European Super League

Regretfully we have all contributed to this madness by continuing to pay ever more money to watch games at grounds or on TV. There is a belief amongst these moguls that we will, once again, swallow the pill and just go along with it so that they can show these pretend matches in front of large crowds on tv across the world.
I have to admit I'm struggling to decide whether or not I shall continue to support the sport I love so much in the current way. Saints will always be 'my team' but am I helping to sustain a form of sport that no longer wants to be competitive, meritorious and fully aware of it's community's values? Jury is out on that one for me.

 

Funnily enough I had a chat with an Eastleigh fan at the pub on Friday. He used to be a Saints fan and follow us home and away, now he does the same with Eastleigh. Getting away from VAR and the scum six, having access to the players/managers, giving your money to a community club etc, all made that sound like a nice idea, and this ESL nonsense makes it even more tempting.

 

I'm in the same camp as you - posted similar just after you did.

 

The natural progression is some kind of draft system, like with the NFL, and then you have FIFA Ultimate Team in real life.

 

You would hope that all the outrage about this would encourage a further discussion and movement towards fairer football policies such as 50+ 1 rule and partial fan ownership (at least), salary caps, ticket price caps, free football broadcasting etc. I very much doubt it though. Whilst I agree with the sentiments, I find a lot of the discourse hard to take, especially seeing it driven by Sky Sports, who have done more than most to contribute towards the state of football we now have.

Leicester winning the league was the worst thing to happen, as it added to the illusion that the Premier League is a sporting competition where anyone can win it, whilst the reality is that it’s only for a select few. It’s insulting seeing the Super League being torn apart for being “anti-competition”, when the current big leagues and tournaments offer very little in their own right.

 

The chairman (?) of Real Madrid has the nerve to mention the losses they have made during Covid as one of the reasons for progressing with the Super League (aka Crap League)....because, of course, no lower league teams have struggled at all.

 

Hahahaha, hats off Leeds!

 

This whole ESL concept disgusts me - however, if Gao was asked to join, he`d be all over it like a rash.

 

I wonder how a certain Arsenal social media person is getting on right now...

 

I get what you mean about the lack of competition in terms of winning the title. But if this ESL goes through, the main point of interest in the league this season (West Ham and Leicester pushing for top four) would be irrelevant, and so the league is pointless.

 

My village team, Chilcompton Sports, has in a way become the victim of its own success. It’s a well-run club playing on its own dedicated ground with a really good pavilion and clubhouse bar. A couple of years ago, the first team won the double of the Premier Division of the Somerset County League, and the Somerset County FA Cup, something only a handful of clubs from much bigger towns and villages have ever done.

The league success gave them promotion to the Western League First Division, but there were problems with this. In order to play in the Western League, the ground would need to be upgraded, a stand for paying spectators built, and players would have to be paid. For a village club run on a shoestring all this was impossible, so promotion had to be declined.

It just shows that even at the grassroots level, money is still everything. If all FA affiliated clubs received even a couple of percent more from the top of the pyramid, local clubs like the Spitfires would have a much easier ride, and the Chillies could have followed their dream.

 

Wolves have changed their Twitter bio to "Premier League Champions, 2018/19".

 

There are way too many differences between the structure for it to work like the NFL, primarily academies.

NFL franchises make money every single year for their owners. I can see American owners coming in and seeing that the clubs are losing money year in year out and thinking "how the **** is this possible" in a much bigger sport (financially and fans wise) than American Football, so have come up with this model. If this were to go ahead it wouldn't be long before a salary cap was introduced to really maximise the potential for profit for the owners.

 

Using that logic, we are the 2014/15 champions

 

The closed-shop structure of North American sports isn't inherently bad, but it has structures in place to provide some semblance of balance. With drafts and with player trades replacing transfers, money is certainly important but isn't necessarily determinative. By regular-season wins, the second-most successful team in baseball over the past eight years is...Cleveland, a club that has never once been in the top half of the league in payroll in that span (and is regularly near the bottom). The Tampa Bay Rays have been as high as 28th (out of 30 teams) in payroll from 2013-2020 and have been solid-to-good most of the time, including a World Series appearance. And MLB has the least-restrictive financial model of the major NA sports leagues, and by far the largest spending discrepancies.

But remove those things and make it just a fixed group with huge financial imbalances and you're almost certainly going to have perpetual punching-bags.

 

It has only just occured to me that this might drag on for some time and until a final decision is made, there is bugger all chance of us getting a new owner.

Who in their right mind parts with £200m on a club that might be about to see revenues fall off a cliff edge.

Which means no investment and likely that Ralph will end up not being able to maximise his potential with us.

 

Also...

 

If this all goes tits, as it should, I wonder if there'll be quite a few clubs suddenly up for sale...

 

We also won the League Cup in 2016 and the FA cup in 2003 then.