Saturday, November 10, 2007
A Chairman's Wisdom
Len Shackleton played for Sunderland in the post war period. An immensely skilled player, Len is better known today for his autobiography, The Clown Prince of Football, where he took to task the people who ran the game back then. One chapter was entitled The Average Director's Knowledge of Football and was a single blank page. Not much has changed, 50 years on.
A couple of weeks back, in a story that somewhat slipped under the radar the new West Ham owner, cookie magnet Eggert Magnusson, came out with what he no doubt that was a spiffing idea.
The Premier League, thinks the Icelandic millionaire, needs to think about scheduling games in the USA in an attempt to tap into that huge market.
What a load of old wafers! God knows how many attempts there have been to make football work there; there was Pele and the NSL, the knock on effects of hosting the World Cup in 1994 and more recently the Beckham inspired hype of 2007. Still the game is a minority sport there.
I don’t doubt clubs would relish the opportunity to cross the pond and play league games in New York, Boston or San Francisco. Chasing the Yankee Dollar would mute any doubts about the effects of such time travel and of course the TV cameras would be there, every step of the way.
There would be trifling objections of course but in the pursuit of more money who cares what people at the grass roots think? There would be questions about season tickets. Would fans receive subsidized air travel or would they just be ignored as usual? Do the Americans really want to see Bolton play Wigan live? Do English viewers want to put up with know nothing American commentators screaming about the Offense and DEfense?
Why stop at America? Singapore last week hosted the match of the season in their domestic S League between first and second. SAF played Tampines in a crunch affair with the title still nowhere near being decided and just 3,000 fans turned up. Bring Liverpool over to play Manchester United and 60,000 would fill the National Stadium.
Perhaps Unitedl could play City in Bangkok and the Manchester Derby could be played out in Sukhumvit and Ramkamhaeng. Why stop there, the Africans love English football, why leave them out? We could have the Merseyside Derby live in Lagos, Newcastle against Chelsea in Soweto and what about the FA Cup Final in Dakar?
What’s scary is no doubt some clubs may already be thinking along these lines. Overseas, sponsors would queue up to pay for the privilege of being associated with the glamour of English football, fans would queue all night for tickets and merchandise and if the fans back home miss out, no problem. The clubs could sell the TV rights and no doubt produce a special replica shirt to commemorate the event.
A couple of weeks back, in a story that somewhat slipped under the radar the new West Ham owner, cookie magnet Eggert Magnusson, came out with what he no doubt that was a spiffing idea.
The Premier League, thinks the Icelandic millionaire, needs to think about scheduling games in the USA in an attempt to tap into that huge market.
What a load of old wafers! God knows how many attempts there have been to make football work there; there was Pele and the NSL, the knock on effects of hosting the World Cup in 1994 and more recently the Beckham inspired hype of 2007. Still the game is a minority sport there.
I don’t doubt clubs would relish the opportunity to cross the pond and play league games in New York, Boston or San Francisco. Chasing the Yankee Dollar would mute any doubts about the effects of such time travel and of course the TV cameras would be there, every step of the way.
There would be trifling objections of course but in the pursuit of more money who cares what people at the grass roots think? There would be questions about season tickets. Would fans receive subsidized air travel or would they just be ignored as usual? Do the Americans really want to see Bolton play Wigan live? Do English viewers want to put up with know nothing American commentators screaming about the Offense and DEfense?
Why stop at America? Singapore last week hosted the match of the season in their domestic S League between first and second. SAF played Tampines in a crunch affair with the title still nowhere near being decided and just 3,000 fans turned up. Bring Liverpool over to play Manchester United and 60,000 would fill the National Stadium.
Perhaps Unitedl could play City in Bangkok and the Manchester Derby could be played out in Sukhumvit and Ramkamhaeng. Why stop there, the Africans love English football, why leave them out? We could have the Merseyside Derby live in Lagos, Newcastle against Chelsea in Soweto and what about the FA Cup Final in Dakar?
What’s scary is no doubt some clubs may already be thinking along these lines. Overseas, sponsors would queue up to pay for the privilege of being associated with the glamour of English football, fans would queue all night for tickets and merchandise and if the fans back home miss out, no problem. The clubs could sell the TV rights and no doubt produce a special replica shirt to commemorate the event.
# posted by Me @ 10:37 AM 
