Quote Originally Posted by IBK View Post
I sympathise with everyone on here lamenting this move as some kind of final nail in the coffin (and hate it equally), but let's face it the football we knew died a long time ago.

The Super Leage = WWF...or as people have said a video game with real players. It's football as entertainment, not sport in the way that we understand it. And like WWF there will be plenty of people willing to watch it.

But look how we got here...

Our clubs owned by Oligarchs/sovereign states - to compete, others sell out to American investment funds or individual billionare sports franchise investors - the very people who have planned for this for years, and none of whom give a shit about the game; our traditions; sporting competition or any of the things that most fans care about.

The EPL - awash with TV money. Why - because the EPL is the most popular league in the world (ironically because of tradition; relative competetiveness; the way the English game is played and the self-fulfilling effect of the money pumped in...) - and watched by precisely the huge emerging markets that care little for the things that are precious to the avarage home grown fan.

Fifa/UEFA - de-valuing international club and national comps by bloating competitions with meaningless games that turn so many fans off ('Champions' League, anyone?); and making the big live events 50% corporate and staged with little or no thought for proper fans (Baku, anyone?) - all to line their own pockets and in thrall to big business.

Players - mostly chasing the money, with those with real affinity with Clubs either the exception or at the very junior end of the game. An industry in their own right. I'd be willing to bet that most would jump at the chance of playing in the Super League.

We fans are anachronisms. We are in large part on the 'wrong' side of a generational divide that sees younger potential fans living their lives through the lens of social media where everything becomes a story and the value of the concrete truth seems diminished. A generation for whom scripted 'reality' TV is a norm; who are used to 'instant' gratification and who are not turned off by the idea of buying 'success'. Future global football fans will know that what they are watching is entertainment rather than sport, but this entertainment is skillfully crafted.

The people driving this thing know all of this, and can see the future. They know also that we, the traditional fans are not needed, and this is why they now feel emboldened to show their contempt of us, having worked in more subtle, yet equally devastating ways for years.

Bad times...
Yeah. The writing has been on the wall for decades. It can all be traced back to Sky Sports. I'm not saying Sky set out to achieve this end, but everything they have done has continued to remove the fan from the stadium and plonk them in front of a telly. Sky built the audience and the swarm of sponsors that prey on that audience. Their model had the destruction of traditional football baked in from the outset.

And Boris and the government can fuck off, as always. Successive governments sat on their hands and watched as literal criminals slithered into the game and took ownership. Now, with the horse bolted and dead after a long a fruitful life, and the gate rotted through by worms and collapsed in the dirt - in rides Boris on a white steed. Who's going to buy that?