Suddenly the champions league is irrelevant isn’t it, who cares if we win it now because after this season it doesn’t matter, never liked it anyway and now couldn’t give a toss. I remember in the mid 80s when the super league was muted then, this morphed into the premier league not long after, the difference is at least it’s domestic, this will be like the Harlem Globtrotters, games will be played in the Far East midweek filled with happy clappers buying shit loads of merchandise.
Id love to know what the foreign teams fans think of all this.
Foreign fan here...
In the late 70'ies up until mid 90'ies english football was my number one fixation i life.
I worked extra hours and saved up money and went to London as often as I could.
Loved just about everything about it.
Yes, I supported Chelsea and watched them as often as I could but I have never been able to truly adopt them as "my club" unlike so many foreign fans who seem to be able to do with passion to whatever club they support outside their own country.
I tried to cram in as many games as possible in a week-end so Southend on a Friday, maybe 2 games on Saturday and another on Sunday was like heaven.
As the years went by I started to travel more in UK to see more stadiums and places.
What a time that was to be alive. At least for me.
But as hard as I tried, I realised more and more that I hadn't roamed the mean streets of "pick your school/suburb/town/city" since birth to fully be a part of the culture.
Post the Hillsborough tragedy football changed in the UK. Some will say for the better and I fully understand that.
But the culture I had learned to love and wish to be a part of disappeared more and more.
What the Premier League brought did not appeal to me at all.
Even though Chelsea eventually became one of the winners of the creation.
I remember going to Leeds-Chelsea in 2003 and the thing I remember best was the awful pie I bought at half-time.
One little bright reminder of the boiled hamburger I bought in the away-end at Watford in 1980 whilst severely hung-over and which I spewed up my first and only bite of within 30 seconds.
I have many good friends in Manchester, roughly they're split 50/50 City/United.
I've been there "hundreds" of times over the past 30 years.
The change of power between them has been a more interesting sub-plot to follow than the actual football.
With the Aguero-goal I just knew that the mushroom cloud I saw far away in the west had to be over Manchester.
Because I knew what it meant for so many.
I could just smile and wish I had been part of all those years of true hurt having to go into school/work/pub knowing what was coming and now finally be loading up the glee-gun proper for the mother of all pay-backs.
I have a lot of respect for the antipathy the City-fan i general holds against the CL.
It's 95% razmataz and 5% sport as far as I'm concerned.
I know your owners wants to win it badly and up until now they've been as good as owners you could ever dream of apart maybe from that ambition. But it is sporting ambition nonetheless. Not greed-driven.
If, and it's a very big if, this Super League would eventually take off I suppose it'll be "The greatest show on earth" but it will not be football to many people.
It will be a money making hyperbole I can't see lasting very long. As someone wrote with a giant cup but absolutely no pedigree.
I think the real winners in many ways will be the remaining english teams and their supporters.
I'm sure a new pecking order at the top will be established soon enough but it will shake a new life into many of the clubs with fine (albeit not with crumbling wast concrete jungle terraces) stadiums, big support and fine history (not necessarily by winning a lot but being part of making english football the best known league and most followed by far).
The 6 leaving will open the competition and there is enough clubs in England with names well known around the world.
Nottingham Forest, QPR, Stoke, Sheffield W., Coventry, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Ipswich, Derby etc. etc. So a competitive league with 20 attractive teams with big support is not really an issue.
I for one would go and watch that with joy even if I didn't really have "my own" team to support.
But I will never attend a Super League game in my life. I couldn't care less.
Off course it would be easier for me to turn-off Chelsea as they were never truly "my team" (see reasoning above) than for you as life-long mancunian City supporters.
Last time in London, probably 10 years ago, I went to watch AFC Wimbledon instead of Chelsea and I knew 5 minutes into the game I'd done the right thing.
Standing up, surrounded by all sorts of characters, muddy pitch, wild tackles, passionate crowd and a lot of laughter. I even think my effort in the bar actually made a little difference to their economy....
Maybe I should leave out I've went to see FC United a few years ago. And enjoyed that as well....
