Football: (Sky-)blue raindrops over a Red parade?

[Spockydog]

 

[Spockydog]

9 minutes ago, Raja said:

All the english clubs are out. What a bunch of amateurs.

These bozos make the Fyre Festival dumbasses look like McKinsey's.

[frenin]

Well, that's it then.

How did this men actually agree to this if they were to shit their pants the minute a very clear to see coming actually happened?

The worst part of this is that Uefa has effectively used fan's rightful outrage for its own greed.

The "Great" clubs could have used their leverage to force meaningful changes in UEFA/FIFA, they could have stopped the Qatar World Cup, the stupid FIFA windows, the revenue problems etc, they could have done all this with the full backing of the fans, or at least without they outrage, which is the only reason this didn't go through, but they decided to burn their leverage to further their greed.

Uefa did this, when they allowed PSG and City to take over and shit over the FFP, when they allowed hilarious transfer fees and so fucking on, this will all be forgotten

 

And people will blame Real Madrid, as if we had a say in this shitshow. Our own president forgot that he didn't own the club.

 

EDIT: Ofc UEFA had to bribe most of the English teams... Not corrupt or greedy at all.

[The Sunland Lord]

6 minutes ago, frenin said:

Well, that's it then.

How did this men actually agree to this if they were to shit their pants the minute a very clear to see coming actually happened?

The worst part of this is that Uefa has effectively used fan's rightful outrage for its own greed.

The "Great" clubs could have used their leverage to force meaningful changes in UEFA/FIFA, they could have stopped the Qatar World Cup, the stupid FIFA windows, the revenue problems etc, they could have done all this with the full backing of the fans, or at least without they outrage, which is the only reason this didn't go through, but they decided to burn their leverage to further their greed.

Uefa did this, when they allowed PSG and City to take over and shit over the FFP, when they allowed hilarious transfer fees and so fucking on, this will all be forbidden.

 

And people will blame Real Madrid, as if we had a say in this shitshow. Our own president forgot that he didn't own the club.

Totally. The painful true is that, despite ESL being a dreadful idea, it's far from the "football won" story people think. Making UEFA look like heroes requires some utter incompetence and stupidity. Now these twelve clowns should resign, but clubs may face punitive measures. This is a failed coup. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just a friendly reminder that the "titans of industry" really aren't any smarter than anyone else. Sorry to bring up American sports again as a comparison point, but this seems fitting. Domonique Foxworth is a former NFL player, decent but not a star by any means, who after his seven year career got an MBA from Harvard Business School and went on to be an executive member of the NFLPA (the players' association). He's talked about how terrified he was before his first major negotiation meeting with several of the top owners, only to realize shortly into the meeting that most of these owners weren't smarter than your average person. This excerpt from one meeting is just great:

Quote

Regardless, our primary purpose for currently shedding light on this lengthy item is to share an exchange between former Panthers owner Jerry Richardson and former NFLPA executive committee member Domonique Foxworth regarding the 2011 labor negotiations, which culminated in a lockout followed by a CBA that stripped from the NFL its ability to unilaterally add up to two regular-season games.

“We’re not playing 17 games, Jerry,” Foxworth told Richardson. “It’s not going to happen.”

“We can make you,” Richardson said, accurately characterizing the status quo under the 2006 CBA. “We don’t have to ask you. We’re being nice by not saying, ‘F–k you, you have to do it.'”

“We’re being nice by not telling you, ‘F–k you, we’re not playing,'” Foxworth said.

“We’re being nice by not telling you, ‘F–k you, we’ll play with replacement players,'” Richardson said.

“We’re being nice by not telling you, ‘F— you, good luck filling up stadiums with Ryan Leaf at quarterback,'” Foxworth said.

Smith interjected at that point, saying, “That’s a lot of f–k yous.” He then adjourned the meeting.

https://sports.yahoo.com/jerry-richardson-domonique-foxworth-once-153417259.html

Seems like your owners in Europe are in the same clown car ours are over here in the states.

(I'll get back to a few posts I was quoted in later after I finish studying).

[Spockydog]

Just now, The Sunland Lord said:

Totally. The painful true is that, despite ESL being a dreadful idea, it's far from the "football won" story people think. Making UEFA look like heroes requires some utter incompetence and stupidity. Now these twelve clowns should resign, but clubs may face punitive measures. This is a failed coup. 

It's over, Finished. Kaput. 

There will soon be legislation in the UK, designed to prevent anything remotely like this happening in the future.

And without the English clubs there is no ESL, so it's over.

 

[Soylent Brown]

I can only assume that they figured a lot of people don't especially like UEFA, so they wouldn't be against cutting UEFA out of a Champions League replacement competition.

It apparently didn't occur to them that 15 teams having a permanent presence would be a massive dealbreaker for the vast majority of people.

[Wilbur]

Graeme Souness speaks of what he knows, that is to say, the wrath of the Scousers.

 

[Wilbur]

10 hours ago, Wilbur said:

When "Liverpool" relocates to their new Shanghai stadium, featuring 110,000 seats plus 400 luxury boxes, then the owners of the Big Clubs (and Spurs) will be well on their way to achieving their ultimate goals.

I quote myself, as apparently Souness has the same thoughts about Asian influence on the American owners:  

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

I wouldn't hold my breath for legal solutions.

FIFA and UEFA (continental association) have quasi monopolies on those continental/international competitions. If you are passing legislation to stop that, you could apparently very well run into problems with competition/antitrust laws.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 hours ago, baxus said:

Thing is they're the rule, not the exception. Everyone can get on top and everyone can hit bottom. It's THE defining principle of sport - the better one wins. Saying that this group of clubs is the best by default is unfathomable to every single sports fan.

Let's go through Premier League top clubs at the moment:

•  City - lingered in Division 1 and Division 2 15 years ago with very little chance of reaching the level they're on today
• United - ruled England and played a major part in Champions League for 2 decades until 7-8 years ago, now are not really title candidates despite being #2 at the moment
• Leicester - a bit of a yo-yo club, bouncing between Premiership and Championship for a while, won a title 5 years ago
• West Ham - were relegated in the past decade, came back, having a great season now, candidates for CL next season
• Chelsea - 20 years ago an FA Cup would've made their season and beyond; Have won CL and EL, made it to several more semifinals and finals
• Liverpool - Football royalty in the '70s and '80s, had quite a long dry spell during which they still managed to win CL twice; dominated the league last season imploded this year
• ...

It is not an off case of fortunes changing, it's a rule.

But isn't this view taking into account way more data than is applicable today? I mean, how can you talk about the 70's and 80's when the PL which was created in the 90's is basically what the ESL was trying to do today? Furthermore, the money has completely changed, and that's what's at the core of this now failed attempted coup. The rich clubs wanted to establish their financial dominance. What occurred 50 years ago is meaningless, especially when 14 of the 20 PL teams are foreign owned now.

13 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The super league doesn’t address any of those issues, it’s simply a continuation down the same path taking things to an even more unfair position. 

I'm not sure I agree, but my opinion here means next to nothing. The general concept of an every week super league where the top clubs are constantly playing one another is very attractive to me, but it's hard to figure out how that doesn't completely distort the game on every other level. As a Johnny come lately tradition doesn't matter to me, so I want the best quality matches, however I get again how that breaks with some false sense of romance Europeans and Brits in particular have with football. 

Quote

Unfortunately there is no real appetite to make real changes to improve the game. My only hope is that this has disgusted so many fans that there will be a real examination of where things are going 

Well the general disgust was at least on display.

[BigFatCoward]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

As a Johnny come lately tradition doesn't matter to me, so I want the best quality matches, however I get again how that breaks with some false sense of romance Europeans and Brits in particular have with football. 

Thats not what you would get, you would get matches between teams with biggest reputation. Arsenal, Spurs and with a few excuses Liverpool have been shite this year. If you want the best matches an open superleague where only the cream qualify (no pesky little funny sounding clubs from easten Europe or Scandinavia) is what is needed. Its the closed nature of the superleague that pissed many people off.  

[Heartofice]

53 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm not sure I agree, but my opinion here means next to nothing. The general concept of an every week super league where the top clubs are constantly playing one another is very attractive to me, but it's hard to figure out how that doesn't completely distort the game on every other level. As a Johnny come lately tradition doesn't matter to me, so I want the best quality matches, however I get again how that breaks with some false sense of romance Europeans and Brits in particular have with football. 

I know on the face of it, that does sound quite enticing, and that is exactly the thinking of the top clubs. They are wrong though, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it isn't the quality of the players that makes a good match. It helps, but I've seen so many matches between top sides to know that just because two top teams play each other, it doesn't mean the game will be enjoyable. They are often some of the more cautious, grindy games in fact.

Secondly, a football game is really  drama played out on a pitch. For it to be interesting, it has to mean something, there have to be stakes and a wider story going on. A game where one side might get relegated if they lose is nail biting if you support them, or a game for the league. How many international friendlies do people watch? How many of the dead rubber games in the CL do people ever bother to turn on? Those games are meaningless and so nobody cares. The SL has basically set up a structure of endless meaningless games (so has the new CL btw so can't say I like that either)

Then thirdly games between the top sides were always meant to be rare, an occasion. But what happens if they occur all the time. Why would you be interested in that? There is nothing interesting about Utd playing Real for the 3rd time this month. It's boring. 

The SL clubs also seem to have decided that local fans are worthless and its the new generation of global fans who will fuel this move, assuming that the new fans will be just as loyal and passionate. But are they? That is a huge assumption. Will new foreign fans tune into watch pointless games any more than traditional ones. If you remove the history from a club, does it still exist?

[Ghostlydragon]

17 hours ago, baxus said:

There's one small difference - relegation. If a team sucks this season in Europe, they usually don't get to play next season in the league they are currently playing in. If a team sucks in NBA/NFL/NHL they get a better shot at draft. It makes Europeans more attuned to the idea of having to deserve the place in the competition, as opposed to just having it there for you, no questions asked.

A big part of the appeal in European sport is having Leicester avoid relegation one season and win the league a year later, or Kaiserslautern getting promoted and winning the league in their first season back in Bundesliga.

Nottingham Forest have won European Cup twice in a row back in the day and have played in Premier league only a couple of seasons over the last 20-ish years I've watched it. Aston Villa are also former European champions and have been relegated from the Premiership in recent years. Leeds have played Champions league semifinals only to drop to Division 1 (or was it even Division 2?) a few years later. AC Milan have won European Cup seven times and this season they have barely made it through to the next Europa League round against Crvena Zvezda Belgrade (another team that's won the European Cup, btw). Manchester United have had 25 years without winning the league before they won everything you can imagine in the '90s and '00s. Liverpool were THE team of the decade in the '80s, winning everything multiple times, and then they couldn't win the title for 30 years (still won 2 European Cups during that time).

There is no guarantees, and you need to constantly struggle to maintain your status in Europe. Teams that are great today have to work extremely hard to remain at the top and those below must have an opportunity to beat them and take their spot. Sure, it's not easy but it does happen. Having your spot uncontested is seen as absolutely unsportsmanlike.

Very well put.

[mormont]

8 hours ago, frenin said:

The "Great" clubs could have used their leverage to force meaningful changes in UEFA/FIFA, they could have stopped the Qatar World Cup, the stupid FIFA windows, the revenue problems etc, they could have done all this with the full backing of the fans, or at least without they outrage, which is the only reason this didn't go through, but they decided to burn their leverage to further their greed.

Nah. The big clubs could not do any of that. To suggest they could is to misunderstand the very different internal dynamics of FIFA and UEFA. And even if the big clubs could have used their leverage to address some of these things, they would not, because it would be inimical to their interests. Those clubs are, largely, commercial companies. Their boards can't push for things that are bad for that club financially, even if they're good for football as a whole - they wouldn't be doing their fiduciary duty if they did.

This is why football clubs should not be commercial entities, of course. But that ship has long sailed. What they need is strong regulatory bodies, ie national FAs, UEFA and FIFA. If those bodies are currently flawed, the answer is to fix them.

8 hours ago, Spockydog said:

There will soon be legislation in the UK, designed to prevent anything remotely like this happening in the future.

An unsuual show of faith in Boris Johnson's government there.

[Soylent Brown]

For me, the problem with the Champions League format is the group stages are boring. It gets fun once you reach the knockout rounds.

Of course, the newly signed-off format isn't going to help that at all as all it does is add more group matches, so it's more of a slog to get to the fun part.

[Heartofice]

Any legislation that is brought in on this will surely not go far enough, probably just a sop to prevent something identically similar happening again. It won’t change the root cause of the problem: that football is built off an unsustainable growth model with little oversight as to who owns clubs, and built to create inequality. 
 

No government is going to do anything about that. They’d be taken to court quicker than they can blink.

[baxus]

9 hours ago, frenin said:

The "Great" clubs could have used their leverage to force meaningful changes in UEFA/FIFA, they could have stopped the Qatar World Cup, the stupid FIFA windows, the revenue problems etc, they could have done all this with the full backing of the fans, or at least without they outrage, which is the only reason this didn't go through, but they decided to burn their leverage to further their greed.

And people will blame Real Madrid, as if we had a say in this shitshow. Our own president forgot that he didn't own the club.

While I dislike international breaks as much as the next guy, they are very much needed if we want to see the World Cup or continental championships. I have nothing against them in principle, but some big changes have to be made in that system. Limit the number of breaks, number of matches, have national teams communicate more with clubs so that so many players don't come back injured from every international break. As it is, it's insane!

Real Madrid is definitely to blame. That being said, they are definitely not the only ones to blame. It's just a nature of things, Real Madrid is the most successful club in Europe, and as such it sticks out way more than less successful and less popular clubs. Let's be honest, Madrid saying they won't be playing in CL raises every eyebrow in the football world. On the other hand, Arsenal saying the same would only get a "yeah, we know." Sorry for taking your club as an example, Arsenal fans of this board, it's just that Arsenal is the club that has the least chances of qualifying for CL next season our of all 12 clubs involved.

9 hours ago, Spockydog said:

There will soon be legislation in the UK, designed to prevent anything remotely like this happening in the future.

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't special legislation directed at football clubs constitute government's involvement in football matters and, as such, go against rules and regulations of FIFA and UEFA which could result in national FA being banned from international competitions? National FAs maybe? There are 4 FAs in the UK and I guess they would all be affected by this legislation.

8 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

I can only assume that they figured a lot of people don't especially like UEFA, so they wouldn't be against cutting UEFA out of a Champions League replacement competition.

It apparently didn't occur to them that 15 teams having a permanent presence would be a massive dealbreaker for the vast majority of people.

A lot of people don't like UEFA and wouldn't be against cutting UEFA out. That's why this whole thing is so frustrating - it's been so poorly planned and executed even worse that it effectively killed any leverage clubs had to enforce any kind of changes.

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

But isn't this view taking into account way more data than is applicable today? I mean, how can you talk about the 70's and 80's when the PL which was created in the 90's is basically what the ESL was trying to do today? Furthermore, the money has completely changed, and that's what's at the core of this now failed attempted coup. The rich clubs wanted to establish their financial dominance. What occurred 50 years ago is meaningless, especially when 14 of the 20 PL teams are foreign owned now.

As a Johnny come lately tradition doesn't matter to me, so I want the best quality matches, however I get again how that breaks with some false sense of romance Europeans and Brits in particular have with football.

No, all that data is still applicable. Had Saudis bought Newcastle last summer it's quite likely there would be another club at the top in a few years.

Also, we are talking about competitions with long traditions. What happened 50 years ago is in no way meaningless. You do need to separate from franchise-oriented sport if you want to understand European leagues and sports in general, that's not limited to football. Premier League has changed things but most of it was technicalities, the essence remained the same.

There's no false sense of romance there, it's 100+ years of traditions, some pretty crazy rides clubs, teams and supporters took during that period, generations of people being raised as supporters of their clubs, making watching the matches (either in the stadium or on TV) family events, it's about club representing you and your friends and family.

It's so much more than yelling "defense! defense!" with your mouth full of hot-dogs and that abomination you Americans call beer. And it's ok that you don't understand that (yet), but it's horrible that people who own these clubs apparently don't understand it either.

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

An unsuual show of faith in Boris Johnson's government there.

These bozos have left him with an electoral open goal (ba da boom tish). Not sure exactly what he should do, but he'd be mad not to do something.

I've heard talk of 'golden shares', or somehow transitioning football in this country to the 50+1 model, which is probably why there were no German clubs involved. I'm not sure how the mechanics of such a transition would look, but it would be great if we could somehow do that.

And I don't think he needs to fear any kind of public backlash for going too far. The only people who would be upset with serious law changes to protect OUR game would be the American billionaire wankers who just tried to wreck it.

 

 

[Spockydog]

24 minutes ago, baxus said:

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't special legislation directed at football clubs constitute government's involvement in football matters and, as such, go against rules and regulations of FIFA and UEFA which could result in national FA being banned from international competitions? National FAs maybe? There are 4 FAs in the UK and I guess they would all be affected by this legislation.

Specifically, which rules are these?