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| Blink and you missed it. |
Sunday nights are normally a bit shit as work is looming over the horizon and the carefree bliss of not being dragged from your bed to live the life someone else wants you to lead is ending. This was no ordinary Sunday night though. This was brilliant.
It started at about 9pm when I made the mistake of 'just checking twitter before bed' and saw 'Super League' was trending. How unusual, thought I, people have finally caught on to fat blokes from Wigan and Warrington running at each other and grappling for fun. That, it turned out, wasn't the case (as well you know.) Rugby League remained a niche sport and in fact, billionaire skulduggery and shenanigans was all over the place.
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| Sadly the world at large hadn't just discovered Eddie Waring... |
As someone who has been telling people since 1992 (with very little impact, it has to be said) that football is heading for a disaster, this felt like the coming of God to smite the world with fire must feel to the weird bloke with wild hair who stands and shouts on street corners* Finally, it was happening. The game was all set to eat itself. Brilliant!
*Is it me, or do you not get so many of them any more?
The first thing I noticed was the idea seemed comically poor. Replace the Champions League with a worse competition which thinks it's better, only because it has more money. It didn't seem very well thought through and that made it all the more fun to imagine. It seemed a bit like the Zenith Data Systems cup had won the lottery or some weird pre-season trophy that a minor TV channel would buy the rights to and try to hype into something it clearly wasn't.
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| Genuine Legacy fans: 1990 ZDS Cup final |
I frankly couldn't wait for it to get started, particularly as it was apparent that the rest of English football weren't going to put up with it and, to their credit, neither were many supporters of the teams involved.
It seemed a very real prospect that we might be starting next year (or even finishing this) without the influence of Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham. Not only would that definitely mean that someone fun could win the league and cup but it would also see the TV deal devalued significantly. That would in turn mean a drop in player wages, a lowering of the cost of running a club and an opening of the door to local money. Take Newcastle for example. Their value would inevitably plummet without the scale of investment from Sky and it might be possible to imagine a buy out from their fans, or, failing that a local person with a stake in the area and the community.
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| I bought Toon for a quid from that Mike Ashley now everything has gone to shit for Sky. Canny like. |
For a fan of a side like mine, it meant dreaming again. If the cost of the game comes down, there's a prospect that clubs from outside the major cities might be able to compete again as the scale of investment needed falls. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Blackburn and Wigan as town teams who've won anything in about a million years. That could actually change!
What fun this new world would be. And, where would all the big 6 fans go? Ok, some of them would follow, sheep like and begging to spend their money on the pay per view premier player porn promised by their owners, but many wouldn't. Would we see widespread adoption of non-league clubs or local lower league sides? Would Utd fans decamp to Salford, Stockport, FC United, Altrincham, Oldham etc? Liverpool fans to Tranmere or Marine? Would they set up new clubs? Would we see non league clubs starting at step 10, the size and scale of which we'd never seen before? Would we see multiple sides created out of the ashes of what the billionaires had destroyed? Would it be like the Victorian era all over again, community owned clubs rising from nowhere with wonderful names like 'Woolwich Arsenal Legacy' that in 100 years time would have an origin story that went down in the game's folklore?
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| This might look like an old photo, but it's actually just some hipsters having a game |
By Monday, I'd spoken to several fans of the big clubs. All of them declared they'd 'had it' with their team. Both Liverpool fans I spoke to said they were off to watch non-league. This was really happening. This was not a drill. Crystal Palace were suddenly in a European place according to the adjusted league table cropping up all over twitter. What a way to go for Woy - the Croydon boy, delivering Champions League football at the end of a long, long career. Who could fail to be absolutely electrified by this?
Rage poured out of every bit of the internet. People started talking about VAR and how the Premier League was shit anyway, how we'd be better off going back to one league and how dull the last 20 years have been. This was weird. I had to check this wasn't a dream. It's like I'd fallen asleep and now everyone was me.
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| 'Actually, it's already a cartel' |
Sky and the Tories weighed in. You couldn't do this, they said. English football is English football. You can't just waltz in with a big fat cheque and buy it. This seemed to me, to miss the mark somewhat. In the early 90s, in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster (and the cover up of that) the advice given to football by...er... the Tories was, that if it got its house in order it had a ruddy bloody good product that it could only jolly well go and sell. Sky were the people who bought it as we all know.
There was something all a bit hollow about seeing the way their leading pundits rushed to twitter to decry the deal. All frothing about 'the fans' and 'competition' as if they'd never chucked loads of money at a structure that disenfranchises all but the fans of the self same clubs that wanted to leave, nor had they ever moved a kick off time or anything like that at all.
By Tuesday it was all looking shaky. It turns out that Man City and Chelsea are the good guys. Salt of the earth English football types. Proper football sorts, who'd only gone and shat on the entire rest of the pyramid because they were worried that if they didn't, then they'd be left having to play games against them and stuff like that. That explained it. It's ok to act like a cunt, if bigger boys make you do it or everyone else is. Glad we've got that cleared up. I'm off to rob some houses 'for fear of being left behind' and I'm sure you'll all forgive me for that.
By Wednesday it was over and everyone was doubly happy. One because it meant no one embarrassing like Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton or god forbid, Sunderland, would ever win anything after all. Thank fuck for that. Where's the ratings in that? Two, because Gary Neville is now king of the world on the basis of being a footballer who can talk AND take orders from his Sky bosses about what to say.
The fans had 'fought' and 'beaten' the 'bad guys' (which seemed to have taken just a bit of a shout outside the ground and some twitter rage for a few hours.) Call me a misanthrope if you like, but I was a bit suspicious that actually, the new Champions League deal had just slipped in place of the Super League and actually, the billionaires had decided that they were happy enough with that shite and gone home with loads of money anyway.
I was a bit down at the mouth now. My 'peoples clubs' had been formed and disbanded in my mind in just 3 days. Tangerine dreams of cup wins and top flight glory days in tatters on the floor. The radio seemed to be telling me that it was actually a REALLY GOOD THING that instead, we could once more dream of bankrupting our owner in an attempt to finish 17th in the Premier League, that we could reignite a dream of 'being like Burnley' (i.e. not winning anything and getting beaten mostly then flogging ourselves to some random Kazakhstan money launderers*)
* I can't actually remember where the Clampetts new owners are from. But you get the point.
By Thursday, I was wondering. Once you've realised that your billionaire owner is an absolute psychopath who has played you like a fiddle for years and then dumped you, without so much as a text message first, on live TV, is it that easy to let them back into your life? Would the bond between club and fan be reparable? Would things go back to normal?
The media seemed happy to applaud the show of strength by supporters and by and large, it was impressive to see, for once (and it does feel like it's never actually happened before at this level) people put aside their club colours and really boring twitter banter and talk of 'ratios' to unite behind one thing. It was impressive to see that for most fans, their clubs getting even more money wasn't as important them competing properly.
If we extend that thought (that football sans competition is shite) only a tiny little bit, it's worth replaying the debate of the last 29 years. If a Super League is the WORST THING EVER because it's got no relegation and it's a false competition that gives the teams in it a ludicrous advantage in their domestic leagues then.... how far removed from that are our own structures as they stand? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the 'big 6' haven't been under any threat of relegation in many a year (Man City were shit about 20 years ago, but they weren't rich then) and aren't likely to be so either.
What's more, most of them are all but guaranteed a top half (or likely much better) finish every season. Usually, they take all the Champions league places. You might think that's hyperbole, but of the last 60 available places, 59 of them have gone to one of the 'big six' (Leicester being the one exception, since Everton in 2005/6.) The arrangement by which you are paid by the place in the Premier League advantages those sides and the deal is made considerably sweeter by the fact you get a lovely wad of cash for getting to the Champions League - with English clubs being guaranteed a place at very least in the lucrative group stages... it's lovely work if you can get it.
It's no coincidence that these clubs are the same ones that Sky reward with more live matches (and more money) because they're the big global draws. It is therefore, in the interests of global broadcasters to ensure they stay successful and therefore n the interests of the Premier League to create structures that make it pretty hard for them to fuck up and nigh upon impossible for them to not be competing for at least something year upon year.
Now, call me a cynic, but that doesn't sound like the pure tradition of the English game. That sounds a little bit like EXACTLY the same motives that kicked off the Super League in the first place. The desire to create and control a 'product' that could place big 'brands' in the global market place. It absolutely defies logic to think that Sky's pundits 'speak for the fans' - they speak for Sky's market share and we need to see that plainly. It might not sound like it from this article, but I quite like Gary Neville. He's not a bad man and to be fair to him, he's touched on some of the stuff I've mentioned - but we need more than a pundit to speak for fans, more than someone employed by the very broadcaster whose marketing of the English game to the globe made football into the marketable commodity that it's become, the broadcaster who, hand in glove with the games authorities, laid the ground, raked it over and watered it, ready for the seeds of a super league idea to grow.
What we've got to now see, is, will the supporters of the big six be mollified by more of the same stuff they've experienced for the last 10-15 years. Will their boards get them onside by signing Mpbappe or some such global star. Will all of this be forgotten? Or will the shock of realising exactly what the game is to billionaires wake enough of them up that the realise that actually, competition is good, it's satisfying. Precariousness in sport is what gives it its thrill.
Will they too, come to think that actually, the stasis and domination of the game by a few teams in a financially rigged structure, played out in front of ever more corporate boxes, more and more for the benefit of the global TV market, is actually, on balance, a bit like the thing they've just been in the street and protested about and all together a bit shit?
I miss the Super League. I miss the possibility of change that opened up in everyone's head for 2 days. Then Man City won the league cup again, despite not even giving a fuck about it and everything was as it was before.
Or is it?
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| It would be a bit mad if they actually won something tbf. |
I was a bit down at the mouth now. My 'peoples clubs' had been formed and disbanded in my mind in just 3 days. Tangerine dreams of cup wins and top flight glory days in tatters on the floor. The radio seemed to be telling me that it was actually a REALLY GOOD THING that instead, we could once more dream of bankrupting our owner in an attempt to finish 17th in the Premier League, that we could reignite a dream of 'being like Burnley' (i.e. not winning anything and getting beaten mostly then flogging ourselves to some random Kazakhstan money launderers*)
* I can't actually remember where the Clampetts new owners are from. But you get the point.
By Thursday, I was wondering. Once you've realised that your billionaire owner is an absolute psychopath who has played you like a fiddle for years and then dumped you, without so much as a text message first, on live TV, is it that easy to let them back into your life? Would the bond between club and fan be reparable? Would things go back to normal?
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| Take me back? I didn't mean it. Honestly. |
The media seemed happy to applaud the show of strength by supporters and by and large, it was impressive to see, for once (and it does feel like it's never actually happened before at this level) people put aside their club colours and really boring twitter banter and talk of 'ratios' to unite behind one thing. It was impressive to see that for most fans, their clubs getting even more money wasn't as important them competing properly.
If we extend that thought (that football sans competition is shite) only a tiny little bit, it's worth replaying the debate of the last 29 years. If a Super League is the WORST THING EVER because it's got no relegation and it's a false competition that gives the teams in it a ludicrous advantage in their domestic leagues then.... how far removed from that are our own structures as they stand? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the 'big 6' haven't been under any threat of relegation in many a year (Man City were shit about 20 years ago, but they weren't rich then) and aren't likely to be so either.
What's more, most of them are all but guaranteed a top half (or likely much better) finish every season. Usually, they take all the Champions league places. You might think that's hyperbole, but of the last 60 available places, 59 of them have gone to one of the 'big six' (Leicester being the one exception, since Everton in 2005/6.) The arrangement by which you are paid by the place in the Premier League advantages those sides and the deal is made considerably sweeter by the fact you get a lovely wad of cash for getting to the Champions League - with English clubs being guaranteed a place at very least in the lucrative group stages... it's lovely work if you can get it.
It's no coincidence that these clubs are the same ones that Sky reward with more live matches (and more money) because they're the big global draws. It is therefore, in the interests of global broadcasters to ensure they stay successful and therefore n the interests of the Premier League to create structures that make it pretty hard for them to fuck up and nigh upon impossible for them to not be competing for at least something year upon year.
 |
| United, getting relegated: 1974 |
Now, call me a cynic, but that doesn't sound like the pure tradition of the English game. That sounds a little bit like EXACTLY the same motives that kicked off the Super League in the first place. The desire to create and control a 'product' that could place big 'brands' in the global market place. It absolutely defies logic to think that Sky's pundits 'speak for the fans' - they speak for Sky's market share and we need to see that plainly. It might not sound like it from this article, but I quite like Gary Neville. He's not a bad man and to be fair to him, he's touched on some of the stuff I've mentioned - but we need more than a pundit to speak for fans, more than someone employed by the very broadcaster whose marketing of the English game to the globe made football into the marketable commodity that it's become, the broadcaster who, hand in glove with the games authorities, laid the ground, raked it over and watered it, ready for the seeds of a super league idea to grow.
What we've got to now see, is, will the supporters of the big six be mollified by more of the same stuff they've experienced for the last 10-15 years. Will their boards get them onside by signing Mpbappe or some such global star. Will all of this be forgotten? Or will the shock of realising exactly what the game is to billionaires wake enough of them up that the realise that actually, competition is good, it's satisfying. Precariousness in sport is what gives it its thrill.
Will they too, come to think that actually, the stasis and domination of the game by a few teams in a financially rigged structure, played out in front of ever more corporate boxes, more and more for the benefit of the global TV market, is actually, on balance, a bit like the thing they've just been in the street and protested about and all together a bit shit?
I miss the Super League. I miss the possibility of change that opened up in everyone's head for 2 days. Then Man City won the league cup again, despite not even giving a fuck about it and everything was as it was before.
Or is it?
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