The out of control corruption of the top league in the world (and the fact they can’t govern themselves adequately), leading to seasons and seasons of football played under a cloud.
The embarrassing behaviour of top clubs like Real and Barcelona recently. Real getting on like babies over basic decisions and overshadowing events on the field with their nonsense. Barca not registering or even communicating with their own players properly as they jump from lever to lever and cheapen their legacy.
Organizations like FIFA pushing for more and more games, and exhausted/injured players going months with no form whatsoever because of it. Traditional tournaments (see the Copa America) getting cheapened and overplayed to make some quick money.
Multi club investors turning historically great clubs into mere feeder teams in a system that breeds even more corruption.
Top leagues turning into processions (like Ligue 1) that threaten the very future of the football in their country.
The exploitation of young footballers in places like Africa, basically being trafficked so others can profit.
And that’s before you even get to how much the entertainment value of the game is suffering from system football and an emphasis on athleticism. There have been so, so many poor games in the PL this season, and it will only get worse as more teams try and coach individuality out of the sport.
And that’s just a start…
Football is in the worst shape it’s ever been in, I feel. Money will eventually ruin the game completely.
A lot of these things have been so in football for most of its history. It's like when people complain that there’s too much doping in the Tour de France these days when from the very beginning it was rife with drugs.
The embarrassing behaviour of Real and Barca is not at all new. Countless examples but just one to mention the 1968 Copa del Rey final:
"Real Madrid fans, angry about the refereeing, started throwing bottles at the referee and Barcelona players in the last minutes of the match. Antonio Rigo, the referee of the final, was accused of favouring Barcelona. Regarding the two not awarded penalties, he said "I didn't see a penalty on Amancio, and Serena tripped. He wanted to deceive me by diving when he entered the penalty area." He also accused the Real Madrid manager of trying to bribe him with a pre-match gift. General Franco presented the trophy to Barcelona with a pitch full of bottles."
The Copa America was played every year bar 2 in the 1920s, it used to be every two years so there are actually some longer gaps between them now.
Exploitation of young footballers from places in Africa has been going on a long time.
Everything you read now about the game being better 20 years ago was written about 20 years ago too, always looking back to a golden era. Eamon Dunphy wrote a chapter in Only a Game in 1976 about how there were no entertainers in football anymore like the 1950s and how football was too focused on tactics and athleticism, this was when Cruyff would have been in his pomp.
I generally agree about there being too many fixtures and the Premier League ownership almost being like a list of the worst people in the world. But I've seen how people get nostalgic about the mid 2000s for example when football was really conservative and defensive in style and managers thought they had to play like Jose Mourinho to compete. There were so many bad games back then too, Chelsea winning every game 1-0 or 2-0 was hardly much of a spectacle, or Greece winning the Euros on set-pieces. Then there was the catenaccio era and earlier eras where talented players would just get hacked and hacked out of every game, borderline violence on pitches that were crap that didn't allow for progressive football, with stadiums that were falling apart. I think every era had pros and cons on the pitch and in organisation, you can't say this era is the worst.
This is a pretty unbelievable statement.
