Author Topic: Football will eat itself  (Read 32198 times)

Football will eat itself
« on: 30 September, 2014, 08:52:34 pm »
Manchester City v Roma

Ist half: two British players on display, one for the "English" team, on for the "Italian" one.  I can't work out how many of the roma team are Italian -but it might be only one!

Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #1 on: 30 September, 2014, 10:57:48 pm »
So if it's like that for nearly every country, is there somewhere near the South Pole or somewhere that's providing most of the players to the rest of us? ;D

Basil

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #2 on: 30 September, 2014, 11:10:22 pm »
Manchester City v Roma

Ist half: two British players on display, one for the "English" team, on for the "Italian" one.  I can't work out how many of the roma team are Italian -but it might be only one!
No way back from that.  It's a business, not a sport. (At that level) How long before the "National" teams become a franchise?

My advice to any true footingball fan is find your local non league club and get down there at 3 on Saturday.  And you you know what?  It will be 3 on Saturday, not 12 on Sunday, 4 on Monday, 7 on Friday, or whatever.

Just saying, like.
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Jaded

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #3 on: 30 September, 2014, 11:57:03 pm »
Just been to my local non-league team. They won. That's the power of a nascent franchise, I guess.  ;)
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #4 on: 01 October, 2014, 12:24:52 am »
So if it's like that for nearly every country, is there somewhere near the South Pole or somewhere that's providing most of the players to the rest of us? ;D

I suspect it's largely a first world, or European thing.  Whatever, it's boring.  Rochdale are doing well, though....

Mr Larrington

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #5 on: 01 October, 2014, 12:53:13 am »
I believe the Bundesliga is far less reliant on bought-in talent than is the norm in BRITISH foopball and it doesn't seem to have done them a whole lot of harm.
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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #6 on: 01 October, 2014, 12:55:44 am »
Good point, David.

Wowbagger

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #7 on: 01 October, 2014, 06:56:01 am »
In one cafė we went to near Kempen the urinals had been fitted with goal posts.
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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #8 on: 01 October, 2014, 09:26:46 am »
Urinals above the posts for English fans/players?

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #9 on: 01 October, 2014, 09:46:53 am »
I have vowed to abandon my lifelong support for my club when they field a team without a British or Irish player included.

I realise Ireland, Scotland and Wales have their own leagues and therefore are providing "foreign players" but "my game, my rules".

There is still clearly a (remote and fading) hope that a kid growing up near Old Trafford could actually play for Man U.  It still happens.

Just like politics though, Premier league football is very short-termist at the sharp end. 

A Manager is usually 10 games away from the sack, he doesn't have the luxury of developing talent for the long-term, his job is on the line from game #1.
Much simpler to buy Ronaldo now than to wait 5 years to see if that promising kid from Salford turns into the new one.

It's crap really, basing your local identity on a foreign consortium-owned club, branded as  "The Divine Theatre of Saudi Ambition", staffed by a foreign coaching team and being played by an assortment of Italians, Croatians, Japanese, Spaniards and Nigerians whose agents are trying their hardest to move them on somewhere else for £300,000 a week.

Did I sum up the beautiful game accurately there?
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #10 on: 01 October, 2014, 10:00:09 am »
I wonder if local has anything to do with it now, even for fans? My son goes to a kids' football thing every week, geographically all the kids there would logically support Bristol Rovers (non-league this season, as Basil says - but tickets about the same price, £20, as for Bristol City two leagues higher - how does that work then?) but the shirts they wear (apart from non-specific t-shirts) are Arsenal, Chelsea, Barcelona, Manchester Utd. The same shirts, in fact, worn by middle-class Indians (two or three times their age) in the trendy 'lounges' of Bangalore and Puna. So I'm not sure 'local' has any relevance at all nowadays.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #11 on: 01 October, 2014, 10:03:31 am »
Eventually it will, but looking at the evidence from Newcastle it's a long way off.
A Stevenage? based owner, a London born manager with no obvious allegiance or previous history in the North of England, a team with a few locals and the rest as imports, yet still a sell out at home games.

Likewise at Old Trafford, although the veneer is fading a bit , they will still be a sell out at home.
Gigg's class of 82 consortium have just developed a hotel near OT and before it has opened someone has booked it solid for all the weekends when MU are at home.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #12 on: 01 October, 2014, 10:41:51 am »
The game known to USAnians as "football" is even less local than proper football - the draft system sees to that - yet local support for locally-based teams seems alive and well.  Though I'm not sure what happens when a team ups sticks and moves halfway across a continent.
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Jaded

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #13 on: 01 October, 2014, 10:44:17 am »
Of course, Bristol Rovers will go straight back up. :hysterical laughing smiley:
It is simpler than it looks.

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #14 on: 01 October, 2014, 10:54:49 am »
Their shirts for next season will be made of Sainsbury's bags.
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Mr Larrington

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #15 on: 01 October, 2014, 10:57:50 am »
Their shirts for next season will be made of Sainsbury's bags.

I thought the Dutch international team's already were (peers nervously around for seven foot Cloggies bearing grudges)
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Snakehips

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #16 on: 01 October, 2014, 11:10:41 am »
Their shirts for next season will be made of Sainsbury's bags.
Great news, it means I've already got a couple of replica shirts. I think I'll swap my allegiance.
An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #17 on: 06 October, 2014, 11:05:03 am »
Just thinking about this a bit more; maybe it's not so much the death of local support as the rise to dominance of a few superhyper teams. So everyone, everywhere supports one of Chelsea, MU, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich (etc). Good but not supergood no longer is enough, it's top or dead. You could say it's the embodiment of that No Fear t-shirt slogan ('Second place is first loser'). Whose shirts does Major Tom do the kids of Manchester and Barcelona wear?
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #18 on: 06 October, 2014, 08:00:53 pm »
City fans liked to claim that there weren't any United fans in Manchester (i.e. Mancunians all supported City). Not true of course, and, now that City are becoming a super-team too, not much of a differential.

However, we lived to the south of Manchester, so City, at Maine Road, were our local team. OK, Stockport County were a bit nearer!

We only went to the odd match as a treat anyway though, so we're probably not representative.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #19 on: 08 October, 2014, 10:36:30 am »
City fans liked to claim that there weren't any United fans in Manchester (i.e. Mancunians all supported City). Not true of course, and, now that City are becoming a super-team too, not much of a differential.

However, we lived to the south of Manchester, so City, at Maine Road, were our local team. OK, Stockport County were a bit nearer!

We only went to the odd match as a treat anyway though, so we're probably not representative.

I could have written your entire post drossall.

I'm a United fan from Stockport (as were about 50% of my mates, the other 50% being Citeh fans).

What people get confused about is that United have millions of non-Manc fans AS WELL AS local fans, whereas Hull don't.


Anyway...here is news about the inevitable.  They tabled the idea before but it was clearly just doing the groundwork.
I imagine that Far East/Saudi money will rule over common-sense and tradition.

From BBC

Quote
The Premier League is once again considering the idea of playing competitive matches abroad.
The concept of a '39th game' was aborted back in 2008 amid fierce criticism.

But clubs are now understood to be considering playing an existing, rather than extra, round of matches overseas, keeping the season at 38 games.
Talks are at an early stage but such a proposal could come to fruition by the end of the decade

This is one step closer to the US franchise system, one step closer to "Manchester City of Dubai vs Shanghai Chelsea"
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #20 on: 08 October, 2014, 02:17:23 pm »
Not sure if this warrants a thread of its own, but it does refer to franchising so I'll put it here - The Indian Super League!

They mention kids playing barefoot, which echoes what I saw - football is the sport of the dalits and the low cast and the poor (the urban poor at least, I don't know about the rural poor). The middle class young men sit in pubs wearing Chelsea shirts and watching Barcelona, but they don't play, it's just a fashion thing. The vast majority of cricket stars are from high cast and middle class backgrounds, although their fans are the whole of society. But will those Chelsea-wearing middle classes be prepared to support local teams? Perhaps, with Bolly-tastic trappings, they will - but whereas the IPL can compete with the best from England or Australia, it's going to be a long team till "Atletico de Kolkata" do the same and outglam the Atletico de Madrid. And of course when they do, they probably won't be looking to the Bengal slums for their talent.

But it is four years since I was there, that's like fourteen in Europe.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #21 on: 08 October, 2014, 05:29:20 pm »
City fans liked to claim that there weren't any United fans in Manchester (i.e. Mancunians all supported City). Not true of course, and, now that City are becoming a super-team too, not much of a differential.

However, we lived to the south of Manchester, so City, at Maine Road, were our local team. OK, Stockport County were a bit nearer!

We only went to the odd match as a treat anyway though, so we're probably not representative.

I could have written your entire post drossall.

I'm a United fan from Stockport (as were about 50% of my mates, the other 50% being Citeh fans).


One of best mates from uni was from Macclesfield. Him and all his mates were City fans and would go on about how true Mancunians supported City. I always thought that was ironic seeing as they were from Cheshire!

Incidentally, my dad supports United (not particularly passionately). He went to school in Stockport and lived in Wilmslow in his teenage years - which is kind of fitting really, as I believe many United players now live there! I would imagine it was quite different in the 50s...

I still fucking hate United mind  :P
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

mattc

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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #22 on: 08 October, 2014, 06:01:57 pm »
Perhaps the top 4 could fuck off to the oil states for playoffs -  and gold limousines to each winnning player.

Then the rest of us can ignore them and watch proper sport. It's not like the fans in the rest of the permiership - let alone the other 3 divisions - give a monkeys about which billionaires' plaything is "best".

p.s. Peter, im sure you posted exactly the same views a few years back. And Lee said all the same things in response. So they must be true!
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Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #23 on: 08 October, 2014, 06:12:15 pm »
 ;D

I'd be happy for the top 4 to go for the whole season!

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Football will eat itself
« Reply #24 on: 09 October, 2014, 08:44:24 am »
BBC today.

Quote
England could play home games around the country from 2018 if an NFL team bases itself at Wembley.
The Football Association is obliged to hold matches at the stadium until 2017 but wants an American Football franchise to replace those revenues.

So there is serious talk about an American Football team basing itself at Wembley.

I really do think this will be the model for the high-revenue sports in 20 years.

Ironically NFL stands for National Football League.



Mattc, you missed a meeting on gold limousines.  Do try and keep up, this is El Hadji Diouf’s



He could have saved himself £100,000 and asked me to spray the word "C**T" on a Ford Fiesta (It would have achieved the same result and I'd have done it for free).

A triple whammy of terrible taste:

1 - Chrysler Edit - Cadillac (even worse)
2 - Escalade
3 - Gold
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.