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Global warning

Dave Bowler

2/14/08

The time of year is rapidly approaching when we dish out all kinds of gongs to all kinds of players for “Goal of the Season”, “Player of the Year” and the like. Most of them are going to be closely contested, the identities of the winners in doubt until the golden envelope is finally ripped asunder.

Not so in the “Ludicrous Idea of the Season” category.
Once again, the FA Premier League defends its title with majestic aplomb, following on from last season’s award winning bit of stupidity “The Carlos Tevez Affair”, with this year’s equally stunning sequel, “Around The World In 80 Hours”.

You will be aware by now that the top league in England, the one that has been based on the idea of every side playing the other, home and away, for the last 120 years, apparently isn’t good enough any more. Now, in an era where everybody complains that we play too much football, we need to make everybody play one more game, against opposition that will, presumably be drawn by lot, leading to the beautifully uneven playing field that could throw up Manchester United v Derby and Arsenal v Aston Villa.

If this were not stupid enough, we’re going to fly the teams all over the world in order to play the games, adding further imbalance to it all. Chelsea might end up with a comparatively short haul trip to Dubai while Liverpool could find themselves in Australia - no jokes about that’s where we always used to send the convicts please.

So, we tear up the rule book, and we make athletes travel all around the world to fit in more games in a schedule that’s already overcrowded. Is there any chance we could make them play on a pitch suspended between two lengths of wire at the top of 200 metre high poles with crocodile infested waters waiting for them below. This is the entertainment industry after all. Oh, and throw Christopher Biggins in as referee and have Joan Collins and Jordan running the line please. And possibly, one team can wear clogs and the other can be dressed as ballerinas while we’re at it. I think that should just about tear away any last troublesome shred of dignity away from the old game.

Surely, even in the increasingly strange world that is Premier League Towers, when this idea of playing overseas was first mooted, there must have been gales of laughter, mustn’t there? Surely, somebody said, “That’s a cracker Richard, nice one. Pass me another digestive”.

Apparently not. And then the Premier League Chairmen were shown the plans, and none of them seemed to notice it was an idea devised by a cretin, expanded on by a moron and given the finishing touches by a lunatic. Didn’t the fact that Birmingham City’s David Gold like the idea offer all the proof the rest of them needed that this was just beyond a joke? Did nobody smell a rat?

Of course, the sanctity of the competition is crucial and the way in which it is being brutalised by an idea of breathtaking stupidity from those at the top just underlines the trouble our game is in. Ideas pop up out of their heads like Pop Tarts and, like Pop Tarts themselves, they’re ideas that should never have been taken further, because they’re tasteless, valueless and leave you with a hollow, sickly feeling in the pit of your stomach. And they leave you with a felling of betrayal. While a Pop Tart sounds like it’s going to be fun filled - unless it’s Cheryl Cole - in the end, you feel betrayed, let down. It’s the same with this plan, because if the Premier League itself wasn’t bad enough, the Champions League, the utter contempt for any side beyond the confines of the top 20, now we’re not even pretending that we care what the supporters think. We’re just going to kick the living daylights out of you, because there are people in Tokyo whose pockets we have to pick. That ok?

I would love to watch Juventus play Inter Milan, but that’s my problem. If I want to see it, I need to find tickets, get a plane to Turin and make the effort. I’m not expecting them to come and play the fixture in my back garden, not even if I move the bird table, cut down the apple tree and mow the lawn more often. That game belongs in Italy, because the game is more than the 22 men kicking the ball around. It’s about the Italian atmosphere, a cauldron of a ground packed with a slew of screaming supporters for whom the result means everything. Not a ground filled with a collection of Chinese people in Beijing who might, just might, know a little bit about Liverpool, but don’t have the first idea just who any of those Wigan players are, and have no real interest in finding out anything beyond whether Steven Gerrard is being rotated or not. If you see what I mean.

Wigan against Liverpool belongs at the JJB and at Anfield, in front of the committed supporters of both sides. As Peter Crouch pointed out last week, “It’s going to be difficult for fans to go wherever the games are played, and the game is about the fans.” Are you going to get the money together - never mind the time off work - to jet out to Kuala Lumpur in January to watch a thrilling 0-0 between Fulham and Middlesbrough?

There are people out there who do not miss a game, home or away, who have compiled runs of 400, 500, 600 consecutive games, have ignored weddings, funerals, Bar Mitzvahs, got divorced, just so they can follow their team. Ok, we might want to put that in front of a psychiatrist as well, but without those people, there is no club football.

How did English football get to be the envy of the world? Because of us, me and you, the people who filled the terraces and who fill the stands, who generate the atmosphere. They’ve taken enough of our game away from us. Now they want to take the actual games and make it impossible for real supporters to follow their team. And once that happens, the chord is broken and there’s no going back. The game will start to unravel.

And we want to turn it into a ball of wool for what exactly? No, not the toughest question ever posed. That’s right. Money. Richard Scudamore proudly says, “The spoils of the Premier League are shared down the football pyramid.” Yes, in much the same way that the fruits of globalised capitalism is shared down the world’s pyramid. Been to Romania lately? And those comforting words of trickle down economics must make things feel so much better at Bournemouth as they head off into administration for the kind of debt that Arsenal would write off as an accounting error.

Basically, the top teams are going to collect shed loads of money for what is essentially a TV based extravaganza. Supposedly, it’s going to be shared out equally between the 20. Oh really? And what will Chelsea have to say about that? Or Manchester United? That won’t last. And when Cape Town has hosted Bolton against Derby, it’s unlikely they’ll be asking for a second game.

This is the start of the further fracture of the game. The big boys will point to their pulling power as against that of Birmingham City and demand a bigger slice of the cake. And once they get a taste for globetrotting, the days of a world league will not be far away - wouldn’t Arsenal rather play Real Madrid in Bangkok than take on Reading?

It’s also the next leap forward in football by television and internet. Just log on and watch the game from 6000 miles away. You don’t really need to go any more, because we bring the action to you. Just pay.

Maybe it will work. Maybe it will be entertaining. But it won’t be football any more, not as we know it. Good afternoon fellow dinosaurs - watch out for that meteor, it won’t do any of us any good.

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