And just as a testament to how things churn over the decades, Villarreal never played in La Liga until the 1998-99 season. They were immediately relegated, while in the following season "Super Depor" Deportivo La Coruña won La Liga and finished in the top three in each of the next four seasons. Deportivo La Coruña are now in the third division (Segunda B).
That's awesome that you know the president of Valencia! They have a great history and its sad that clubs like that can only really even aspire to the bubble these days when only 15-20 years ago they won La Liga twice and also made two Champions League finals in a row.
The local supporters, who were being squeezed with £80 tickets because their owners care more about the global market than them, would stop supporting the club that treated 38 games as friendlies so that the profits margins went up.
I mean.... not to get all V&N but.... yeah! This is what us on the left have been saying forever. Whether it's footy or Amazon or energy... yeah.
Dunno. Since the underlying premise is so antithetical to football culture I really don't think you could have.
Frankly I continue to find this perspective bizarre. Champions League qualification based on non-champion league place only started in 1993; before that, only the actual league champions qualified for the European Cup (and many traditionalists still want to go back to this format). Did people have no rooting interest in most games before 1993? And the first division used to have more teams -- the first PL season had 22 clubs, which of course meant more clubs outside both relegation danger and the title hunt. The football league existed from 1888-1955 without any European competition at all -- why did anyone bother watching all those decades' worth of dead rubber friendlies with no European qualification to play for?
seems to me that if a bunch of guys on a Red Sox message board could figure out better ways to attack the problem, getting some PR firm to do it wouldn't have been more difficult.
Watching your local team play in person was the only way to watch soccer. For most of that period, there was no soccer on television. Until the 90s soccer on TV was fairly limited.
Two things made it irredeemable no matter the strength of the messaging:
Well as mentioned upthread or the other thread, they could have figured out ways around that. For example, saying that the top 7 of the EPL would qualify might have changed the look rather than the substance.
Presumably football still belonged to the fans when Berlusconi saved them and bought and bunch of stars.
I think their exact point is that money has driven the sport for entirely too long. And also that the pattern has had a cumulative effect, such that the "latest problems" really are the most severe problems. Football is worse for the average supporter now than it has been at any time in your or my lifetime - more expensive to attend, with greater inequalities within and between leagues, and consequently with leagues less competitive in aggregate and fewer clubs able to win domestic or international honors overall - so it is particularly galling to see the people who have presided over that trend then try to claim to be looking out for the interests of the average supporter.
What a disaster. That Barcelona is so eager to go along with a failed league with Real Madrid reveals a level of desperation I did not expect. Even Atletico was not that desperate to hang around once the other teams bailed.
It is indeed galling to see the leaders claim to be looking out for the interests of the average fan. But are things really worse for the average supporter, though, as opposed to the average local supporter? I remember growing up in Singapore in the 1980s as an Everton supporter, only being able to catch occasional games on the telly, and then coming to America in the 1990s and having to go to the Plough and Stars to watch Premier League games. Now I can watch more Everton games each season here in the US, and my friends back in Singapore can stay up past midnight on weekends to catch every game. That to me is a great improvement. The game has grown internationally tremendously and consequently there's more money flowing into it, and that part of the supporters' group message about super agents asking for astronomical figures for their players that *have* to be supported by TV rights strikes me as getting the causality the wrong way around. There's huge demand to watch the best players play soccer, and I'd like that money to go to the players more than the owners.
Huh. I was watching Premier League games at the Plough and Stars in the 1990s as well.
It’s not bizarre if you are raised in North American sports culture. Yes - the leagues are sealed but they have playoffs which guarantees fan interest.
Pretty similar, tbh. I mean, I'd rather Spurs finish top 4 every season than win the PL and miss out for multiple seasons. I guess that's kinda the problem.
Oh, I completely agree that access to the game has expanded tremendously for the international supporter and I personally greatly enjoy benefitting from that. My post probably should have been specified more clearly, but I had the domestic supporter in mind, both because that is who the Milan supporter group that kicked off the discussion represents and also because its really the domestic supporter that the powers-that-be are pretending to care about after undermining for so long.
I made a pretty extensive post in the other thread on this topic that I'll link. There have always been big clubs in every league but, overall, I think its pretty clear that there has been a lot less competition and fewer teams capable of winning the title in the last decade in France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the major European cups, when compared to earlier periods. And even in England, supposedly the most competitive league, I'm not sure there is any more real competition at the top today than there was in earlier eras of the Premier League (despite United's dominant run) or prior eras.
I think you're right. To me it was just such a short sighted, arrogant attempt to create a more predictable revenue stream for several reasons:
From how I read the article, it's Juve, Barça, Real Madrid, and Milan who are facing a two year ban. The other clubs have avoided a ban by signing a formal commitment to not pursue a Super League (or are close to such an agreement).
Bullshit. Let's ban like 90% of the teams that drive revenue and eyeballs for 2 years.
Just catching up on this thread — this is a very insightful point.
I think the really important difference in how a lot of the US vs. Euro sports league dynamics have played over the years is that top Euro soccer leagues have external competition and top American sports leagues do not. Big-time European sports owners are jealous of the American sports system because the American sports system is much better at limiting costs as a percentage of revenue. In the status quo, these would-be Super League clubs are already nearly guaranteed a Champions League place (except in England, where were 6 ESL clubs and only 4 CL slots) due to their massive domestic financial advantages anyway. But despite massive global commercialization, domestic dominance, and a steady flow of CL cash, many of them are still very stretched financially. We can understand this as a result of some dumb financial decisions in the transfer market, but owners are more likely to take the view that they are required to keep up with the Joneses.
The chutzpah of these clubs, I swear. It'd be a real shame if they went bankrupt and had to pull a Rangers.
