Premier League - victory of marketing hype

[Milk Tray Man]

As for the FA Cup, time was that was almost like a national holiday every year. The whole country would grind to a halt and you'd even get people crowding round the display windows of electrical shops in town centres watching it. It didn't matter who was playing, it was a massive occasion that everyone looked forward to. Even those who weren't usually bothered about football would sit down and watch it.

These days though it's just another match, apart from for the fans of the two teams involved. It's not even the climax to the season any more, because you sometimes even get Premiership games being played on the same day, and up to a week later. The whole sense of occasion has gone. I can still reel off the list of FA Cup winners, the beaten finalists and most of the Cup Final goalscorers from the late 60s (which is as far back as I can remember) all the way up to about 1995. And I can do that because it used to be a memorable event.

After that though, all I could tell you is that the usual suspects (Man Utd, Arsenal & Chelsea) have each won it a few times, Man City have won a couple in recent years, Wigan won it a couple of years back and Pompey beat Cardiff one year. But don't ask me the years, let alone who scored or who got beat. Other than that, it's all a blur. Because nowadays it's just another match.

I know that the chairmen of also-ran Prem teams like Hull, Swansea, West Brom, Villa etc. big it up when they go on a bit of a Cup run, but if you were to sit them down at the start of the season and ask them whould they prefer a top 4 finish or a Cup win come May, you could safely bet your pension that just like the "big" clubs, they'd pick the top 4 finish. And the yo-yo clubs like Sunderland would pick staying up. Such a shame the way the oldest (and once most prestigious) cup competition in football has been so devalued.

[Dick Moby]

So you have trained athletes, which I would class them as, and you reckon they are burned out with maybe two games a week ? 180 minutes doing the job you are actually paid for. I appreciate that they train most days but I think I could push myself for a 100k a week.

[MrTickle]

What makes it sad for me regarding the FA Cup is that anyone who started following football in the last 20 years will never experience or understand how much it really meant to fans of bygone eras. As a kid growing up in the 80s I used to dream of watching my club attempting to get to Wembley. I would take my terrace tranny(radio) to school to listen to the draw at lunchtime on a Monday, hoping you get a home tie against a lower league club and that all the big boys would get drawn against each other. It used to mean a lot to the players as well. You only have to look at old videos on Youtube to see how they celebrated winning a semi final for example. Today it's just another game. You used to get proper shocks as well with no excuses. When a club got to a final the town would be decorated in it's colours for the week building up to it. I'm glad I followed football at a time when it was about the glory and not financial gain.

[number 6]

The FA cup was huge 25-30 years ago...now nobody cares about it. Same goes for the ashes cricket, world championship boxing etc. What do they have in common???? Sky got their hands on them.

[David Johnson]

Great post. It conjures up a lost world really well.

[David Johnson]

I think you are right about the intensity being the problem. Clearly it isn't a shortage of dosh that has resulted in British Premier League clubs not doing as well as you might expect in the Champions League and Europa League. And it isn't because they don't have foreign talented players.

The problem seems to be that the Premier League has the reputation of being played at break neck speed. The fans and owners seem to demand that way of playing in many cases. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard commentators, managers etc. explaining why foreign player A, bought for squillions has failed so far in the Premier League "It can take time to adjust to the speed and physicality of the British game".

[Essex Lad]

I harken back to the good old days of the European Cup, CWC and Uefa Cup. Pre-PL English teams did rather well with Forest, Liverpool and Aston Villa all winning the EC and playing 42 1st Division matches and not putting the reserves out for the FA Cup and League Cup. That was intense. Now the big clubs tend to rest their best for the domestic cups ? so is it more intense? It is certainly less physical. Can't see Harris, Stiles, Charlton, Lorimer, Madeley, Reaney (well the whole Leeds side under Revie) staying on the pitch today.

[David Johnson]

When I refer to intensity and physicality, I am not talking about turning people into cloggers, it is more about athleticism.

Although players in the sixties might have played more games, I do not think that they were as fit as the modern day players who's diets have been revolutionised and their fitness levels and physical performance e.g. how many miles they cover in games is monitored to the nth degree.

I remember some of the players in the sixties looked as if they had just come out of the pub having had a few pints and a pork pie which in some cases they had!

[Milk Tray Man]

It wasn't uncommon for players to smoke in those days either. Some of them probably got through half a pack of Woodbines during half time.

[bluewomble858]

now before i get crucified here me out. i have since talked to my therapist about my outburst on another topic on this forum. he agreed i had the right to be angry at what had been said, however, he also told me he believed i over-reacted and i agree that i did. he also told me to come back to this forum because he believes it to be a positive outlet for me to interact with people. as long as i control my temper. looking back in hindsight, i should have not responded the way i did to milk tray man. my therapist suggest that i also extend a olive branch towards milk tray man, so i will apologize to milk tray man for blowing what he said out of proportion and for leting my temper get the best of me. rather or not he accepts is not up to me.

now to the topic at hand. i don't think sky is as much to blame as the american television companies are. i remember in 2006 when i first started to watch football, all we got is one live game and a couple of tape delayed games. sure, ESPN would air euro tournaments and the world cup, but you could hardly find any domestic level stuff unless it was MLS. then fox sports world changed over to fox soccer channel and setanta was added to the directv package and gol tv got the bundesliga rights. all of a sudden in 2008, you got two live premier league games and all the rest taped delayed, you got four serie a games, you got three la liga games, you got a ligue 1 game, you got three to five bundesliga games and you also got some scottish league and eredivisie games. i'm not counting the brazilian, mexican and argentine leagues you also got. football exploded over here.

the way it is going, football (or as much as i hate when americans call if "soccer") will become more popular than anything in this country in 20-30 years. the NFL is going downhill due to the negative publicity the players get off the field (ie ray rice, aaron hernandez and deflategate) and the concussion issue is something parents are taking into consitteration with their children, they are finding that "soccer" is more safe for their children to play than football. baseball is suffering from the steroids era and the lasting effects of it, baseball has'nt really fully recovered from that and the 1994 players strike. basketball is popular, but only really among blacks since then-clippers owner donald sterling (a white guy) tells his mistress not to bring any more black men to his games and the media goes stir crazy for it, yet larry johnson (a black player) said that he believed the NBA should be a all-black league, forgetting that successful players like steve nash, dirk nowitski and kevin love are white basketball players. plus you have niche sports like hockey, NASCAR, golf and tennis that americans can take or leave. sports like rugby and cricket only wish to be a niche sport in america and i get weird looks when i tell people i like rugby and world's strongest man.

the american television networks are seeing that football aka "soccer" is a growing pnenomenon and more americans are jumping on board more than ever. couple that with the fact the american national team is geting better, better to the point of possibly winning the world cup in two or three world cups. most people in england would think of guys like tim howard or clint dempsey or maybe landon donovan when they think of the american national team. but their are other players that deserve to be mentioned, like jozy altidore, brad guzan, graham zusi, maurice edu, kyle beckerman and matt besler.

yes, sky can be blamed for being the premier league's pr department and they don't show the lower league clubs as much as they should. but in reality, they are only doing as the yankee dollar tells them to do consittering NBC spent $250 million to the premier league rights on their network, where they show arsenal, tottenham, chelsea, the manchester clubs and liverpool and those clubs get preferential treatment from the network. heck, we get a one hour premier league review show, those clubs highlights take up 35-40 minutes of a one hour show. they have a three hour block every monday called manchester mondays, where they show the manchester clubs games again with bonus "biased" commentary. plus, you could be watching hull city-crystal palace and you will get a banner across you screen promotiing buying a chelsea shirt at worldsoccershop.com. the more of those clubs shirts are sold to the gloryhunting american public, the more money those clubs make and the more money the television networks make. i know i have watched some birmingham games when they were in the prem where that would happen during the game and i'd scream at the tv screen in my brum shirt "i don't want a f*cking chelsea shirt, piss off."

in conclusion, i wish that there was a way we could meet in the middle. i believe too many foreign owners and players are bad for the league because then you lose the national flavor of the league. the premier league is basically a english league powered by american money so that foreign players from all over the world can play in it and since the fit-and-proper persons test is among the easiest to pass among the five major leagues, it's more tempting for foreign owners to purchess a team for the sake of billionaires bragging to their friends during a round of golf at the country club "i own a football team". germany has it right in only one club (red bull leipzig) is owned by foreigners. the german league has better football, yet since it's not a english speaking league and since it don't get the publicity the premier league gets, they struggle. also, bayern munich dominating don't help the league either. i believe like arsene wegner believes. we will eventually have a european super league where all the major clubs from each league will form a super league and their will be no relegation/promotion to that league, there will be elections. that league will be ran like a country club so that a club that is not viewed favorable to the other clubs don't get into the super league. the premier league, la liga, ligue 1, bundesliga and serie a will all become second division leagues where the winners will have to be elected into the super league, more often than not being denied a spot because they don't have the pedigree or the money to match the other clubs in the super league.

i hope you all have enjoyed reading this. once again, i wish all a very wonderful day and KRO everybody, especially you milk tray man. peace be with you. !peace! & !love!