{"id":636,"date":"2021-04-19T21:00:55","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T21:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/?p=636"},"modified":"2021-04-19T21:00:56","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T21:00:56","slug":"super-league-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/?p=636","title":{"rendered":"Super League Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don\u2019t believe anyone complaining about the European Super League is na\u00efve enough not to believe that football\u2019s all about the money. For as long as there has been chairmen to extract profits from clubs, football has been about the money. The Premier League emerged from the era that housed Ken Bates\u2019s electric fences, Thatcher\u2019s persecution of the poor, and Alan Sugar\u2019s desire to sell more Amstrad Satellite dishes. Treating the fans like dirt whilst happily accepting their coin has been the Modus Operandi<\/em> for the people at the top of the game since time immemorial. The idea that the Premier League was simply a \u201crebranding\u201d because of football\u2019s bad 80\u2019s vibe is laughable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s different this time? The transformation of the top flight from \u201cglitzy repackaged Division 1 games featuring Ronny Rosenthal\u201d to \u201cmoney-making powerhouse featuring all your favourite stars and Nicolas Pepe\u201d was not instantaneous. It was a gradual gentrification, a country and a culture so intrinsically mistrustful of foreigners, slow to change its inward-looking ways. It wasn\u2019t until the \u201994-\u201995 season that we saw more than one foreign import in the top 20 most expensive transfers[1]<\/a>, according to data from transfermarkt.co.uk. Whilst there were many dissenting voices about the formation of the Premier League at the time \u2013 perhaps most notably Alex Ferguson, which has been mentioned elsewhere today \u2013 it was not a root and branch destruction of the very core of its being. All about the money, yes, a repackaging, yes, but it\u2019s essence was the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the gradual change has allowed to happen is a strange communal cognitive dissonance, in that because things didn\u2019t change an awful lot when we went from point A to point B in 1992, and then things didn\u2019t change that much when we went from point B to point C, and so on ad infinitum<\/em>, we\u2019ve been able to convince ourselves that relentless extraction of money that football became wasn\u2019t that bad, because the change from what it originally was so slow. And now, worrying that they won\u2019t have access to neighbouring wells to run dry at some point in the near future, the breakaway clubs have decided that they can create a new, safe, endless well of money that will secure the wallets of their owners for all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was inevitable from the day Alan Sugar informed BSkyB of the value of ITV\u2019s bid for the inaugural Premier League TV rights, and told them to \u201cblow [ITV] out of the water.\u201d It\u2019s all about the money. It always has been, and it always will be, and the fans can go whistle. It\u2019s the natural culmination of a sport that\u2019s become obsessed with money above all else, and the most surprising thing is how surprised people seem to by this absolute \u201crevelation\u201d, which was really something everybody knew all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/a> Cantona from Leeds to Man Utd isn\u2019t counted as an import<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t believe anyone complaining about the European Super League is na\u00efve enough not to believe that football\u2019s all about the money. For as long as there has been chairmen to extract profits from clubs, football has been about the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[114,113,112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.30yardsniper.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}