As my father once said, some people are born football fans; it is for football they live and nowt else.
Liverpool’s Fernando Torres met one such fan:
“I will never forget a man crossing the street I met a short time after I got [to Liverpool]—he said to me that he worked all week just to think of the pleasure that would be waiting for him at the stadium.”
Future owners of British football clubs need to know how deep the passion runs and then ask themselves not if they can match that passion (for they can’t) but if they want the added responsibility of also owning the clubs’ heartbeat.
Football fans need to read Martin Samuel’s fantastic and frightening article, “English football at risk from French revolution”:
It is easy to blow a hole in French intellectual supremacy with one fact: Lyons have won the league title for the past seven seasons (and are seven points clear at present), making the league run by the DNCG the least competitive throughout Uefa’s 53 members, with one exception: Moldova. . . .
The greatest flaw in the DNCG proposal is its warped concept of fairness. This involves a club using only their natural resources, meaning that Roman Abramovich could not invest to make Chelsea bigger but would have to work within the existing financial structure and get nowhere. Jack Walker could not reinvent Blackburn Rovers and there would be no hope that an oil-rich Manchester City might upset the established order in the coming seasons.
There are a lot of things I like about France; football, however, is not one of them. The last thing football needs, especially English football, is more bureaucratic involvement. Then again, that’s the last thing anyone needs.
Setatnta pundit and former Chelsea midfielder Craig Burley’s absolutely right; if we sterilise the beautiful game any further we’ll end up with netball:
I keep hearing, “Just because he played the ball it doesn’t mean it’s not a free kick”. For the life of me I don’t understand that. There are all these buzz phrases, “momentum”, “overaggression”, “trailing leg”, but if you win the ball first how’s it not a fair challenge? Like it or not, every challenge has the potential to cause injury, you can’t get rid of that. Not every player can be Cesc Fabregas or Robinho.
The talent of some is as ball-winners, they’ve worked on those skills all their careers and they’re necessary to the team. My worry is what happens to them? Go to any ground in Britain and a 50-50 challenge will get bums off the seats as much as a good shot or pass. Fans want to see the passion.
Besides the prawn sandwich brigade, there are four other people in attendance at matches who don’t understand the game: the ref, the linesmen, and the fourth official.
A brilliant article by the Times’ Martin Samuels, “Sepp Blatter finds no refuge in Foreign Legion.”
Indeed, there was no golden age of club ownership in which pure and generous benefactors with unimpeachable business ethics and a world view taken straight from the films of Frank Capra moved through the marketplace dispensing joy and a generous bounty. All that has changed is that as the economic power of the Premier League has spread worldwide, so the identity of those who are interested in harnessing that power as a means to an end has spread, too. Some will be better for their clubs than others; it was ever thus.
You honestly think Blatter, et al, would be raising this stink if the money were flowing into Spain or Italy?
UEFA president Michel Platini’s beginning to sound like FIFA president Sepp Blatter, a man who doesn’t know to keep his mouth closed:
Do you want in Liverpool an Arab sheikh as president with one Brazilian coach and nine or 11 African players?
Where is Liverpool in that? We have to make some rules.
I guess Frenchman Platini forgets his spell at Italian club Juventus from 1982 – 1987.
From Sky Sports:
Football Association chairman Lord Triesman has warned a salary cap may need to be enforced in English football.
No! I’d rather football go bankrupt and die than enforce such punitive measures. Who needs or wants parity when Hull is third in the table? I truly despise socialism of any kind.