It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate." They then tip up in Saudi or Qatar as if nothing has happened. This is where the real hypocrisy lies, the public figures and their proclamations about how people should live their lives but not them it seems.
It's reported that Everton's financial problems have been exacerbated by Carlo Ancelotti suing the club in the high court. Shame, what a pity never mind. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ing-everton-in-high-court-manager-real-madrid
You've noticed that too then? Only ever seems to post on football threads when there's a positive/negative debate happening. Utterly bizarre.
That's actually a really interesting point regarding the Super League. My instinctive reaction, like most, was to hate it and want it to die a painful death, but you're actually right, it could in fact have restored some kind of sense of realism and purity to the sport "below" that level, though the fear would of course be that it would then suffocate the rest. Still, worth pondering. The question as to club ownership regarding City, Newcastle, PSG is a nuanced thing. Again, the instinctive reaction is to baulk a little bit at the ownership of clubs by regimes with questionable human rights etc, but then as you rightly say, it opens up a wider debate regarding where pretty much any team gets their money from. We're not whiter than white in that sense - how many of us took a principled stance regarding ownership by a Chinese investor, for instance. Okay, so ownership by a de facto state (PIF for all it's proclamations otherwise, is absolutely ownership by the Saudi state) takes that on a step, but I'm not completely comfortable with the idea that Middle East = Bad. Everything else = Fine. That goes for the World Cup in Qatar, as much as club investment, F1, LIV golf etc etc. It's just not as simple as that (and it's worth repeating that although the more obvious human rights issues aren't as prevalent in the West, we're not exactly lovely at points either. We also quickly forgot that Chelsea amongst others were owned by Russian concerns, and I honestly think that the creeping influence of Russia and China is more poisonous than ME ownership). I've been doing quite a lot of work with the Saudis recently (so it would be hypocritical of me to take money from a PIF concern, then throw my toys out of the pram over them owning Newcastle) - it's quite an interesting thing to see from more than one side. I don't think anyone would look at MBS and say he's a top man, and our views are rightly coloured by the horrendous killing of Jamal Khashoggi. But the reality over there is that change is afoot. MBS is making Saudi Arabia a far more progressive nation (and the influence of SA is prevalent amongst all the Middle East) with, of course, a long way to go. But that change can't be made overnight. The country is still very much influenced by the older generation of conservative clerics, who now sit at odds with a far more progressive, younger generation of Saudis. The older mob aren't just going to accept wholesale change, so there's gradual change happening whilst basically they wait for that lot to die. This isn't me saying Saudi Arabia is great, by the way, but I do absolutely think that we should be open to the possibility and promise of change over there. Constant opprobrium and a wish to isolate them won't help either us, or them, in their attempts to drag the country forwards. It might make us feel terribly worthy and morally superior for a moment, but surely we're better off encouraging progress than turning our backs to it?
For a very brief period of time. In short order, a new class of domestic elite would rise, because even with the money thrown at the SL, there would still be a fortune to be made from domestic rights. The smartest 'big clubs' would be whichever ones turned down the opportunity to join...I'd imagine there would be far more money available as the biggest team in the PL than as the 15th-biggest team in the SL. There is no easy way to unring the bell. Sports are effectively the only thing remaining that you can convince a large audience to watch live, and consequently an obscene amount of advertising money will flow through sports leagues as a matter of course. The presence of autocrats is somewhat unique to football, mostly because no one outside of North America gives a damn about North American sports (except for the inexplicable clique of Vikings fans here), but owning a top-level professional sports team is pretty well outside the reach of even your average billionaire now...a bad MLB team sells for about £1 billion, while the average is closer to £2b, and a historically mediocre NBA team in an unfashionable market coming off a good season sold for £3.2b. It's all hedge funds and people with eleven-figure net worths now, and the trend isn't slowing. Ultimately there's only one way to change this state of affairs: convince 20% of the population to sit down in front of their televisions at 8pm every Thursday night to watch a family-friendly programme. And another at 9pm on Wednesday, and 7pm on Tuesday, and perhaps a few more throughout the week. If you can do that, advertisers will lose their fixation with sport. But that's a tough sell.
The always excellant David Squires (everyone says so).. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...test-football-season-in-sportswashing-history
David Squires's season awards, may have been posted before DFK, DFC. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...30/david-squires-premier-league-season-awards.
We feature here to. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ls-of-arsenal-southampton-and-jordan-pickford
