Spike

Yeah that'll happen in Spain.

This film keeps coming up lately, I need a rewatch.

I’m not a fan of any team, but @Cicerois right I was a fan of Chelsea once upon a time but nowadays I just watch whatever match I fancy the most, and not as often as I used to. I kinda got fed up with the state of English and European football in general. I’m very critical of how English football is run, and I feel like I have to be extra emotional about it because the English have a bit of Stockholm Syndrome with the Premier League. Mainly I have empathy for the clubs and fans that are derided as ‘small’ as through no fault of their own, exist within a system that rewards those that are already successful while punishing those that struggle. It is a system design for the ‘old boys club’ and I find it quite upsetting and hypocritical when football fans get upset by clubs that challenge the ‘status quo’. I don’t like financial doping in this sport but the clubs that formed the Premier League created an ecosystem where that is the only way to break the hegemony. So it bothers me when fans of the ‘nobility’ clubs get offended by the nouveau rich as if their own clubs aren’t directly responsible for the environment that creates the sugar daddy clubs. Maybe as an outsider looking in it seems like the ‘old club’ working class fans are acting like the very same Tories that deride them as hooligans, in how they treat ‘small club’ fans. The only constant feeling of excitement I have for football is waiting for the yearly ‘lads, it’s Tottenham’ moment

Every team associated with the Super League and formation of the Premier League should be relegated.

You don’t get it at all. If you think this is an ‘agenda’ you are sorely mistaken. If you step back and wonder why United is the most famous club in the world and your answer is ‘cuz we are da best n da biggest’ you have no idea how media, marketing, or even the Premier League works on a fundamental level. Busby Babes and George Best have nothing to do with the globalisation of English football in the 90s, the strangulation of grassroots football, the commercialisation, the transition of supporters into customers. The Premier League was a tool to crush the smaller teams for the benefit of the wealthy clubs, there is nothing organic about how and what happened in the 90s, that was the death of football.

It is okay when Man United, Everton, Tottenham, Arsenal, and Liverpool, breakaway from the FA to form the Premier League to have predatory TV rights deal that literally take away money from the rest of English football, but it is bad when Man City have outside financial doping. Grow up guys. If you can’t see your own club for the poison that it is, you’re in denial. The absolute arrogance of some fans to out down other’s when their team is equally as guilty for the landscape of English football is astounding. The First Division money was literally reinvested into the entirety of English football, Premier League money only divided between Premier League clubs and not even evenly. For a culture that is keenly aware of classism, it is strangely defensive of the ‘old boys club’ that is football clubs. Blathering on about history and prestige like some crusty ponce sitting in his country side manor.

Can’t see the forest for the trees. I don’t know what to tell someone so in denial about how Murdoch, Sky, and the Premier League manufactured Manchester United to be the flagship of a product sold to consumers. There is nothing organic about the how and why of Manchester United, preferential TV slots, the lion’s share of sponsor and advertising money, the flagship whore of plastered over the world, forced into the spotlight by a media conglomerate that then created an athlete more famous than the club itself. Funny how a system that is built to facilitate the growth of a megaclub tends to do this. It is almost like Man United were the only team that received any marketing internationally, I wonder why? Maybe because the biggest English media company in the world had a vested interest in the Premier League and skewed a heavy bias towards one club…

And why is Man United rich? Because they enacted predatory TV deals in the 90s with the premier league and Rupert Murdoch, catching lightning in a bottle with a great team and manager during the period of mass globalisation of English football where it was sold as a product to foreign markets. Man United was literally the right place, the right time. United’s popularity and power is more thanks to Rupert Murdoch and David Beckham and than anything else.

United, Premier League, Serie A, and La Liga broke football before Chelsea did. They laid out the ground work with incredibw spending in the late 90s and early 00s. United dropped 30mill £ each on Ferdinand and Veron in 2002 and 2001. Real spent a total of 77mill € on Zidane in 2001 and 62mill € on Figo in 2000. Crespo, Vieri, Mendieta all cost over 40m € in the late 90s. The mid 00s actually saw a dip in huge transfers until the second round of galacticos with kaka and cristiano

Or you know it could be the billionaire that just bought the club

More like manual labourers are the backbone. ‘Farmers’ and engineers are the guys in the air conditioning telling others what to so.

@Stan don’t be sore about it mate, I didn’t think it would actually bother you. Don’t let it ruin your day xo

Because I knew you’d blow up about it. Come on mate, you know I’m just teasing

@Stan browsing TF355, posting, creating threads, editing thread titles, checking his rep score, and watching every game.

Ancelotti talks shit constantly. Don’t believe him.