So, it seems that football has reached a stage where the obsession with money has taken over to the extent where we see it dripping from every pore. Summed up by the Wayne Rooney and more recently, Tevez fiasco. Highlighted further by the sacking of the unglamorous yet exceptionally effective Chris Hughton, and most recently Sam Allardyce has lost out to the overly expectant board of Blackburn, before him Mark Hughes lost out to a more glamorous Mancini.
I ask today, has the ever increasing money driven nature of the Premier League given us cause to give up on it?
Perhaps most frustrating, is the recent desire of players to move to Spain. While players have used the reasons of family, lack of ambition and even climate to justify their wanting to leave their club, in reality one cannot help but look further than the difference in tax rate as being the significant factor in players wanting to quit English football.
Are the days of a Ronaldo and Cantona over? Is every top player going to instead be in Spain? Are we far away from a time when teams are to be filled with exotic sounding but distinctly average foreign players making up the majority of the sides in the Premier League.
With Fernando Torres’ loss of passion and form, Didier Drogba’s ageing (and inconsistency) and Cesc Fabregas’ possibly impending departure from the Premier League, are we going to have to switch over to La Liga to see the best players in the world compete?
One only has to analyse a few aspects of the Premier League to find your answers;
Andy Carroll, Scott Parker, Birmingham’s back 5, Blackpool, Gareth Bale, Ji Sung Park.
These players sum up the best of the Britishness about our League. The desire to win.
While the world of the recession may be far, far distant from the dream world of the Premier League, there are moments of life captured every weekend which is what makes football so amazing. The passion of the fans gives the players the hype and this passion will never be lost. Just ask Man United fans who might berate and foul mouth the American owners, wearing scarves to show their lack of appreciation if they would consider anything other than watching Manchester on a weekend.
Yes we watch it for the mercurial and the majestic. The one in a hundred players, the moments of utter brilliance. These iconic moments may fill the tabloids and be branded around the back pages, but it is the more basic human elements I am interested in.
One moment of the season I look back fondly on is Drogba’s reaction to missing the penalty against Tottenham at White Hart Lane; raising his hands apologetically to the travelling away fans. And I say this as a Chelsea fan. One cannot help but identify with that reaction, and almost every football fan has missed a penalty. The utter honesty of the moment was a pure brilliance. The façade of professionalism crumbled and the real man underneath shone through. And lets face it, if you don’t have the desire to succeed you will not make it in the Premier League, just ask Diego Forlan, who can only be described in cricketing terms as a flat track bully; exceptional against teams who roll over and die, but when the going gets tough he struggles.
These are the moments when we see a bit of ourselves in the modern day amphitheatre. While building heroes is part of the everyday man’s love for football, we can leave this to the tabloids and in the mean time be inspired by the passion, desire and courage shown by players every week. I think that money is football now and one cannot expect an agent to take his job any less seriously than a player, and the case is definitely no different in Spain. In short, you would be mad to choose to watch La Liga before the English Premier League.
There might be some mind boggling amounts of money being spent, there might be some ego maniacs and power hungry agents controlling the game, but as soon as it turns 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, I would not change the Premier League for the world.
La Liga is not far off replicating the SPL (Scottish Premier League) in being a two horse race. There are four, some would say five, potential teams gunning for the Premier League title this year, and another 5 competing for a place in Europe. La Liga has a long, long way to go before it reaches the amount of across-the-board passion as displayed this weekend.
Spain might have the best two teams in Europe, but for now let’s just be sure that the Premier League is the best in the world.
The article was written by Joe Austin for FootballFancast.com. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC – ed.
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