AmexRuislip
Retired Spy 🕵️♂️
Apologises if fixtures, but I found this piece/rant quite an enlightening read.
Any pretence that players’ health was any driver for professional football’s return lies in tatters. The big-money European leagues have cranked into big-money-making gear. But the small-money leagues have given up on season 2019/20.
England’s Premier League (EPL) starts this week because England’s football broadcasters have said “**** safety, pay me,” like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. And just as coronavirus has exposed societal inequalities, so it is with England’s Football League (EFL); its biggest-money event, the Championship, restarts next Saturday while its second and third-tier clubs voted “nah, **** that” (I’m paraphrasing), apart from the money-spinning play-offs. Meanwhile players continue to catch the virus.
The timeline of league suspensions was demonstrably money-driven. All seasons below the National League ended on 26th March. The National League stopped on 22nd April. League Two said “enough” on 15th May, League One likewise last week. And Scotland’s Professional League (SPFL) has only just finished with the consequences of its decision to curtail 2019/20. Debates over SPFL reconstruction rumbled on, because certain clubs were ready to increase an already-bloated Scottish professional set-up, when money is at its most premium in that set-up, just to avoid relegation.
More.......
Any pretence that players’ health was any driver for professional football’s return lies in tatters. The big-money European leagues have cranked into big-money-making gear. But the small-money leagues have given up on season 2019/20.
England’s Premier League (EPL) starts this week because England’s football broadcasters have said “**** safety, pay me,” like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. And just as coronavirus has exposed societal inequalities, so it is with England’s Football League (EFL); its biggest-money event, the Championship, restarts next Saturday while its second and third-tier clubs voted “nah, **** that” (I’m paraphrasing), apart from the money-spinning play-offs. Meanwhile players continue to catch the virus.
The timeline of league suspensions was demonstrably money-driven. All seasons below the National League ended on 26th March. The National League stopped on 22nd April. League Two said “enough” on 15th May, League One likewise last week. And Scotland’s Professional League (SPFL) has only just finished with the consequences of its decision to curtail 2019/20. Debates over SPFL reconstruction rumbled on, because certain clubs were ready to increase an already-bloated Scottish professional set-up, when money is at its most premium in that set-up, just to avoid relegation.
More.......
