Friday February 8, 2008
39 games - one step to oblivion
So. They’ve finally done it. The Premiership chairmen have come up with an idea so mad, so avaricious, so crushingly short-sighted, as to make the comic pronouncements of Fifa president Sepp Blatter seem benign by comparison.
I mean, Blatter drives you mad, but entertainingly so. His idea to have women footballers dress a bit more skimpily to lure the punters in? Funny. His edict saying injured footballers must leave the pitch and come back on again if they get hurt, thus giving the hard cases even more incentive to kick them out of the game? Amusing, if like me you’re more of the hacker persuasion than the silkily skilled. The “Van Nistelrooy rule”, allowing strikers to score goals even when they’re standing two miles offside? Hilarious, especially when you hear the losing manager whinging about it after the game.
But the idea that Premiership teams should play a single extra game in the season, abroad, against randomly selected opposition, with points to be added to those gleaned from the existing 38 games?
Not funny at all. Not close.
It’s the beginning of the end of league football, which is the foundation on which the game’s success has been built.
They used to say “the league table doesn’t lie”. Under this system, it will.
The 39th game kills the point of the Premiership. I for one will not attend any Premiership matches under such a system. What’s the point? The three points you get in the game you’re watching might be wiped out, when you draw Manchester Utd in Rio while your rivals get Crystal Palace.
There are, of course, two possible explanations for this scheme. One is that the Premiership chairmen are trying to shock us with the maddest idea they can come up with, so fans keep their mouths shut when they come up with something only slightly less crazy, like a world super-league that lasts all season long.
The second is that they really mean it.
Either way it’s got to be fought.
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