GT49er
Well-known member
Errmmm .................. Irony alert; irony alert; irony alert .............................
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[Football] American invasion of the Premier League - the end of promotion/relegation?
- Thread starter Swansman
- Start date
Exactly what I posted earlier. Of the ESL clubs less than half are American owned. And, let's be honest, when players are demanding 400k a week to play you have to be a billionaire to own a big club.
Reducing that to simply "aren't the yanks awful" IS political. God forbid if anything happened to Tony and his family really wanted to sell (can't see it) I'd take an American who already owned a sports team over there over the ****ing murdering Saudis every day of the week.
Exactly.
The bizarre narrative often stems from a long held America and Americans are awful mindset, for older lefties wrapped up in choosing the wrong side in the cold war. Enjoying all the pluses of the Western democracies, whilst admiring murderous USSR/DDR from the armchair. For some younger folk, again enjoying all the pluses of the West, doing some YouTube ‘research’ to hate the US, whilst neatly airbrushing out the mass murderous Saudis, Chinese and Russian regimes. There are people, even round here, who in Feb/Mar/Apr would’ve told you that Zelensky and concerned Swedish/Finnish politicians were liars. Now gone to ground, as Ukrainian death pits are uncovered. Unbelievable.
Neville's Breakfast
Well-known member
You are absolutely right to highlight the absurdity of the moral equivalence argument between American owners and those from places like the Middle East. I also take your point about experience with sports teams. Still can’t help worrying though about where this is all leading. We are already so far from the football experience of my youth and granted in some ways that isn’t a bad thing. It’s really difficult to put in red lines when we have slipped so far already. However, I do think one of the positive developments of modern football is the pyramid system which relies on promotion and relegation. The Americans would probably have loved the old system of 4th division club chairmen getting together over a gin and tonic to decide if there was to be any promotion or relegation with non league that year. Or they would if they were interested in 4th division football, with the Wrexham owners being an honourable exception. There are some great modern examples like Newport County of the positive impact of the pyramid. I can honestly say I enjoyed our promotion from League 2 back at Withdean as much as the PL experience. I don’t think Americanization will necessarily destroy the game as plenty don’t share what I enjoy so the stadiums will probably remain full. Not for me though. I enjoy football clubs not football players or managers and would rather our game gave maximum opportunity to the likes of Accrington rather than constantly trying to appeal to Liverpool and Man Utd etc.
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Westy, are there really people on NSC campaigning not only against America but on behalf of Putin? These older lefties, as you put it, are rather thin on the ground. The last one I came across was a character in the TV series 'Spooks'.
Swanny is an exception, but his take on geopolitics, science and technology and the 'deep state' are the antithesis of his understanding of football, and are best ignored (sorry, Swanny!).
I wouldn't conflate that stuff (old communists, bitterly sipping black tea while drawing on a roll up) with general anti Americanism. It is quite reasonable to look at Trump, QAnon and the other nonsense out there with some alarm, and a sense of 'there by the grace of god go we', but like [MENTION=616]Guinness Boy[/MENTION], I suspect most of us would happily get used to American owners as long as they were decent.
And I'm sure most of us recognize the difference between Americans taking the opportunity to benefit from the money factory that is the EPL, versus the Saudi 'state' sportswashing their way to continued supplies of arms (and indeed a nice invitation to the Queen's funeral).
There will be pressure for a closed shop at some point, whether it's a new cuddly ESL or no relegation from the EPL. But it won't be a result of "the Yanks taking over". We know fan power killed the last ESL and as I posted at the start of this thread the TV will not have a closed shop PL so it's not a certainty.
You know the nsc narrative, we’ve talked about it before …. America and Americans are very often disliked, singled out. In the past, you agreed, we talked about Corbynistas and their wider supporters who think that way as legacy of the Cold War.
Plenty of others feel the same, invariably people who’ve never been to the US, armchair haters. A chattering class of I hate Israel, therefore I hate the US, or I hate capitalism therefore I hate the US.
Turning to football, this surfaced at the time of the ESL. A not in itk liar tried to blame the entire thing on Fenway Sports Group and the Glazers, they said Abramovich and Lewis/Levy were innocent passengers. When esteemed football writers throughout identified Perez and Agnelli as the drivers. Guess what, they still are now.
In fact, the one thing that might actually hasten a closed shop EPL is more competition for City. History tells us that the less competitive a league is, the MORE levers are put in to make the rest of the league exciting. Playoffs for promotion, the top / bottom six split in Scotland because that's always a two horse race, increased European qualification. MORE meritocracy. And needed because all the time City have Haaland you may as well give them the trophy in August.
OK. Maybe I find it easier to ignore people who talk bollocks than you do
I wasn't aware of a conspiracy to keep Americans out of football while promoting the interests of Abramovic and Levy (and I am not sure what these two have in common, apart from their ethnicity). That's news to me
If this was just the witterings of someone on NSC, then I refer you to my first comment, m'lud
Perfidious Albion
Well-known member
I dislike any foreign ownership of clubs. Few have shown any real commitment other than a financial interest . Despite the money they bring, I don’t think football is any the better for it. I dislike foreign ownership of public utilities too, it gives foreign owners control over things we need.
Not Andy Naylor
Well-known member
I couldn't agree more. Ignorance, as so often, is the enemy here. Some people who have never spent any time in the USA generalise about Americans and American institutions but things are more complex than they think.
I'm definitely on the left politically, but I've had a lot to do with American sports professionally and I think they do a lot of things extremely well in the context of the USA. The NFL, for example, is run on extremely democratic, almost socialist, lines. And they certainly wouldn't be having blood-soaked Saudi money anywhere near the ownership of any of their teams. But not everything that they do there would work here, because we have different systems - college sports etc are not a factor.
Some team owners make an effort to understand different overseas territories, some try less hard. Fenway made a mistake over the Super League and admitted it, and the way they have developed Liverpool is similar to the way they have managed the Boston Red Sox - resisting any temptation to move away from an iconic home ground in favour of developing the existing site. Kroenke, the Glazers, Boehly - you can't lump them all in together. .
Imho Boehly’s silly aspirations for the EPL are almost an irrelevance. The pyramid will remain, parliament’s intervening, the people want it to stay.
I follow the subject of football finances a little. Under the nsc radar Arsenal and Spurs are spending on a different level from before and some. Chelsea and Manure spending vast sums, ManC cherry picking the world’s best players with astonishing wages. We all know what the Saudis will do at Newcastle. Will FSG want to join in by starting to subsidise the Liverpool playing budget, who knows?
I see an unstoppable top 6 or 7 taking shape, perhaps only interrupted by the occasional nuts CEO and manager choices ruining it for a season.
6 of those 7 have really upped the financial ante, no one’s talking about it. Instead the Monday Night Football club dribble over the miraculous coaching of Ten Hag or Conte. We won’t see the equivalent of a Pompey or Wigan winning the FAC again imho.
PSG and Bayern have their leagues tied up for as long as they choose.
As for the rest, the hope is with outstanding scouting and an alchemist of a manager.
Good, clear points.
I have moved sufficiently along from my 1980s left wingery to accept a mixed economy, but it is essential the government create laws that protect the state (and the people in it).
Unfortunately we have had weak 'free market' governance for too long, culminating with a slipshod charlatan almost signing over our telecoms (and the ability to control our society) to the Chinese state company, Huawei Technologies. It took the secret service to stop Johnson shitting away our future with as much though as he'd give to the offer of a soapy tit-****.
With strong rules, it wouldn't matter who owned the UK clubs. The EPL is such a cash cow now there is really no excuse for not cranking up the rules a bit.
For example, if it isn't a rule presently, then why not make the rule that promotion and relegation cannot be abolished? It would be a lot easier than banning foreign ownership. With the best will in the world, that horse has bolted.
Thank you, I always appreciate your knowledge and writing.
I know the Liverpool finances inside out. FSG have only ever put in medium term interest-free loans to fund the three infrastructure projects, club cash flows pre pandemic were so good, chunky repayments were made. Yep, redeveloping the stadium in situ as they did in Boston.
On the US, Trump received 63m votes in 2016, less than for Hilary. I’m not going to hate a friend to this nation of 329m folk due to 1/5th of the populace voting for racist bully. I love the US as much I do all the western European nations I’ve visited.
- Thread starter
- #95
I don't think thats the "NSC narrative" - more likely a few individuals (like me) disagreeing with the take that America is some kind of force of good. 50+ overthrown governments, endless wars that were initiated by brainwashing the public into believing that they were actually bombing democracy and freedom into a country, later turning out they killed all those humans for business purposes. Some people simply don't like that. And those same people are perhaps struggling with the idea that FSG accidently slipped into trying to (completely out of touch with reality) trademark the word Liverpool, joining the ESL, raising ticket prices with 15% from one season to another and furlough non-playing staff. Yes, they had to back out of it not to anger their customers, but these things were not mistakes - they were deliberate acts of greed and only in Narnia would they turn down further opportunities to suck out as much cash from football as possible regardless of sacred traditions and whatnot. They just don't want to be in the forefront of it as they don't want their brand to get dirty.
Did you put in a good word for Putin here, as a kind of saviour against Ukraine/NATO?
Not a good look now is it. Pits of murdered Ukrainian elderly and women being discovered.
In 1938 your apologist genocidal fascist views would’ve made you a mate of William Joyce and Oswald Mosley.
- Thread starter
- #97
"What about Putin?" is the most common response when someone brings up American atrocities. Does Putin make American atrocities better?
My apologist genocidal facist views? Coming from a bloke defending a country responsible for more invasions than any other country.
Looks like your choice of thread title wasn’t an accident after all.
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Today Ukrainians are being murdered in the same way that Hitler, Stalin and 1990’s Serbians carried out their evil.
Over the last 8 months you haven’t given a shit about that.
It’s very human. Far removed from quasi internet research on David Icke and other sauces.
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- Thread starter
- #100
I'm not allowed to talk about the war in Ukraine. Banned from the thread.
People accept Western atrocities - because they think we only kill people who they find racially inferior (like Arabs) or people who they find ideologically flawed (like socialists and anti-imperialists), which is something you and others not only defend but also enjoy. Things like USA overthrowing Allende to put Pinochet in charge and then having him execute thousands of leftists is like a warm tasty cup of tea for you. 50 000 children starving to death in Yemen as a consequence of the Saudi-American intervention.. pure joy for you guys, or why else would you be so eager to defend American actions through pointing elsewhere?
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