Match Day Thread Premier League, Cups & Euro Watch

I doubt clubs would ever leave the domestic league altogether - at worst, the push will be reduce number of PL games or not participate in the smaller cups like League Cup, Community Cup (maybe even FA Cup) ...

 

Nope.

For two prime reasons;

1. How do you take part in a 20 club domestic league and an 18 club European league concurrently?

2. The FA & PL will never sanction this, and so anyone fancying it would be left with a straight choice.

It’s nothing but wind and piss anyway, same as it was last time the Yank owners fancied flexing their muscles & it’ll be treated with the same response - meh.

 

Hopefully but there may be enough clubs owned by oligarchs and sovereign wealth funds whose only real allegience is to the £,€,$ or whatever currency they prefer to make it happen.

 

If I were young and just taking an interest in spectator sports nothing would induce me to buy into the money-making juggernaut that football at the top level has become.
It's only because it's in my blood that I can't let go, but I hate everything about the off-pitch aspect of it now.
I wonder how far they can go in their determination to wring every last penny out of the game before people will have had enough?

 

Ultimately club owners are merely custodians whatever their current fiscal input is.

The two clubs who’ve floated this turd yet again are owned by Americans though, who’ve invested a grand total of £0 into their clubs between them.

 

You realise that it’s Fifa who have put this together and invited teams to join... maybe look at it from a neutral perspective and not through your Liverpool hating glasses

 

Says who? You’re not that gullible are you?

Where’s the Liverpool hate in that post btw?

 

Sorry you’re right, I shouldn’t believe what’s written By sky and all the other press about it, I should believe you who are obviously have much more more knowledge of it

 

When you can point to anyone at FIFA or even anyone who isn’t ‘an unnamed source’ who puts their name to this, then let me know.

If you can’t see what’s obvs going on here, then I can’t help you.

 

If you can find any correspondence that shows Liverpool and united came up with this idea and put it forward the let me know

if you can’t then I can’t help you

 

One of those rare games tonight where I actually wanted Utd to win.

 

Yeah mate, it’s pure coincidence that this ‘leak’ via an unnamed source outlines the supposed plans for European Super League, only a week after both of those clubs, or more accurately, their American owners, got royally ****ed off with their ‘Project rinse the rest’.

No link whatsoever, and only a complete cynic would possibly suggest that this latest rehashing of an idea that’s been around for 22 years without getting any traction, and with no one supposedly involved actually put their names to it, but the unnamed source was seemingly more than happy to state that United & Liverpool has been invited in.......was nothing more than a thinly veiled and completely hollow threat to the PL in the wake of their abject failure last week.

The president of La Liga summed it up perfectly:

Javier Tebas said: "The authors of that idea - if they really exist, because there is nobody actually defending it - not only show a total ignorance of the organisation and customs of European and world football, but also a serious ignorance of the audiovisual rights markets.

"A project of this type will mean serious economic damage to the organisers themselves and to those entities that finance it, if they exist, because they´re never official. These underground projects only look good when drafted at a bar at five in the morning"

 

I have no interest in following American sports but I'm told they operate the closed-shop types of league - therefore it's no surprise that Utd and our owners are happy with the prospect. Though I do think that the idea that FIFA are instrumental also has credibility.
After ManU and LFC's involvement in the recent fiasco the press were always going to bring up that link, because actual research is not their forté.

On your other point, I have always maintained that a club belongs to its fans, that owners and players come and go, but it seems that even this principle is being eroded.
The Beeb video on the subject has a load of talking heads waffling on about how the game has to change, owners can do what they like, blah blah...
It also shows considerable opposition from many of our supporters. Only the fans seem to understand the place football has in our culture, we can't let it be stolen completely by owners who see it as no more than a cash-cow. It's bad enough as it is.

 

Not sure the press invented that bit as it seems to have all come from the same ‘unnamed source’ and it comes a week after Parry advised both clubs to threaten to leave the PL if they didn’t get their own way......

Relegation is alien to the major US sports investors, it’s no secret that they hate it as a principle, so no surprise that this proposal comes without it.....

The FA & PL plus UEFA and the vast majority of fans, won’t have this, simple as. So all stuff like this is going to achieve is making the likelihood of Govt backed football governance complete with fan representation on club boards, odds on. Which from the American owners perspective would be a massive OG.

 

Rewind a few years and recall the discussion of the 39th match or whatever it was, where it was proposed the PL teams would play a final match agains a European team. The clubs whinged and said no it's too much we can't cope with that, it would wear us out. Can you see them coping with a domestic PL and Euro PL as well? The players of today get knackered running onto the pitch before kick off these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_39

 

We can’t possibly play a decent side in the League cup which takes about 5 games to win the thing if you’re in Europe ffs, but it’s apparently sound to add another entire league to the programme - albeit that was never going to happen.

 

I hope you're right on that last one.
I have to reiterate that I think FSG have done a really impressive job with getting LFC back up to the level of a global football powerhouse, and they've done it the right way,imo.
However, they have a misunderstanding of the relationship between a club's owners and its fans and they underestimate the importance of keeping the supporters happy.
There's more to running a football club than number-crunching.

 

Agree with this. There was a point about 16-20 years ago when the balance was just right. There was money in the game but football at the highest level was at a standard across Europe which was both entertaining and accessible for all. Money didn't drive the football, the football led it. Players rose based on the quality of the football first and foremost and that made watching clubs play to their strengths exciting and genuine.

Somewhere along the line the balance tipped. In fact fck it, I'll call it and say it was when Abramovich took over Chelsea. The price of players rose, the wages rose and the media spin to build it all up rose with it. At the same time, those who couldn't keep up fell away. Then the City take over, the rinsing of players from European's elite clubs based on the "name" rather than growing a club from within. In the end it became manufactured and the hype became manufactured with it. I don't blame the two clubs, but more the outcome.

I get the fact that many will say old school big clubs are doing this as protectionism to prevent other clubs gate-crashing their dominance... and that may very well be true, but they're primarily doing it because they've become corrupted by the impact those clubs have ultimately had on the modern game and simply want to take advantage.

 

FSG hired Klopp, that was what they’ve achieved imo. I’d also give them credit for increasing commercial revenue, but that aside, as a non Kopite, I think they’ve just ridden the wave that Klopp created. They were starting to come under pressure for their frugal spending before they hired him don’t forget.

They’ve not read the room in terms of the fanbase on a number of occasions, they moved their position when called out in fairness, but that’s the wrong way round.

American sports investors and English football aren’t a good fit imo.

 

That was a big factor but Man Utd had already been splashing around £30m on individual players, Roman just made it more common.