Barely two weeks into the new Premier League season and I appear to be largely disinterested already. Although I am of advancing years (they definitely speed up as you get older, that’s scientific fact) I am not of the opinion that everything was better in the ‘good old days’ when players were paid a pittance, played for one club throughout their career and retired to run a pub, having received a few hundred quid from their testimonial.
However, the League is now so divorced from real sport, a true fan might as well go and shout “who are you, who are you” outside their local superstore for all the relevance the top PL clubs have to anything like genuine sporting values. Two weeks into the season, and we already have the ludicrously overpaid pundits telling us that David Moyes is under intense pressure and his next game is a must win. Really? I know context is everything but I might venture to suggest that real pressure could be better illustrated through, say, raising a family on the living wage or trying to get through the working day in Syria (choose your own example). Moyes will succeed or get a multi million pound payoff if he’s removed. Pressure I suspect most of us could handle.
So what is the PL? Players refusing to play for the club to whom they are contracted to play because another club has indicated it may be interested in their services. Players described as a real asset to any club despite a history of racism and occasional acts of violence towards their professional colleagues. Imagine this in any other walk of life. Yes, he’s very good at his job but is prone to racist attacks on his work colleagues and, yes, if he’s having a bit of an off day he may on occasion bite the arm of a fellow employee; no problem, sign right here, I can see him fitting seamlessly into our team ethic!
The problem is that football at this level is so divorced from reality and so locked in to the bottom line that virtually anything is excusable if it increases market share and improves the brand. And there’s the nub – “come on you Tescos”!
I might stick to tennis. Players can play two matches of circa four hours or more in 48 hours without complaining of burn out, they actually get rewarded for winning rather than just turning up and there still appears to be a genuine bond of sportsmanship, even among the elite and in the heat of the fiercest of rivalries. Now don’t let me down with a soon to be emerging drug scandal!
And I can’t even bring myself to comment on the current plight of United!