Super League in by back door

Referees aren’t just concerned about the stick they receive.  Like all the other genuine fans they worry about what is happening to our game.  No good saying it’s only at the highest levels that commercialism and the need to win at all costs are ruining it.  Everything filters down and nonsense catches on remarkably quickly at the lower levels.

A Super League in disguise

Was it only the end of last season that the big clubs were said to be planning a European Football league so that the biggest money-making machines in UEFA could play amongst themselves and make even more money?

And here we are, less than a year later and it is all in place - under disguise. UEFA seems to have even fewer scruples than our own Football Association.  They knew that unless they sanctioned some form of competition, there was the danger that Arsenal, Manchester United, Barcelona, Juventus and others would go their own way. After all, it doesn't need a genius to see that they feel more strongly about money than they do about loyalty to fans and other professional clubs. Well, have we a European Super League or not? They would say not, but to deny it is to act like the proverbial ostrich.

Of course the change has not been as radical as actually setting up a Super League. What they have done is to change competition rules by stealth, so that half way through the season, the general public are only just coming to terms with what the changes have been.

More means worse

I said in this column back in August that if a club was to win the European Cup then they would have to play nearly half a season's domestic fixtures. There are still moans from the likes of Alex Ferguson and yet that is exactly what he wanted. Nor do these additional fixtures seem to lessen the number of friendly and other such lucrative trips that clubs go in for.

It appears to me that all this season we have been inundated with matches from Europe.  When they weren't that common, they seemed much more exciting.   Now there is such a glut that domestic fixtures are postponed leading to even more congestion.

Our Football Association, not slow to get on a bandwagon, have now given a second chance to a losing club in the FA Cup to make up for the non-appearance of Man. Utd. What a nonsense? When clubs lose matches but are then allowed a second chance or automatically appear in the later stages of another cup they did not qualify for, the game is indeed built on sand.

And that's not all . . .

f you think we've seen it all, wait until the start of the year and the so-called FIFA World Club Championship. I can almost read the headlines now. ‘England to tender for the 2001 World Club finals.’ ‘FIFA members to be lobbied with a budget of £20 million to gain this exclusive event.’ ‘We have the best facilities.’ ‘Football was born here.’ ‘We have a right to hold these championships.’ I'm sorry, but I feel like I've heard it all before.

Big business, shareholders and the media giants run football but we are still treated as idiots by being told that it is the Football Associations who run it.

What about Wembley?

I must end with the biggest farce of all, the rebuilding of Wembley Stadium.

Anyone who has visited Wembley does not need to be told by the Sports Minister how important it is that the stadium is rebuilt. What I can't understand is why at Wembley. Of course the location has many memories but isn't it time we looked forward? At one stage, not so long ago, the twin towers were going to be kept. Then there was a couple of big flagposts instead.  Now there is the Wembley arch.

So, no twin towers, no Wembley Way, new stadium, new pitch, new everything. Then why, oh why, does it have to stay at Wembley? Poor transport links that can never be improved; congestion that goes on for hours for all those without a helicopter or a team coach with police escort. Now, at last is the time to build a national stadium on a green field site with good transport links.

With the power of the government, surely land would not be a problem. But then we are talking about the use of intelligence again . . .

John Moore 

© J. Moore 1999

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