Tbf I think our commentators and pundits are biased. If a player goes down injured from a foreign club, straight away they're pointing out how it's time wasting and how they know all the tricks in the book. If player from an English club goes down easily to run down the clock, they say nothing.
Wrexham's James McClean says he makes no apology for singing an anti-monarchy song as the club celebrated promotion.#BBCFootball— BBC Sport Wales (@BBCSportWales) April 16, 2024 Not sure what triggers this guy but I’m not a big Royalist fan myself but I wouldn’t go out of my way to start singing anti-monarchy songs. Just find it all a bit odd why he goes out of his way to do things like this. Probably presume his many English team mates aren’t Royalists either.
Being anti-English is the one prejudice that liberal orthodoxy permits the Welsh and the Scots, so with all other forms suppressed they grab this with both hands.
He shouldn't get booed for not wanting to wear the poppy and all the hysteria he gets with that, but he's clearly an odd guy who goes out his way to provoke (turning his back in the national anthem for example). I remember when Declan Rice declared for England, McClean made a very odd Instagram post literally saying ""We are a strong race, we never give up. Our pride is deep in our heritage. It's not something you can learn to be, it's something we are born with." I mean, can you imagine an England international posting about being a strong race about a player defecting? There'd be a massive uproar about it.
🚨 OFFICIAL: Arsenal are out of the Clubs’ World Cup after tonight.🇦🇹 RB Salzburg access to the World Cup.🏴 Manchester City, Chelsea.🇪🇸 Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid.🇩🇪 Bayern, Borussia Dortmund.🇫🇷 Paris Saint-Germain.🇮🇹 Inter, Juventus.🇵🇹 Benfica, Porto.🇦🇹 Salzburg. pic.twitter.com/I8ljDZCQTN— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) April 17, 2024
The FA and The @premierleague have reached an agreement to strengthen the #EmiratesFACup format and increase support for grassroots football.Swipe for details ➡️— Emirates FA Cup (@EmiratesFACup) April 18, 2024 Terrible decision from our FA, I mean how many of those lower league Clubs need money from the replays to help them financially. Once again the selfishness of the Premier League wins through.
They should just do what Spain does and have the lower ranked club host every tie. The quality gap means there hasn’t been that many replays recently compared to previous seasons. And arguably it’s easier to beat a big team over 1 match than it over 2. The big teams always seem ro do well at the smaller grounds anyway. Last season for example there was only 1 PL vs Lower league replay. There was four this season. Will be interesting to see if they are many penalties. In covid seasons they were not many matches that went all the way.
From 2024-25, the PL will scrap the winter break and opt for a longer summer.Incidence rates have dropped during the second half of the season since its introduction... At the current trajectory, we may see the highest-ever injury burden, with the no. of days lost surpassing…— Ben Dinnery (@BenDinnery) April 18, 2024
I remember Van Dijk speaking a couple of seasons ago about how the winter break messed up his season. Says it ruined his rhythm and brought on quite a few injuries for Liverpool. It can be quite an injury risk if you dramatically reduce exercise intensity then dramatically increase it again all in a short space of time.
I really do fear not just for football, but that the entirety of the sporting landscape will change and become unrecognisable over the next 10-15 years. All of these terrifying proposals that the big six have been wanting for years have been resisted up to now. But unfortunately it feels like they’re finally starting to get their way, the FA cup changes feel like the canary in the coal mine. We’ve got the amended CL starting next season, talk of PL games being played in the US, Super League talk not going away, the Saudis wanting a hostile takeover of every sport, IPL owners trying to buy the County Championship and many more scary scenarios seemingly on the horizon.
The new football regulator specifically prevents PL games being played in the USA without its permission.
The sport is definitely at a crossroads. Some big decisions are going to be made in the next few years and they'll probably largely be decisions we don't like. In all honesty, I think the only way this ends is that some decades down the line the wealth bubble bursts catastrophically (which it will eventually) and forces a major reset. Wrt to FA Cup replays getting scrapped, this isn't the last thing like this we'll see in the near future. The football calendar is way too congested and if we think injuries have been bad this season they're only going to get worse. It's unsustainable to have players playing this many games season after season and we know what types of games will be the first to be sacrificed.
International football is probably high on the list after the league and FA cups as well. Maybe even above them as the clubs do earn from the cups.
Why do you think that international football is at risk? The World Cup is the second largest sporting event in the World. It's about making money and international football has the much higher prestige than club football.
International football isn't just going to end. Most players players care about it way too much and the vast majority of fans want it. What will happen imo is big teams will push for a reduction in the number of teams in the their league and if they don't get it eventually they'll just all break away to a super league and be in charge of their own club calendar.
The German and French leagues are already 18 so that wouldn’t be massively controversial. But a super league will be illegal soon under the regulator and with the regulator being seen as Goverment linked ir won’t want to approve anything unpopular.
It'd be controversial in England. Maybe less so in Spain but I don't know. How do you not think there wouldn't be a huge uproar if international football was scrapped? Can you imagine this sport without the World Cup? It'd cause a huge upheaval. The World Cup bears so, so much responsibility for maintaining/growing the sport's global popularity. It's the biggest event in the entirety of sport.
Tensions between the EFL and PL are strong at the moment. I wonder if it will out PL clubs off wanting to send players on loan and buy from them.