FIVE Premier League bosses meet a guy who organises pre-season football tournaments in foreign lands at the Dorchester in central London, they chat about summer tours and the Champions League and alternatives to it and it suddenly becomes a “secret” plot for a breakaway European Super League.
Of course, “breakaway Super League” is synonymous with greed and worshipping at the altar of big clubs and big money and big hype. And so the whole notion gets the moral high horse treatment. It’s shooting fish in a barrel. Who is going to stick up for greed and commercialism?
Never mind that a meeting at the Dorchester – home away from home for stars, starlets and wannabes, with its own colony of paparazzi outside – is never going to be “secret” or that, if you were keeping things hidden, you wouldn’t all emerge together, laughing and carrying on.
And never mind the fact that nobody present – let alone the representative from the tournament organisers, whose quotes 48 hours later were mangled beyond belief – actually said it was a good or desirable idea, much less that they were working towards it. Nope, all of that might ruin the tale.
The irony here is that in many ways the media missed the bigger story. Among the topics discussed was the fact that the European Clubs Association – led by Bayern’s Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – were trying to cut a better deal for the continent’s big boys in the Champions League. Mooted ideas range from rejigging the revenue share (which is already skewed towards teams from wealthier leagues) to having “wild cards” (for historically big clubs who fail to qualify), right down to having a cadre of elite clubs who would be in it every season, unless they finished last in their group and got “relegated” to the Europa League.
Right now, Uefa have neither a president (Michel Platini is suspended), nor a general secretary (Gianni Infantino is the new Fifa president). And they won’t have either until after the Uefa Extraordinary Congress and that won’t be until the Court of Arbitration for Sport rules on Platini’s appeal, which likely won’t happen for another three months.
ECA are looking to exploit that power vacuum and English clubs will need to choose sides. That’s the story, even though it’s a bit more complicated and somewhat more boring (OK, a lot more boring) than tales of greed and breakaways.
THE Adam Johnson case, which saw him found guilty of sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl, also prompted much gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair and soul-searching about football having lost its moral compass. A lot of it centres on whether Sunderland and the Professional Footballers’ Association knew he was going to plead guilty when the former continued to play him and the latter continued to support him.
You can justify both actions under the presumption of innocence. But it becomes tougher to do so if, indeed, Johnson had admitted guilt to them early on in the process instead of waiting 11 months until the case came to trial. In fact, you might even get the suspicion that stringing out the process was a way for Johnson to make a few extra quid, Sunderland to stay up and, maybe, for the victim to withdraw her allegations, given the public ordeal.
Johnson committed a serious crime and will serve his time. At the same time though, we could have done without some of the moral posturing, like the newspaper that splashed a photo of him in a swimsuit with the headline “paedo in his Speedos”. It probably did not occur to them that most associate paedophile not with what Johnson did, criminal as it was, but with creeps who molest pre-pubescent children. And it certainly did not occur to them that Johnson’s child will one day, through the magic of the internet, see that headline. But hey, that’s collateral damage to some.
IT wasn’t that long ago that Alan Pardew was being hailed as the best English manager around. (Admittedly, there isn’t too much competition, but still...) Crystal Palace were up to fourth in the table on points. Billionaire owners Joshua Harris and David Blitzer had taken a minority stake in the club, meaning there would be further investment. Yohan Cabaye was arguably the signing of the summer, Wilfried Zaha was living up to his potential and Yannick Bolasie was an under-appreciated genius.
That was less than three months ago. Palace have not won a Premier League game since. They have played 11 games, drawing four and losing seven. Remember that fearsome attacking juggernaut with the terrifying pace? Just three players have scored during the stretch.
One is a centre-back (Scott Dann). One is a guy who had not scored in 16 months and sat out the first half of the season (Emmanuel Adebayor). And the other is a forward whose last goal from open play had come nine months earlier (Connor Wickham).
If the season began on Christmas day, Palace would be dead last. And it is hard to see things improving today with Liverpool rolling into Selhurst Park.
It is an article of faith that Pardew is a “streaky” manager. And the numbers back it up. Before this most recent run, he had collected 60 points in 35 games with Palace. Prior to that, he had begun the 2014-15 campaign on a high which was on the back of a disastrous end to 2013-14 (16 points in 20 games).
There is no rational reason why a manager should blow hot and cold to such a degree for so long. Or, indeed, that he should do so time and again. Whatever it is, it doesn’t bode well. Clubs, and particularly the men who own them, like consistency. It makes for an easier product to sell. Unless Pardew can right the ship – or at least provide a cogent explanation for why Palace are suddenly so bad – he may need to seek employment elsewhere in the summer.
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