The Champions League will ‘die a death’ as fans fear the end of ‘f***ed’ football

An emotive Mailbox here with fans in fear that match-going fans are actually pretty irrelevant. This is not about sportswashing but a power grab.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com

What’s the Middle East end game?
I’ve been having a think about this new “fashionable” thing of Middle East countries buying up football clubs, and now lots of players, and wondering what the end game is.

It can’t all just be sportswashing so it got my wee tiny brain working for once. This all seems part of a bigger plan.

I came to the conclusion it’s the power they’re after, and that power will change the game as we know it.

My theory is that within 3-5 years a new Champions League style tournament will created by Saudi (or various Middle East countries), with money for any club involved dwarfing anything the Champions League can offer, and anything the Super League would have offered. This tournament will also include teams from the Middle East, as well as the best teams from the biggest leagues. FIFA will be bought, and top-level football as we know it will be a horrible soulless mess (It’s currently clinging on by the fingertips). The games might take place over there, or here. I’ve not worked that one out yet.

Home-based fans will be outraged, but will play second fiddle to the new modern ‘we just want the best players’ consumer fans, who won’t care. Top-level domestic leagues will be a mess and the Champions League will die a death. With this tournament in place, top level players in their prime and the best young talent will start moving to Saudi for money you couldn’t comprehend. Who knows, owners might even eventually take clubs from their domestic leagues to play in some big pish global league.

When more and more of these clubs are being bought up with Middle East money, those in charge of these clubs will agree to it (it was all part of the plan), and other owners that wanted a super league will also agree to it.

With LIV Golf they bought up individuals to change things because it’s a sport for individuals, with football you have to buy clubs, and that’s what they’re doing.

Is this theory nonsense? It could be, but UEFA must be bricking it. We all should be. It’ll be awful.
Vinnie, LFC, Glasgow

Does football need us, though?
Reading Ian Watson’s article with nodding dismay but what if we’re the ones that are wrong?

We cling to the match-day fan as the alpha customer but is that what clubs need? Covid proved on one hand that yes, the game does need the match-day fan. But they need it for The Product and not for the money.

The alpha customer for the clubs are the match-day tourists. These people buy the TV packages, drop a ton in the club shop, buy beers and nondescript meat pie (WHL memories), they wave the flags. The PIF owned European Super League reboot will still attract these fans. It will still attract the TV money.

The loyal match-day fan is already an afterthought and it’s been this way for decades, even before the Premier League era. And I’m not even thinking of the time when fans were treated like literal animals with such contempt that children were unlawfully killed in a crush which was then covered up by the police. (Not allegedly, proven).

Maybe the PIF ESL v2 does a stand of cheap seats for locals. That’s it isn’t it? That would be enough? Maybe a cap on away ticket prices? Only employing locals at living wage? Maybe host the Boxing Day game in Qatar so that no one has to travel when there’s no trains? That’s all the problems solved right? We get to keep the fans in the stadium and have multi millionaires play football for us. Job done.

To paraphrase a much more serious quote, when United got a noodle sponsor I didn’t speak up, when City loaned themselves Frank Lampard I didn’t speak up, when Chelsea sold their players to their investors I didn’t speak up, now there is no one left to speak for me.
Alex, South London

…Well well well. So you didn’t want a Super League?

Remember Rory? “I don’t care if Chelsea finish 15th every season so long as I can go to Stamford Bridge every week”

Well done!

So now everyone’s off to Saudi and we will end up watching 3rd division football disguised as Premier League by Sky. How will you know? I bet in Australia they think theyre watching top class football too!!
Mo

READ: Fans too divided to stop PIF, Qatar, private equity from conquering football’s soul…

…Really good article from Ian Watson about the prospect of nation state ownership of our national game. Unfortunately the majority of the media are all too happy to look the other way and fawn over the genius of Guardiola et al.

Because make no mistake, Manchester City were the vanguard/template or however you want to term it and Middle Eastern geopolitics dictates that there will be copycats, one-upmanship, ‘we’re more powerful than you’ moves and all the rest.

Hopefully exposure like this will increase awareness amongst fans but I’m not too confident that it’s not going to all end up going to shit due to the tribal nature of the fanbases.
James Outram, Wirral

Addressing Gerard
Lonely articulation of why sportswashing is fine actually whilst articulating why it is in fact bad in this morning’s mailbox. Whatever about its efficacy and the reasons why states and individuals do it. I think we should all largely be uncomfortable with the fact that a sport – literally just a game of 22 people kicking a ball around – SHOULD have to take due consideration of what a country totally unconnected from it thinks about things far removed from the business of kicking a ball around. Forcing fans, leagues etc to have to make moral considerations in the context of a football match is……..bad IMO.

P.S. Disappointing absence of ‘But the British Empire’ after Ian Watson’s article this morning.
Simon, London

…Gerard came with the vibes of a man who wishes he’d been born in a time when you could just burn a woman as a witch rather than listen to her nonsense.

Possibly the weirdest defence of the Saudi regime I’ve ever seen (for the sake of tidiness, I’m going to assume that Gerard primarily meant Saudi Arabia in his grand defence of the Middle East as a whole). Ignoring the unintentional hilarity of referring to a “self centered westernised view” before immediately calling it the Middle East, the clue as to how much the Saudi regime cares about perception is probably the vast amount of money they spend on altering their public image.

As with all of the best f**king horrible organisations, they don’t tend to put the bad stuff front and centre. Because they do actually know how these things work, and that you can generally get away with horrors as long as you’re not too brazen about it.

I’ve noticed a very strange trend, in which bigots defend overseas authoritarian regimes that they should traditionally oppose. This desperate fear of equality, gussied up as a fight against the moral corruption of our society by whichever target their hateful mind-shapers has currently aimed at, has somehow twisted them into applauding and celebrating medieval idealogy. And to be clear, I am not referring to Islam here. I’m referring to the cruel and malevolent rules and laws created by the regime, and their manipulation and bastardisation of faith and devotion.

Gerard and his ‘but the Nazi had the trains running on time’ absolute f**king nonsense is just the latest example of an angry idiot leaping onto their golden bus of misogyny. Equating authoritarianism with safety, f**king hell man – you know where you live, right? Did the authoritarianism of the British government bring safety to the people of Ireland? And let’s be clear Gerard, authoritarian governments don’t tend to be overly honest about anything that doesn’t suit their agenda. I have all sorts of (admittedly apocryphal) tales that certainly don’t point to a safe society. But a lot of those relate to the treatment of women and children, Gerard’s mortal enemies. By treatment, I mean rape, sexual assault, abduction, and murder.

Gerard, if they don’t think they’re dirty then why do they lie? Why do they hide the reality? Why do they push false information into the public consciousness at vast cost? Why have their planet-destroying industries been actively engaged in hiding the damage they are doing? Why have those same industries been rolling out propaganda for decades rather than making any attempt to stop killing us all? Because their public face is the mask of legitimacy they can hide behind. Just as I am sure that you, my scared little Gerard, don’t openly tell people that you’d prefer a world in which homosexuals didn’t exist, where men were men, and where you could give your wife a good slap when she talks out of turn. Or just talks.

Gerard, you need a f**king education and news sources that aren’t so bloody questionable that even the Mail would reject them. With any luck that’ll stop you writing such ignorant shite and wasting people’s time with responding to the miserable ranting of a f**king fool. Two sides of the same coin, ffs.
thayden

Donate, donate, donate
Wanted to write in to say thanks to Levenshulme Blue and all others who have donated to our fundraiser instead of going to the Community Shield. The disregard for fans is once again a disgrace and it is great that fans are taking a stand.

And this isn’t just an issue for City fans. As said in the initial email, it affects everyone and so we have been heartened by support from fans of other clubs too both with messages of solidarity and donations, including from Arsenal fans boycotting in solidarity.

There was an excellent article this morning on this very site about how football fans are so divided now that we can’t fight off the threats of private money, nations states etc (including Abu Dhabi, yes) – but if fans can get together on this is would be a nice step.

This is about the Community Shield, but it’s also about every other time that matchgoing fans are carted around the country at the most inconvenient times possible for the sake of telly money. It has to stop and boycotts are the only way. Football fans acting together can do absolutely anything we want.

If we can do something for the community at the same time then all the better – thanks again to all who have donated and continue to support.
The MCFC Fans Foodbank Support team

I love Bukayo Saka
One simple reason – we all say “go on hit it” in our minds and then are disappointed when the attack fizzles out. Saka is the one who WILL hit it, AND score. Either foot too!

Him and Rashford are a joy to watch against any opponent, incredible what a quality coach at club level does for our young English players.

Here’s hoping they’re both so red hot at the next tournament that not even Gareth’s handbrake can stop them.
Fat Man (1 good pass from Trent and some good corners, sounds like Ward-Prowse)

READ: Rating Saka and the rest as England end season in style with 7-0 drubbing of North Macedonia

The Greal problem?
What is the reason that so many seem somewhat offended by Grealish getting pissed?

He had an average first season, followed up by a far more impactful second season in which his team won the big 3 trophies.

So he wants to celebrate, before knuckling back down while in-season.

Just terrible.

Can’t think why a rich young man may celebrate to excess.

Oh yes that’s right, because he can.
Manc In SA (Maybe City should be forced to play all their games pissed next season? Pep too.)

Thoughts on Bournemouth from a Brighton fan
As a Brighton fan I wanted to comment on the sacking of Gary O’Neil and appointment of Andoni Iraola by Bournemouth – because it all feels very familiar to me.

On the face of it, it’s crazy that Bournemouth have sacked O’Neil after he did an excellent job keeping them up last season.

Cue the predictable comments from pundits and fans of other clubs: it’s outrageous and embarrassing that a British manager should be sacked for a fashionable foreigner with no experience of our league.

But scratch beneath the surface of message boards and forums and you find a lot of Bournemouth fans saying that, actually, much of their football last year was poor. These are the people who watched Bournemouth every week, and many of them are saying that perhaps O’Neil wasn’t the man to take them to the next level.

Bournemouth have taken brutal but decisive action, to appoint someone they think is better suited to delivering their long-term strategy for succeeding in the Premier League, not just scraping by every year.

And they’ve done it early in the transfer window to make the transition as smooth as possible, rather than waiting until the autumn international break or Christmas before appointing a firefighter in a panic.

To me, this all feels very reminiscent of when Brighton sacked Chris Hughton and appointed Graham Potter.

“What do Brighton think they’re doing? They can’t hope for better than what Hughton is achieving. They should be careful what they wish for. And who is this new guy? He doesn’t have any Premier League experience. They’ll get relegated next season and I hope they do.”

Brighton fans saw it differently though. Hughton will always be a legend at Brighton. He did an amazing job for us. But most of us could see that we couldn’t progress further under him and it would only be a matter of time before we were relegated.

Potter (and now De Zerbi) were a much better fit for the model that Tony Bloom and Paul Barber were developing, based on bringing through young players to play expansive passing football. Replacing Hughton with Potter was the right call, and it turned out okay.

Bournemouth’s appointment of Iraola may be a disaster. I know nothing about him and very little about Bournemouth. And it is definitely harsh on O’Neil, who I hope finds a good job somewhere else.

But I can see the logic behind this decision. And I trust the views of Bournemouth fans more than pundits or fans of other clubs, who don’t know Bournemouth and whose knee-jerk reaction is all too predictable.
Benedict (Sussex)

What about the Owls though?
Another odd one after the sacking of Gary O’ Neil was Darren Moore leaving Wednesday after dragging them into the Championship.

As a Blade, I was devastated after Posh threw away a 4 goal lead from the first leg of the semi final play-off, then the ref and VAR contrived to bugger Barnsley and Windass scored a last second goal to send Wednesday up. Nightmare!

But through it all, I always thought Darren Moore was a decent bloke and was pleased for him that they went up (but not for the Wednesdayites). He was always calm, controlled and steadfast and he brought a lot of dignity to a pig of a job. Something’s clearly gone wrong for him and all his backroom staff to suddenly leave. I must admit, I am intrigued….

Anyway, glad he has gone as I think Wednesday are much worse off without him, but I wish him all the best for the future wherever he rocks up – so long as they aren’t playing us.
Bladey Mick (not looking forward to VAR again next season)