adexkola
Doesn't understand sportswashing.
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2008
- Messages
- 48,543
- Supports
- orderly disembarking on planes
Shout-out to Sir Alex, but we benefited from the expansion of the PL and the exposure from Sky, as much as we did from Sir Alex's work. So issue 1: size is not 100% related to merit; luck and position matters just as much.I understand that sentiment but there’s definitely an argument that the majority of those clubs are big because of their historical performances and the huge amount of hard work that laid the groundwork for that. It’s almost like saying feck the work that Sir Matt and Sir Alex put into United, if corrupt oil sheiks want to spunk money up the wall to bypass that hard work and get to the top of the footballing landscape they should be able to without question.
Second: with an established hierarchy of top historical clubs, it's insanely difficult for other clubs to profit purely from hard work. I would be more mad at Man City and Chelsea and PSG if there were examples of smaller clubs using prudent spending and bringing through talent to make it to the top and take advantage of slip-ups from the elite. The top clubs know this but they only cared when competitors came that could use money to negate the lopsided advantages they held historically. It's why I can't take the president of La Liga, Legas seriously; whining about City while allowing Barcelona to feck over Leganes? Less said about Southampton the better. And so on.
I'm all for proper financial regulation in the game that dampens the effect of just splashing money around (whether it's earned or not). I want success to go to the clubs that are managed superbly, that bring a lot of youth through to the first team, or find gems at discounted prices, and can innovate on/off the pitch. In the absence of that, I don't care whether the inequality is coming from teams that "earned it" or are new upstarts. I don't think it's healthy that the CL final stages are made up of the same old teams. I'll get behind an initiative that seeks to address all of that. FFP didn't do anything but pull up the ladder.