Super Kick-about

Soccer to some

From our Swindon Correspondent:

From Sky

Plans for a European super league would be “very damaging” for football and “we support football authorities in taking action”, Boris Johnson has said.

The prime minister tweeted that the proposals “would strike at the heart of the domestic game, and will concern fans across the country”.

How 12 private businesses in a field as irrelevant to the common good as football choose to organise themselves really shouldn’t be the business of the Prime Minister, especially during a pandemic. This isn’t an electricity or water cartel. It’s a bunch of blokes kicking a ball around on a Saturday afternoon for entertainment.

He added: “The clubs involved must answer to their fans and the wider footballing community before taking any further steps.”

And they do. Don’t like it, stop giving your money to Man United. Instead of supporting a club halfway across the country that you only started supporting because they were the winners when you were a child, go and find your local non-league side, with cheap prices, terraces and a bunch of local people, where that geographical name still means something. Or get into fly fishing.

Of course, it’s most likely that football fans will grumble about this and then just cough up the money, like they always do, so why wouldn’t the clubs do this?

0 0 votes

Article Rating

Tim Worstall

Next There Is, In Fact, Considerable Economic Value In The Earnd Scheme »

Previous « But Why Would It Take 18 Months To Restart Eurostar?

View Comments

Spike says:

April 19, 2021 at 12:52 pm

Likewise, small US cities that can't support even a minor-league baseball team often get a short-season club using the most serious college athletes. Same sport, same experience, imperfect play, but a way not to feed Major League Baseball and its political crusades.
- Bloke on M4 says:
  
  April 19, 2021 at 2:56 pm
  
  and to me, why support some mega club in a distant city? What connection do you have with them?
John B says:

April 19, 2021 at 1:06 pm

Boris-Two-Faces who is all for free markets and competition except when he’s not.
- Bloke on M4 says:
  
  April 19, 2021 at 3:03 pm
  
  That's overwhelmingly the state of the Conservative Party. People like Liz Truss are rarities.
james morgan says:

April 19, 2021 at 7:10 pm

Right. What is all the fucking fuss about? And WTF is Boris getting involved with this - and on the wrong fucking side. It's a free fucking market - they can do what the fuck they like. If it's attractive people will pay money to see it - if not they won't. END OF FUCKING STORY.
Boganboy says:

April 20, 2021 at 4:47 am

Since I find football, indeed all sport, extraordinarily boring ever since I dodged it at school, I must admit I simply couldn't care less.
- Michael van der Riet says:
  
  April 20, 2021 at 6:06 am
  
  I kind of like beach volleyball, to watch I mean.
Bongo says:

April 21, 2021 at 10:12 pm

Just suppose, as a thought experiment, that the proposed ESL had a plan to stop brain damage from heading the ball and to stop players taking the ball into the corner in the last 5 minutes of the game.
We would never know if these were good ideas for spectators and that worker protections for workers were being enhanced.
Because government over-reach - for government is a system of utter filth when it dealing with sport - we would never know if it worked.