Man Utd and Tottenham bin fires deserve zero credit for Europa League final
Remember when ‘playing on a Thursday night’ was uttered as an insult? A symbol of a club’s failure to get in the Champions League. Treated as a kind of curse, the Europa League just got in the way of the important business of earning free money in the Premier League from a higher finish. Money which could be frittered away on second-rate talent, of course.
The PFMs sat with their legs apart and held it in contempt, very much the glass of dry white white wine to their three bottles of strong Barolo and they would put out weakened sides in order to get knocked out as soon as possible.
“It’s one of those competitions that teams get in and then they try to get out of,” said Harry Redknapp who spoke and, to an extent still speaks, for this viewpoint. Playing on a Thursday and Sunday was spuriously claimed to upset players’ delicate biorhythms.
“It takes an even bigger toll in my opinion, that’s the problem. That Thursday night one, every week, and playing Sundays every week…it’s not ideal,” said Redknapp, a physiological expert in his own lunchtime. Is he saying it now that it’s much easier for rubbish Premier League teams to get to a final?
Foreign clubs could cope, of course, but not the delicate Premier League players. Some fans bought this line of bullsh*t and still cling to it, for some reason downplaying one of the few trophies that can be won in a season, having written out an ordered list of trophy importance, based on nothing but some invented truths only they believe.
But now it’s an all-English final, they seem to have decided to take it seriously in a way they did not when Porto beat Braga or Sevilla remarkably won it three times consecutively. Or perhaps we do now because the manager that achieved that feat works in the Premier League so must now be respected. That’s how English exceptionalism works.
Much humour has been derived from Manchester United playing Spurs. Two absolutely chronic bin fires who are both some shade of disgraceful. But the Premier League rewards even the worst with more than £100million of free money; no one from Europe can compete with that.
The truth is, as anyone who watches European football will tell you, other leagues are certainly more regularly entertaining and there are loads of great players who have no interest in playing for an English club. Even though they might earn more, they know that’s not the most important thing. But the teams they play for have diminishing chances of doing well because of simple economics.
A lot of the best players, but not all, have been drawn to the Premier League. That doesn’t mean they play the most entertaining football, of course, but the weight of numbers and overall quality are having an effect because of the sheer volume and depth of resources in favour of the Premier League.
The imbalance is now so massive that it just can’t be ignored, best expressed with Spurs playing Bodo/Glimt. The disparity of resources was profound. Just in case you don’t know how profound, Bodo had one player in the squad worth six million Euro, Spurs had 26 worth more. Now, you don’t have to be critical of this competitive imbalance to recognise that it exists and must influence results. Imagine if, say, rubbish Italian clubs had such an advantage. It’d feel unfair wouldn’t it? Not that it’s possible to totally even out resources and we accept there’ll be differences. It’s the extent of the disparities, not the disparities per se.
As the Premier League becomes ever more financially dominant, it will obviously have an impact on European competitions, especially outside of equally financially dominant sides in the Champions League. Even these rubbish Premier League sides can’t be competed with and they are really terrible. Is it desirable that this should be the case? We’re now at a stage where only a handful of clubs can win any European trophy.
For example, watching Chelsea beat Djurgårdens wasn’t interesting for anyone not a Chelsea fan because of their altogether vastly superior resources. It’s like if they got to an FA Cup final by beating Walsall. You’d think, well, so what? Of course they did.
When West Ham won the Conference League, only when they beat Fiorentina in the final did they play any side even vaguely near their resources. It was hailed as a great victory, but how great was it really? You wouldn’t think that if they won the FA Cup after only playing third or fourth-tier sides and then beat a top Championship side in the final.
If money means anything at all, the Europa and Conference League final should always be between English clubs and if they were as good as is often claimed they are, probably the Champions League too.
Part of the fun of football is not knowing the outcome of games but when fixtures are so imbalanced, you inevitably do. The argument for a separate European money league grows ever stronger the more the gap widens. You just want teams to have a decent chance and right now, that chance is diminishing every year.
It’s not even just about the winners so much as just doing well. How does UEFA pass these tournaments off as proper competitions, because they’re not. Maybe they want them to harden around a few teams. Predictability attracts more investment after all, so the last thing they want is unpredictability.
The Thursday night curse may have been lifted from Premier League clubs just at a time when the competitions are having their competitiveness undermined by grotesque financial imbalance.