If The English Premier League Play Games Abroad, Football Is Dead
I'm sure most will have read of the proposals made by the English Premier League this week that another round of games should be added to the league season from the 2010-2011 season onwards with the ten games being played outside of England in whichever city pays the most money for the staging rights. In an even better twist, the "top five" clubs will be seeded so as to avoid playing each other again in yet another attempt to maintain the current hierarchy of the haves and the have nots with no disruption to the status quo. Without one shred of exaggeration, everything about these proposals makes me feel sick to my stomach. The EPL and it's member clubs make no bones these days about the operation being ran as a profit making exercise for the owners and it should come as no surprise that they feel a game a season in destinations such as Dubai, Beijing and Sydney is only fair for the overseas supporters and potential new customers they can attract. Note, I'm now using the Premier League clubs' own vernacular for those who attend matches and buy replica shirts. These people are now classed as customers in the same way that punters buying frozen chickens from Tesco or Sainsbury's are, not fans, simply walking cash machines who are too thick to realise that the days of football as a sport not a business ended for good about fifteen years ago. The erosion of long held values of supporting your local team and following them from the terraces rather than the armchair or the bar stool in the pub is now complete when the very games themselves are being taken to far flung corners of the world in a headlong chase for more yen, dollars and rupees. Never more so than this week have I looked at football and thought the old saying "money is the root of all evil" should be it's official tagline. If this proposal goes through then let the last real football fan turn out the lights, there'll be a customer along in a moment who can fill their boots with what's been left of the beautiful game.
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