Go On, F**k Off The Lot Of You

Looking forward to us playing Real Madrid 6 times a year.

 

Football's willingness to be a giant reputational washing machine is about to be tested.

 

Quite a few fixtures will be played there as well no doubt

 

This 64 team thing is a dead cat. To make it seem like they’re listening and that it’s open to all. They aren’t.

If you think Barcelona or Madrid are willing to share (club saving) TV revenues with 62 other clubs or that the PL teams, currently receiving a horribly unbalanced size of the UK pot would move to this, then I have a bridge to sell you. 64 teams isn’t a super league, it’d be even worse than the Champions League for dead fixtures.

Sooner they all leave to go to their 12 club closed competition the better. Leave the real football to the others.

 

Man United have rejected the proposal.

This could be brilliant. The European elite tearing themselves apart and ending up split between two different competitions.

 

It look like the kids asses LSD to my breakfast espresso *again*:

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...oost-court-of-justice-ruling-uefa-fifa-eu-law

 

Wait until you see what UEFA have done to the Champions League and their other competitions from next season. It’s basically a big free for all league setup, albeit everyone doesn’t play everyone else.

 

I’ll give it a season at best, maybe not even that.

 

I think fans will hate it, but presume there’s a tv deal tied into it so wouldn’t be shocked if it limps on longer than that.

 

The new 'Swiss League' format for the Champions League will be dreadful. Once the media switches its attention to it and realise precisely how it works, there will be hours and hours, pages and pages of groaning and grumbling about it being complicated and/or unfair.

It's probably not especially complicated for people who can think clearly, nor will it be especially unfair, but the basic lack of jeopardy will make 6 of the 8 group stage matchdays barely watchable. It'll take eight matchdays lasting from September to the end of January to whittle 36 teams down to 24. Okay, so the top eight advance to the last 16, while 9th to 24th have to go through a play-off but there's not enough at stake. There'll be so many games where the teams are more or less through with nothing major to play for.

I heard a pundit on Sky saying that the dream for the suited brainiacs behind the Super League is to have a competition where Liverpool play Barcelona, Real Madrid play Bayern and Man City play PSG on a weekly basis. I genuinely can't think of anything more dreary. These clubs are already over-exposed, corporate juggernauts.

 

Yes and the answer will be to **** with the national pyramid by reducing the Premier League and having the teams in Europe join the domestic cups even later. I don't care what the top teams do in Europe it just pisses me off when everyone else has to change to suit them.
I fully agree with the title of the thread.

 

I’m always irritated by commentators and pundits being desperate to see “our teams” win in Europe. These are effectively multi-national juggernauts and the only English/British thing about them is the location of their home ground. Unless you are actually a fan of one of these clubs, I would have thought you would be quite happy to see them lose.

 

Back in the day I always supported English/British teams in Europe . There was 1 team in the European cup , 1 in the cup winners and 3 in the UEFA cup . It was knockout and come November there were only 1 or 2 teams left . The matches were more infrequent so I didn't have to "support" Manure, Citeh on Tuesdays , Arse and Noocarsle on Weds and several other teams who play in the Thursday night league.
Every other week .
Perhaps this is why no one really cares anymore unless you support a big team ?

 

Yes absolutely. Back then it was generally british-owned english clubs with largely british players and I can remember being delighted when Liverpool, Nottm F and Villa won their cups. Now I absolutely don't care and don't ever watch the champs league matches.

 

Why not end international football - England are never going to win the World Cup or the Euros, so what's the point of it? - and let the Big 12 (or whatever they call themselves) have their own league every summer. They can spend the extra lolly they get from the summer league on more players, so they can't complain of being tired when the domestic league starts again in the autumn. Knocking international matches on the head will allow the domestic league season to be shortened by about a month (no more crappy international breaks) and free up the summer schedules - so loads of time to fit in a 2-game-a-week European super league. Sounds like a winner to me

 

No, it's Real Madrid and Barcelona who'll be sining "can we play you every week?" to each other. The alternative will be playing Jeddah City or Jeddah United, or possibly the Moldovan champions (no disrespect).

 

The danger is that (if it happens) they'll hoover up 50 players so they have separate Fifa and Super League squads.

 

I'm the same. I hate the overblown pretentiousness of the whole thing, even the God-awful theme sets my teeth on edge.
It might sound appropriate in a cathedral if a head of state is being buried, but as the precursor to a game of football it's ridiculous.

 

My analogy, what really annoys me, MOTD only cares about the P.L. In the old days they showed highlights from a 2nd division game and/or 3rd/4th division. Hence when in the late 70’s early 80’s we were storming through the divisions we were on MOTD a few times! All league tables were shown every week! Now if you aren’t in the P.L. According to MOTD you don’t exsist, until you get promoted then they can’t get enough of you for a season or two!

It’s all for the big clubs, everyone else is irrelevant until they accidentally join them!

 

Is that right ? It may well be, but I only remember The Big Match showing lower league games, and given that was a local network program, we would often feature, as opposed to say “a Blackburn”. Maybe MoTD did too, I just don’t recall.

 

Like TUT says, I don’t remember this at all.

 

MOTD would indeed show highlights of games from Division Two, Three and Four occasionally. It wasn't a regular thing by any means, and sometimes the choice was for logistical reasons – say a Division One game was postponed and it was the only alternative.

Between 1964 and 1992 (when MOTD won the rights to show highlights of the Premier League and it became the show it is today), Watford appeared 43 times, the great majority of those when we were FA Cup matches or in the top flight.

Our first appearance on MOTD was in January 1970 – the FA Cup fourth round tie against Stoke City. We were on a small handful of times as a Div 2 and 3 club in the 1970s and as we started our rise up the divisions we made a handful more appearances.

We were on MOTD in spring 1978 – the Fourth Division game against Southend at Vicarage Road (1-1). The other match that day was Division One's Everton v Ipswich.

We were on three times as a Division Three club in 1978-79 – Gillingham A won 3-2, Rotherham H drew 2-2 and Swindon A lost 2-0.

1979-80 Div 2 - lost 5-0 at Sunderland

1981-82 Div 2 - Cardiff H 0-0, Luton H 1-1, Blackburn A 2-1, Leicester H 3-1.

As you say, The Big Match, was regionalised and we were on that a lot more frequently as a lower division clun.

 

I know for a fact that at one time (this would be in the 70s) the BBC were contracted to show a quota of games from all divisions over the season. My father heard John Motson say this when he spoke at a local event. If I remember, they had to show two games from the 4th division, about 5 or 6 from the third and more from the second. There were only two games shown per week, except in Cup weeks when it was three. Our 4th division game v Southend was shown in 1978 after we were already champions and they were second.

 

Great research ETG

 

Thanks - yes I remember all those games on the TV (except Rotherham) but had wrongly assumed they had to be on TBM (like the 2-0 win vs Newport when Mercer and Downes scored?).

 

Unfortunately the balance of power between money and competition tipped irrevocably in favour of 'money' a long time ago now. Since then, all attempts to redress have been pure artifice