Mbappe And The Saudi League Etc.

It genuinely surprises me that anyone has much of an interest in European competitions anymore, let alone could find some for any new league. We are thoroughly saturated with football. It’s not like the old days when a foreign game was a rare and exotic thing. I can barely raise the energy to watch Watford.

It came home to me watching how self-regarding and boring England’s women footballers are becoming that **** me, it’s been like this with the men for years. The domination of despotic regimes is near to being the final straw.

I watch far more cycling, a sport that has reached dizzying new heights of performance and entertainment, possibly even (mostly) without the aid of performance enhancing drugs. Netflix’s Tour de France documentary shows how.

 

They should not be given the choice to stay in the domestic leagues.

 

Don't speak too soon. There are cycling teams owned by the UAE, Bahrain and Ineos with the Saudis poised to make big strides over the next couple of years too!

 

True, but the impact of those first two has been to raise the bar on European teams and improve the sport. Gone is the Team Sky domination through the same old tactics. It’s now eyeballs out racing.

The effect of big money on football is largely parasitic.

 

They are both entirely European teams, in terms of their legacy, infrastructure and management, they're just badged and backed by Middle Eastern money. And, to be fair, neither has really invested to such an extent as to change the game in the way Saudi Arabia has targeted football. I was being slightly facetious in my earlier comment, but I know that Saudi Arabia see cycling as suitably low-hanging fruit and may well make big strides in the next year or two. The Saudis could basically buy the entire sport for the price of a couple of N'Golo Kantés!

This is a broad point of debate but I'd argue the eyeballs out racing is down to a variety of factors – chiefly the fact that there's now so much data available – the so-called Strava-fication effect meaning that even juniors know precisely the numbers required for a particularly performance. Add to that, the fact that the courses have generally shortened, the routes plotted have become more dynamic, and the reduction in team size at the grand tours has had an impact. When the teams were initially reduced to eight it led to more cautious tactics but since the Covid break the opposite has happened. Besides, Jumbo-Visma (a Dutch team) has arguably done more to alter the dynamic of how to chase and defend the yellow jersey at the Tour than anyone else.

 

Good points all.

With cycling, money has improved a sport which is still very accessible to fans. With football, the mega-millions in the last decade haven’t improved it and leads many fans to feel alienated from it.

Jumbo suffered from predictable suspicion following this year’s win. I really hope their ability to rip up a race for our enjoyment isn’t one day going to come crashing down.

 

And now the Saudi Pro League says it wants just that. And UEFA's chief of football told a Croatian paper that that's ******** (which may mean "show us the money").