Exactly the same apart from the game was a pointless friendly featuring the England C squad who didn't care about the game either.
All the talking heads in football say, "Oh, there's too many games..." and then as soon as there's a chance to make a buck it changes to, "Well, its only one more game..." If the FA really wants to screw around with an idea like this, play the Charity Shield in New York every year. Or play it in New York one year and Tokyo the next. Christ, the two teams will probably be on a pre$ea$on tour of the U$A anyway, so they won't even need to change their travel plans. You get the two teams with the most plastic USA fans, in the biggest USA market, in a time zone that should allow the game to be watched at a reasonable hour in England. Plus, in early August there's almost nothing going on in USA professional sports. There will be Englishmen who will start whining, "It has been the tradition of English first division football since time immemorial, that the Charity Shield represents, blah, blah, blah..." That's fine, but consider the alternative: ten fixtures spread around the globe with championship altering consequences. Do we really want to see Arsenal lose the title because the players couldn't adjust to one hundred degree heat and humidity in Jakarta? Well, yeah, maybe, but that's just me... This weekend US tv showed three games that showed the problem clearly. Reading v Portsmouth, Derby v. Tottenham, and Chelsea v. Liverpool. The first half of each game pretty much looked like Serie A football. A lot of intricate passing amongst the back four, a pass forward, no one making a run and wasted attack after wasted attack. Coincidence? No, the players are tired and so there is a Gentlemen's agreement in place to not play in the first half. Yes, goals are scored in the first 45 minutes of some games. But the fact is, games "come to life" in the second half, because there are already too many fixtures, too much travel, and too much football in general. Oh well, a lot of clubs are held as public corporations and public corporations must push there products until they lose any unique intrinsic value and they simply become ubiquitous trash available in every Wal-Mart in the free world. Welcome to the future of football.
Whether you want to get into the semantics of what consitutes a supporter, the original point is pretty valid. If you've lived in Sunderland and been a regular (neither pertain to me), it's almost impossible to deny that the degree to which you are a fan will be much greater than someone miles away who happened to like the Kevin Phillips-Niall Quinn combo and adopted Sunderland as their team. If the 39th game evolves into a quarter of all home matches being played overseas or ticket prices become so high that attending matches becomes almost impossible, the life of the Sunderland local is going to be impacted to a much greater extent and he is going to feel abundantly more short-changed than the non-local fan. That doesn't mean that someone can't claim to support the team or be a fan, but you have to recognize that the meaning of the club to a local is going to be greater. Whether it's business or not, it's not too hard to understand the animosity of locals who feel like something that was theirs is slowly being taken away. Statements like it's the price you pay for having a league like the Premiership ignore the fact that a lot of regulars have no input in the business decisions affecting the club. Some would liken it to the gentrification of the Premiership.
Thats not a very constructive attitude to take now is it, if we all thought like that the game would be dead and buried already. the friendly will have been well attended as England have great support no matter how bad we are. However do you really think Derby, Sunderland, Wigan fans will be able to afford to fly half away across the world to see a match. The stadium will be full of fans of the premier league and when the quality doesnt match what they expect of a big 4 team it will be like attending a funeral atmosphere wise.
To be honest, with the way Reading have played lately, I'll sign a petition requesting they play once in England and 38 times abroad.
No, also trickling down is ticket price inflation. When there are non-league teams charging £15 a ticket, it's taking the piss.
There were a lot of English ex-pats there though. Other than when the big clubs with lots of foreign fans play, most matches will be lifeless.
When have chairmen and owners ever said there's too many games? It's the managers and pundits who whine about the amount of games, the same people complaining now. The charity shield is there to make money for charity. If they brought in the costs of playing abroad, i.e. renting the stadium, bribing the USSF and SUM etc, there'd be hardly anything left for the charitable causes. Plus a game in America wouldn't bring in any more ticket revenue than a sold out Wembley. I'm not convinced. There are leagues with 46 games a season plus countless cups/trophies where teams don't just pass it around. You could get rid of every competition except the league and teams like Liverpool and Chelsea will still play defensively.
Something that was theirs being slowly taken from them... Brian McBride Clint Dempsey Carlos Bocnegra Eddie Lewis And I'm sure very soon... Jozy Altidore I don't see how folks can defend the clubs they support populating their squads with mostly players from abroad and then, with the same breadth, besmirch the playing of even one match abroad and remain intellectually consistent. Why is the one OK and the other not? PLEASE tell me what is so English about the current Sunderland squad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunderland_A.F.C.
I don't want to rant too long and write something so long no one will read it but I have no choice. To summarize, I'm against it. Personally, I think it's bad for English football and that's what I care about most, not the whims of bandwagoners. Unlike most people I fell in love with the Premier League, and football in general, because of the general way it was set up: It's fans and it's tribal nature with multiple clubs per city for the big cities, promotion/relegation, true hyper competition where no club was truly safe. Anything that was different to the way sports was set up in the states. I didn't start loving it because of it's "style of play" or "they have my 'hero' on their team," or any of that other shit. So the prawn sandwhich arguements like 'You guys have fans all over the world and we want to see them too' or 'It's now a global sport' never had that much effect on me. They say all twenty clubs are for this but I think that's bullshit, the ones who are really driving this are the big clubs. I've always said that the biggest threat to the game is huge clubs and the prawn sandwiches that support them, while at the same time not supporting their local club/league because it's not up to their liking. There's nothing more pathetic then some teenager from America who's been watching for a couple years chanting "I'm Liverpool 'till I die duuuude!"(The main reason why I enjoy trolling the big clubs' boards so much) Yeah, yeah, you have the right to spend your time and money on whatever you want, just like I have the right to call you out for the plastic ******** that you are at the same time. So I always supported initiatives like trying to force clubs to have more native players rather than just buying more foreign players. Even if that mean't my own national team players who I'd like to see in that league will have to go elsewhere. It IS a global sport and there are plenty of other big clubs in other countries that might be able to compete. I never cared about having 'more quality' because I can truly enjoy a football match like DCU vs Revs for what it is without having to demand every player play like C. Ronaldo or Ronaldinho or Steve Gerard. Or follow Caribbean Cup without crying about it being amaturish just because I'm too spoiled by watching Champions League. In the end, what I write here makes no difference because I know I'm the minority and world-wide prawns are the rule now. To me, this is just another step in turning European football into the NFL. Something that is turned into a farse and a cash-grubbing circus rather than a legitimate competition simply because it's primarily entertainment.
It's not at all inconsistent. Right off the bat, a lot of fans were only ever interested in supporting their local club. They weren't interested in their league becoming an internationally marketable commodity. These were business decisions not made by fans. For a lot of fans, the preference would be the old First Division that existed prior to the Premiership's inception. The extra match to the season is just another piece of gimmickry that takes the club further and further away from what they once had. A lot of fans are turned off by the fact that so few of the Premiership squads are made up of so few players from the British Isles. If you look at it from the other side, your logic is that they've already had a good chunk of what they liked taken away, so why not go ahead and take more and more. I think you are also missing a little something about the relationship between the town and the club. Most European clubs represent an area much much smaller than American professional franchises and as a result, the differentiation between the club and town or city is much smaller. In a somewhat similar parallel, if you take college sports in the US, there was a time when the teams were composed of students who excelled at athletics. Standards for admitting athletes has dropped at a lot of schools over the past who knows how long (I'm guessing 50 years)? Certain schools have very low graduation rates amongst athletes, but have highly successful teams. A lot of the athletes are not really students looking for academic gains. Generally speaking, support for the teams hasn't suffered any drop-off at schools where the graduation rate is really low. The point is that the teams still represent the school and despite the dubious academics of certain players, support from students in general hasn't dropped just because the athletes aren't really a true representation of the student body anymore. The support of a local team is pretty much the same way.
What's interesting at the moment is how quiet everybody, especially Premier League (or whatever the ******** it's called this season) officials, have been about the way these games are to be financed. Are we to assume that the Premier League will foot the bill for travel and administrative costs whilst splitting the TV money fairly amongst themselves and the clubs? Unlikely. It'll probably be left up to the clubs themselves to organise where they'll play the games. The Big 4 will get the pick of venues: New York, LA, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok, Dublin, Sydney, places where they genuinely will be able to bring in huge crowds and large TV audiences. I would imagine that they'll be using this as an opportunity to get round that odious problem of not being able to negotiate their own individual deals for the TV rights in England. They'll be able to sell masses of tickets at a hugely inflated price whilst charging the earth for the TV rights to this one-off exclusive to networks in each region. Merchandising will also be massive for these games, with one off commemorative shirts, etc. That's all well and good for the Big 4. However, Derby County, Wigan Athletic, Reading, Fulham and the Premier League's other less glamorous clubs are going to struggle to stir up the same enthusiasm abroad. Where on earth are people going to come out in large numbers and pay huge sums of money to see Birmingham City vs Blackburn Rovers, for example? Both of those sides struggle to break the 25,000 barrier at home and aren't exactly world famous. They'll have to sell the tickets at a much cheaper price than their more illustrious rivals and the TV rights even cheaper. The English League already allows an uneven split of gate receipts, so the Big 4 will be under no obligation to share any of their cash with anyone other than their opponents and I would guess that, thanks to them being seeded in "the draw" they'd be able to argue that they're technically the home side and therefore entitled to the lion's share of the gate revenue generated by the game. With all the matches being played in different countries, they'll more than likely be able to circumvent the Premier League's equal sharing of TV revenue ruling but, even if they can't, they'll still earn a massive amount more on gate receipts and merchandise for these games. So what have we got? An exciting new opportunity to "protect" the domestic game or just a bonanza pay day for the big boys? The Premier League authorities are making a lot of noise about how much of an effort they're putting into including all 20 Premier League clubs in this venture but, really, it's hard to see how this won't be just another opportunity for the Big 4 to further extend their financial advantage over the other 16 and tighten their stranglehold on English domestic competition. As long as they get their cut, the Premier League won't care how the rest gets split, despite their protestations to the contrary. There's also the concern that, if TV deals for the games were run like this, it may set a dangerous precedent and set clubs on the way to negotiating their own TV rights for every game not just the end of season one-off. And what about the fans? True, the Big 4's legion of foreign fans do bring in a lot of money through merchandising and TV revenue but without the loyal fans who put money through the turnstyles year after year they'd be less than nothing. In my opinion, there's no bigger "******** you" to the people who form the financial and cultural base of the club than to declare that you intend to play the last and potentially most important game of the season in a foreign country in front of fans who've contributed nothing more than a few hours on an armchair and a few dollars for the latest kit. By rights, fans of all 20 clubs should boycott their club's games until this idea is consigned to the dustbin of history and the clubs themselves are forced to go grovelling on their knees, begging the fan's forgiveness and promising never to take them for granted again. Sadly though, this would only hurt the "other 16". As has been pointed out ad nauseam there's simply too many cultural tourists waiting to take the place of disillusioned genuine fans of the Big 4 for a walk out to make any difference. For those of you who genuinely think it's hypocritical for fans of clubs with several foreign players to object to their team playing a game abroad, it's become very apparent that several of you fail to understand the difference between a club and a franchise. You need to remember who's paying a large chunk of the bills here. Managers are employed by football clubs to, in turn, employ the best footballers available to them, in the best interests of the members and supporters of the club, regardless of nationality. Allowing the club to play one of its home league fixtures abroad goes against the best interests of those members and supporters as it makes it extremely difficult for them to attend that home game. It's the paying, regular supporters who are supposed to ultimately call the shots (just look at Newcastle United for evidence of this, even in today's money mad game) and this idea of playing games abroad flies in the face of that. What we're seeing here is the final nail in the coffin of the values of English football culture. Fans seem to be completely taken in by their clubs' claims that each new outrage is absolutely justified as they have to keep up with the rest of the clubs and, besides, "the Italians or the the Spanish'll only do it if we don't". Success at all costs seems to be the mantra of football fans these days, while dignity and tradition seem to have fallen by the wayside.
Players come and go. The club is constant. Fans support clubs, not players. Fans have always been unhappy at things clubs do which seem to be purely about making money. Sometimes things can be viewed as necessary evil, such as allowing a stadium to be sponsored so it can be built. Other times, such as clubs bringing out a new kit just after Christmas (when many kids will have just received the old and now out of date one) was just seen as pure greed. This falls into the second bracket. It offers the fans here nothing. It screws up the balance of the league fixtures, sending the clear message that making money is more important than the integrity of the game. It's a further move for the benefit of the tv viewer rather than the fans who give a lot to go week in, week out. Fans don't like the direction the game is going, and this is also viewed as being the thin end of the wedge. If the premier league find this to be a good revenue stream they are not likely to stop there. Everything about the game since the creation of the premier league has been about moving it away from being a sporting contest towards it being a vehicle for making money. Despite what "economists" over there may feel, that is the complete antithesis of what fans here feel a football club should be about. More and more the league's attitude towards its attending customers is "we don't give a shit what you think because we are rolling in money". Turning part of the season into a travelling circus just isn't a road down which we want to tread. My sneaky suspicion is that the top brass know this plan is unworkable. I remember Peter Cook once saying in an interview that when he submitted scripts to the BBC he used to put in far more than he knew he'd be able to get away with, in the knowledge that he'd be made to compromise back to the level of what he'd really wanted to put in all along. Similarly with this proposal, as everyone knows, six of the 10 games in any one weekend will probably be of virtually no interest to people outside England. This of course means that they'd agree to scale down the plans, to maybe only having the big 4 play such games. Of course that means they won't be able to have a full set of fixtures for the 39th game, so they'll announce that after listening to the fans' concerns they'll scrap "week 39" and just have some of the big 4 playing games instead. Naturally, the big 4 will "protest" at this, so they'll decide to show only away games of the big 4, with the "home" teams getting a lump sum as compensation for their opportunity to pretend to be the Washington Generals for the day. And that's probably what they wanted all along, with their lesser clubs blinded by their usual greed and stupidiy, agreeing to something else which will put them even further behind the top sides.
Right so everytime we sign a foreign player we have to play in that country. Whats English? The 40k fans every week The academy set up Many of the first team squad The location Foreign players playing in other leagues helps that country not hinder it. If we banned all US players moving to Europe you would never get better at the sport. The MLS would never have taken off without a certain englishmans help but do i want to see a MLS game in England, No! ive got my own league. Ever thought why football has become as big as it is? Its because its a simple game with simple competitions which work. Tampering with the game causes a fan who cares about the sport to react but i suppose its just a business. Why dont the NBA go and play in Africa as thats where the majority of its players ancestors were origianally from.
After some thought now. I'm actually against the Premiership going abroad. It was a good idea at first. But it's a load of bollox in the end. Premiership should stay at home, and then once that is sorted. FIFA can implement their "6" player domestic ruling.
In the first paragraph above, I was right with you - that's the main reason I started getting interested in European football. But the second paragraph really bothered me - personally, I want to support professional football and here in the U.S. that consists of about 30 teams (U.S.-based teams in MLS, USL-1 and USL-2) and there are many people who do not live close to any of those 30, including myself. That is the main reason why I am choosing to support a foreign team. But, other than that, I really like how it is organized, etc. (your first paragraph), and until the U.S. decides to have a single, balanced table to decide its champion, I will always like the format of European football better. Now if I had a local team to support (sorry the PDL doesn't count - non-professional teams playing too few games), I would be at every home game just because being at a game is so much better than watching on TV, but I don't. And I know that there is no way an American-based fan of a European team is going to come close to those who are actually based in the city (or at least the country) of their favorite club, but I don't understand why everybody acts like those people should be ashamed of themselves. I'm also a San Francisco Giants fan and it would not bother me in the least if the team had tons of foreign fans who were rooting for my team as best as they knew how, and I don't know why it should. And I grew up in San Francisco and went to many games as a child. But maybe you are specifically talking about those guys who are chanting, "I'm Liverpool 'till I die duuuude!" even though they likely would drop off the bandwagon if Liverpool ever started fighting relegation. If that's the case, I do understand where you are coming from. I may support a foreign team, but I am not saying it will be forever (especially if I am fortunate enough to move to an area with an MLS team) and would never say it would be unless I truly believed it.
You are in Cheney which is near Spokane(nice scenery whenever I pass through there), so maybe the Seattle-based MLS club? As for the bandwagoners, the most disturbing ones are the 'Eurosnobs' that don't support their local clubs(if one is near) or league because it's not up to their spoiled quality standards.
This is the death of Top flight English football as we know it if Scudamore and the scum in suits have their way. No one in any other country would give a damn to watch Wigan Sunderland or Boro play football. The managers and players have been asking for a winter break for years and less fixtures not more! And who is to say a 39th abroad fixture will not turn into a 40th? The £ made from this will go to the money men not to transfers. This is not NFL! Football already is a global sport. It is THE global sport. We have international club and country competitions. This is simply not needed and it is repulsive for anyone to support these twats
It is pretty scenic here (and extremely white the last couple months). I run a lot and this is a great place to do so, or anything outdoors for that matter. Personally all things being equal, I just like European football better for a number of reasons: a much fairer way of determining a champion (completely equal schedule where the champion is determined on its body of work over the entire season, not over a few games in October/November) as well as, I won't lie, a better quality of play on the field and much more passionate fans as a whole off definitely does help. So if I have a choice of following a European team on TV or the Internet versus following an American team the same way, I will choose the European team. There is no way I would ever root for a national team over the U.S., though. Now if I can actually go to games on a regular basis and become a season ticket holder, I would pick that hands down. Nothing like being there. When I went to college 30 miles south of Seattle, I went to Seattle Sounders games as often as I could and listened to them on the radio when I was unable to make it there or they were playing on the road.
What with the FA's liking of moving games abroad whilst wanting to host the 2018 world cup, I'm interested to find out where they want these world cup games to be played?
Yeah but think of all the extra cash it'll generate, it'll be like this year's TV bonus all over again .... and we can spend increasingly large wads on increasnigly shite players ... and make a mockery of the season with a random game. But wait, the draw will be seeded, it'll all be well thought out and fair for all. The top 5 teams will not play each other to ensure a fair spread of games ... oh hang on, 5 sets of 2 games to be played in 5 cities ... nah, surely they've not just used the seedings to ensure each city gets one of the top 5 teams so they'll bid more ... surely they're more interested in fairness for all the clubs battling relegation than filling their pockets ... hmmm. And they'll use some of the cash to fly out loyal fans who spend hundreds of pounds a year following their teams, as a kind of reward for putting them on the map in the first place ... Yeah, they really couldn't give a shit about us or a fair fixture list could they. There's a petition here too http://www.fsf.org.uk/news/news0095no-to-game-39.html on the Football Supporters Federation site. Talk of cancelling Sky Sports en masse, boycotting games etc. Although with the FA looking like they won't back the move, along with MLSs recent reservations, so we might not have to worry about it. Unfortunatley for Scudamore the FA still run football here, unless they can be financially rewarded I suppose. Still, if it goes ahead Accrington Stanley and the like will be getting a boost to their fan bases. It'd break my heart but I'm not paying my cash to a faceless brand.
i've seen a lot of unfounded worry about what will happen if there's an international 39th game. The reason that it's unfounded is because it hasn't been implemented, no one knows what will happen if it goes through---i.e. attendance, travel logistics, etc. It could be a great success or it could fall on it's arse. But, it needs to be explored and even implemented so we can indeed see the effects. Just shooting it down because of all the unfounded "what ifs" is ludicrous. All I've seen is a lot of ethnocentric and geocentric arguments against it because it's "undermining" tradition. The fact is, it's not going to change the current 38 game schedule. It's ONE ADDITIONAL game. The English opposition I've seen is all unfounded and is based in the possessive belief that Premier league football belongs to them and for any foreigner to go mucking around with their league is just wrong. The league in fact is full of internationals, from the ownership on down. Why not let those who play and those who actually own the teams make the decisions they have the legal right to make? What irks me is that the plan will get tabled and the ManUs and other big clubs will go off on their own and play "friendlies" in Dubai and wherever in the middle of the season as we've just witnessed leaving the other smaller clubs to fend for themselves. But when the Premier league suggests having a 39th game the Ferguson's gripe that it was their call to make when in fact it's the Glazer's call. I can assure you the Glazer's would like nothing more than to have them play a 39th in the states, and like them or hate them, unfortunately it's their call to make. All of these arguments that Americans that support a Premier league team are 2nd class fans or plastic is just bollocks. I'm a member of LFC Boston and the mere suggestion that they are plastic is just complete BS and is pure discrimination and utter predjudicial hypocrisy.
On Thursday, the 20 Premier League clubs agreed to look into the possibility of playing an extra round of matches every season - abroad. I'm totally against this decision, and am trying to show that there's a critical mass of fans who don't want their teams going to play an English Premiere League game somewhere outside of England. So I made this poll - and I want to invite people to go and vote and maybe if we get enough votes we can send it to the people in charge. Here's the link: http://www.pollsb.com/polls/poll/63...one-round-of-league-matches-per-year-overseas
it makes the schedules unbalanced, giving some teams easier seasons than others. One game might not seem much, but when important issues are being settled by a very narrow margin, it's significant. And the whole point of the league system is that it's meant to be equal. Add one game and you might as well scrap the idea of a balanced schedule completely. how is it unfounded? Essentially all you done is declared that things that matter here don't really matter because they aren't important to you. There are loads of American traditions that people he don't give a shit about. Imagine, for example, if American sports scrapped playing the national anthem before games as foreign tv didn't want to hear it. Now that's a minor point, but it might raise one or two objections I dare say. because they are making shit decisions based purely on greed. It's an idea designed to make a handful of rich men a little richer, and you slam the thousands/millions of fans against it as being selfish. ...and the fact that they'd encourage such ideas is one reason why chairmen such as glazer are not exactly popular. They are completely out of touch and not concerned with anything but money. the fact is, if Liverpool hit hard times and slipped in mediocrity, LFC Boston membership would nosedive. The number of Liverpool fans in Liverpool wouldn't. It can be nice to have overseas fans. Reading picked up quite a few in Korea, but as sure as day follows night, once we sold our Korean player to Fulham, you know those Korean Reading shirts were filling dustbins across the whole of the Seoul area.