fudging love this as it’s so true
People talk about it no longer being a working man’s game too
it can’t be because the money in the game has gone up and up in a non linear way…
players are getting paid more than ever, even if they are brick
transfer fees are getting bigger and bigger even if a player hasn’t played much football
it’s a gold rush basically
and the poor fudgers who suffer the most are the fans who go
we pay more at every club than we used too
the product gets changed to suit armchair fans at a whim. KO change with short notice is standard now
And it’s to feed the TV beast that expects it product with the money ending up lining the pockets of the players and agents.
I can’t think of a football owner off the top of my head who has made money (there will be some)
but there are many many players that have walked away form the game so rich is unreal
people will say they are the product. But they aren’t. It’s a package. Without the fans, the games are very very different. Almost computer simulations. And we pay the highest price economically and emotionally
They opened the Pandora box with the Champions League. Under pressure from Europe's biggest clubs, they threw insane (at the time) amounts of money at a handful of clubs creating a very uneven playing field in smaller countries. What they didn't realise is that they initiated an inflation on transfers and wages, so much so that breaking a record became a source of pride. I might add that, in our case, it's often turned out to be a disaster but that's another matter entirely.
To sustain that upward curve, they had to accept money from Russian oligarchs first, then whole countries. And for what? Who comes out of this a winner? You pay a lot of money to go to the games or even watch them on TV (it's reached the point where people have to pool together to buy a subscription in some countries). Everybody's buying in that stupid system because they hope to get their share: even smaller clubs either because they dream of getting a sugar daddy, just like they dreamt of breaking into the Champions League twenty years ago.
It could even be argued that football players themselves aren't happier than they were 40 or 50 years ago. They're surrounded with sycophants and parasites and their lifestyle is probably closer to a royal family's than a regular Joe's.
Fortunately, I believe we're in the last stretch. Nobody's going to top Middle Eastern countries. The few Silicon Valley tycoons don't care about 'soccer', fortunately, so it's going to end, one way or another. But they whole craziness wasted so much of our time! Think about it: we've been lucky to punch above our weight for almost a decade but what's the point of being an Everton fan, for instance? The closest thing they've had to entertainment was escaping relegation on a few occasions and qualifying once for the Champions League with Moyes. Right now, the Premier League is a Middle Eastern league, with two US consortiums and a bunch of also-rans, one of which may mix it up with the rich boys every now and then. And we (myself included) pay a premium to watch that.
