[TV] 'Super Greed' Sky documentary.

Stato said:

Watched this tonight. It was interesting looking back at this with a bit of perspective. Obviously Sky didn't pursue the similarities between this and the founding of the Premier League. No mention of Alan Sugar being on the phone to Sky telling them to blow ITV's bid out of the water and no link made between the Premier League's relentless pursuit of world TV audiences and the positions in which the European owners find themselves.

It seemed obvious that those who planned the breakaway made an absolute dog's breakfast of the whole business. It was an amateurish shambles. I found it interesting to consider the part that the need for secrecy played in this. These were incredibly rich people who must be used to planning deals, but then setting in motion teams of people to make their desires reality. Without the accountants, the lawyers, the PR & Marketing, etc. without agreed governance structures, all of which was seemingly having to follow the announcement because of the cloak and dagger nature of their stitch up of UEFA, they themselves didn't seem to know who was doing what and to what end.

The documentary's point of view seemed to be that the big problem was a lack of understanding of football culture and fans and that the response to the proposal from fans, politicians etc, particularly in England put paid to the plans. Although this was an appealing narrative that plays to an audience of people who'd like to think that collective action can beat the kind of naked greed that it was faced with, the story was nowhere near as simple. They weren't just facing angry Chelsea fans, they were facing international sporting bodies, politicians, pre-existing legal agreements and owners of other clubs throughout Europe.

Parrish appears throughout and he describes how he bought Palace. Now, I'm not raking over the usual coals to have a dig at Palace, but if you know the story as we do, you'd be aware that his purchase of the club left some innocent parties decidedly out of pocket. I suspect that he would argue that this was sad, but unavoidable if he was to salvage the club. However, I suspect that Agnelli at Juve and Perez at Real would make the same argument about their actions in this matter.

The whole thing left me even more pessimistic about the future of the sport. Nothing seems to have been done about the unsustainable practices and mismanagement that have led to these multi-million businesses being run into the ground. I read in today's paper that the big names are still making demands for more, asking for ECL qualification through previous coefficients if their other advantages don't get them there automatically. The addition, since the event, of another nation state ownership will obviously just make the unsustainable competitive inflation worse.

It was yet another reminder that this era will be remembered as the period of history when everything good in the world was ruined by the need to monetise it.

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