Tonights game - a sad day for football in this country

[Uncle C]

Moan about foreigners in our game, but the fact remains that this seasons Champions League Final will feature most if not ALL of the following English players:

Brown, Ferdinand, Hargreaves, Carrick, Scholes, Rooney, Terry, Joe Cole, Ashley Cole, Bridge, Lampard, Wright-Phillips.

This group of players have been good enough to play a major role for their clubs in conquering all of Europes elite to get their respective teams through to the Champions League Final. And yet put them in an England shirt (apart from Scholes), and they routinely stink the place out against mediocre opposition and end up failing miserably.

What is wrong with our International set-up to cause this ? Capello must be looking at this particular Final slightly bemused by the fact that that so many of the players under his control are featuring in the premiere European club fixture, and yet can't even muddle their way out of a group containing the "powers" of Croatia and Russia.

Overpaid prima donnas who are too well off to give a toss about national pride.

 

[Skint Gull]

Okay, well don't take the sports channels then! If nobody was willing to PAY to watch football on the box, do you think the Premier League would ever have been created?

I have Sky and when I'm watching telly I would say 80% of the time it's on Sky Sports. That does not mean however that I watch a lot of football on it. I'll generally watch the 'Big Games' and for my sins, the England games but I generally watch a huge range of other sports that I am quite simply not prepared to give up.

Sky Sports shows, and I watch all of these:

NFL
Superleague
Cricket
Tennis
Speedway
Pool
Snooker
WWE
Golf

I can assure you, I'm not alone in saying I would have Sky Sports even without Premiership and Champions League footy

 

[Knotty]

Willow is right - it's far too easy to blame Sky for this. Cast your minds back to On Digital when the ITV companies took a punt by paying a LOT of money for football league rights. What happened? Nobody watched, and they went bust. On the other hand, Sky have always paid top dollar for top-level football. It might not hold all that much interest to fans of clubs like ours, but your average armchair fan and Joe public football fan wants to watch the very best if he's going to watch anything at all.

Still, there is definitely someone to blame for this debacle, and that is the FA. They encouraged a breakaway Premiership in the early 90s for no other reason than to snatch power from the 92-club Football League, as it was. Yet there was no form of internal compensation or taxation put in place, meaning the rich clubs have got richer and richer, and the turnover of the mediocre Premiership clubs now dwarfs that of the clubs that are really not far below them in the natural pecking order.

So in short, don't blame Sky, blame the FA. Incidentally, this is a pattern being repeated across the continent. Nations like Norway and Denmark now have a handful of "super clubs" whereas before there was relative parity. That's all changed thanks to Champs League money.

Exactly. I don't blame the top clubs or players either. If someone is going to throw money at them, why should they not take it? If Albion got to the Premiership we'd be taking it too.

When Sky began offering vast sums of money to football, the FA totally failed to ensure that the money was distrubuted in a way to benefit all levels of football. The top clubs and players would probably have been happy with half of what they were offered, because it would still have been a lot more than they were getting before Sky, and the rest could have been filtered down through the divisions.

 

[Spiros]

Moan about foreigners in our game, but the fact remains that this seasons Champions League Final will feature most if not ALL of the following English players:

Brown, Ferdinand, Hargreaves, Carrick, Scholes, Rooney, Terry, Joe Cole, Ashley Cole, Bridge, Lampard, Wright-Phillips.

This group of players have been good enough to play a major role for their clubs in conquering all of Europes elite to get their respective teams through to the Champions League Final. And yet put them in an England shirt (apart from Scholes), and they routinely stink the place out against mediocre opposition and end up failing miserably.

What is wrong with our International set-up to cause this ? Capello must be looking at this particular Final slightly bemused by the fact that that so many of the players under his control are featuring in the premiere European club fixture, and yet can't even muddle their way out of a group containing the "powers" of Croatia and Russia.

But look at the sort of games those players play week in, week out. They play a high-tempo fast game where the ball is won and lost frequently. Put them on the international stage and all of a sudden they try and play as if they've been moved to Serie A. If we had an England manager (of whatever nationality) who got these players to play the same kind of game as they play in the premier league then we'd see better results

 

[Storer68]

Why is that relevent? There are other sports (and programmes) that people like to watch on sky. People dont only get sky for the football.

really. how many pubs have special "Sky three" nights?.

People only get sky for the football.

 

[Storer68]

support their local team(s) for a start, no-one on here can complain when Worthing/BurgessHill/Peacehaven/Hove Park Colts etc etc go under if, while The Albion are away at Carlisle (for example) they've got their feet up in front of the 3.15 at Newbury

also what type of Toby pays £60 for a ticket to see a league match?

the same sort that pays £27 to watch divisoion 3 at an athletics track with a portakabin

 

[Vatican Citys No.2 Keeper]

Absolutely no interest in another over-hyped Premier leage match with Sky and ITV fucktards creaming themselves over the biggest match of the season - not.

The two sides will allegedly be sharing a winning pot of £115million - while back in Halifax their club goes under for the sake of a few hundred k (john Terrys average fortnightly salary).

While clubs are plummeting into administration and real English football is turning into a carcass savaged by agents, over-inflated salaries and prima donnas who are not worth a fraction of what they are paid, the average genuine football fan of clubs such as Rotherham Bournemouth, Luton and dozens of others are going to wall and being penalised over relatively small amounts of money.

Sky were dribbling on last night about the game signifying everything great about English football.

Utter cack. It signifies everything that is wrong about this once-great game.

Its not ours anymore. It is being sanitised and ultimately taken away from the majority of the football fan.

Man Utd, Cheslea the FA, Sky, agents, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Joey Barton, Flamini - f*** 'em. You disgust me.

tottally and utterly true. Had no plans on watching it anyway, but am busy nonetheless so thank f*** i aint watching it.

Also cos it'll be re-run of fa cup final from last year

 

[Gully]

I won't be watching it either, have a pre arranged get together with some friends, none of whom have any interest in football...might try to sneak home in time for the second half though!

 

[manilaseagull]

Need to get up at 3am if I want to watch it........no way.....oh ok alarm is set fo r0245

 

[Hannibal smith]

No doubt about it Sky money has changed the game but its predominantly its for the better. Just a look around the Emirates, Old Trafford and the city of Manchester stadium proves that it’s not all £50 notes sticking out of El Hadj Diouf & Joey Bartons pockets. Similarly, for anyone who complains that it’s a champions league not contested by champions it is an infinitely better standard than 20 years ago. If it’s good quality football you want, the champions league delivers especially the games between the English teams this year – Anyone who didn’t enjoy the 2nd leg of Liverpool V Arsenal should find another sport to watch.

If not saying its perfect (One look around my local tonight with the replica shirted Chelsea and Man U twats who don’t even know where Manchester is, let alone old Trafford is enough to make me heave) but it is better football world now than the one game on the TV in a blue moon, lump it, heads up, Brian Mclair is the best player in the league world we used to inhabit.

I’m looking forward to it – It’s the last Englishman playing football I will see for a while.

 

[ben andrews' girlfriend]

Agree with every word. And, as I always comment, quite frankly, a match between a US owned, Scottish managed club and a Russian (or whatever loyalty Mr Abramovich is claiming nowadays) owned, Israeli managed club packed with overpaid prima donnas from around the world (as per the cover of WSC) does not a triumph of English football make - hence our absence from the Euro Championships.

Excellent point made

 

[Pavilionaire]

Sadly that is the way business goes-everywhere you look in life smaller businesses are being swallowed up because they cant compete with larger businesses. You rarely see a greengrocer or fishmonger now because supermarkets have priced everyone else out the market. Do we boycott the supermarkets? Of course not.

You make it seem like a relentless one-way journey towards monopoly, but it doesn't have to be like that.

I work in Steyning and we've just had a new greengrocers open up (they're brilliant) and a new fishmongers is on the way. There are also 2 excellent butchers.

Nearby Henfield also has a town-wide "Plastic bag-free" zone policy where the traders have cut down, or eliminated, their provision of environmentally-harmful bags.

There is evidence on the ground that high streets are fighting back, and there is no reason why the same can't happen in football. If Cardiff can get to Wembley and Stoke get into the Premiership then there is hope.

Personally, I'm looking forward to tonight's match. It's Lampard vs Ronaldo, it's Terry vs Ferdinand, it's the USA vs Russia - there is certainly a lot at stake.

The big winners are the Premiership, though, and the problem when they broke away is that they've kept all of the cash for themselves, rather than filter it down through the leagues as would have happened if they'd remained in the Football League.

 

[Marshy]

great day for english football i think you miserable git !

 

[Kaiser_Soze]

Agree with every word. And, as I always comment, quite frankly, a match between a US owned, Scottish managed club and a Russian (or whatever loyalty Mr Abramovich is claiming nowadays) owned, Israeli managed club packed with overpaid prima donnas from around the world (as per the cover of WSC) does not a triumph of English football make - hence our absence from the Euro Championships.

Excellent point made

So you think Spanish fans didnt see it as a triumph for Spanish football when they had 2 teams in the CL final, and the same for Italian Football back in 2000 regardless of the nationality of the managers or the foreign players in the league.

I guess we might as well write off any successes that the England team will have under Capello because it will be an Italian managed nation with players from an American owned or Russian owned team or whoever it may be.

Easy got it right earlier. Too many people take a hollier than thou attitude now but how many of them will want tickets to the Champs League final if we ever made it.

 

[alan partridge]

I'm hoping it will be a really good game of football