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I posted about this on a thread a while ago. It seems to me that Blatter and co fail to appreciate the essence of this whole issue; or rather they behave in a disingenuous way in trying to represent club football in a way which conforms to their idealised, probably sentimental fantasy rather than the blunt reality of the real world we all inhabit. I'll paste my previous comments;
'...Actually, when I look at this it is typical Eurocrat socialism with the inevitable bureaucratic overview. The vanquished cohorts of unreconstructed marxism will find any stick, no matter how tiny, with which to beat the tail of triumphant market-led capitalism. No matter that it is the now-unfettered market which has delivered the world's best players into the EPL; no matter that it is the same approach to business which has lined the coffers of the Brusssells bureaucrats by making the core EU states successful and rich; no matter that the CL is the world's leading competition BECAUSE of this wealth of footballing talent which the market in all its gory glory has brought to the EPL, the Bundeslige, Serie A and La Liga. Pompous little pinko bureaucrats like Blatter mouth these sanctimonious little essays in dirigiste politics, with no apparent sense of irony that their position owes everything to the success of the leagues in question. So, he might care to ask himself, who would actually want to witness the spectacle of an emasculated version of a demonstrably mighty club turning up for a match bereft of its superstars?
The man's a tosser of the first degree.'
Developing this point (which was expressed rather luridly - heat of the moment and all that) he states no more than the truth when he points to EPL domination of the CL yet no England team in the Euro's. That's because of the success of club football in England, and the EPL's attraction to the very best players. As I said above, who the hell would want to turn out on a European night to watch Arsenal or Chelsea (never mind Real Madrid or Barcelona) lining up without several of their star players, with whom they have conquered their domestic leagues, simply because Blatter and co cover their eyes and pretend that these clubs are something fashioned from their own prejudices rather than from the cut and thrust of reality? The idea is ludicrous, and yet no-one so far has pointed to this particular elephant in the drawing room.
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