It's not that difficult. Back in '95 a single millionaire putting up one million pounds was a lot of money and it kept the Rovers as protagonists for 2-3 years. Arsenal committed to long-term sustainability nearly 20 years ago; by '06 they'd reached the peak with their resources with a barely-lost Champions League final after the previous two decades had seen them win five league titles (including two doubles), a then-unique cup-and-league-cup double, the Cup Winners Cup, plus they were generally consistent in the League (under Wenger they were always in the top 4 for a long while – does anybody remember that upon St. Totteringham's Day in '16 they managed to rise to runners up to Leicester?) and actually in the last few years of Wenger they got what not long before would have been by itself a career-crowning achievement of no fewer than three FA Cups in four seasons. They also had the advantage of Wenger doing things like watching his players' food intake in the initial years before everybody caught on –it's a bit like Liverpool in the 1940s right after the war. Tottenham under Pocchettino tried and went for the big one over a few years until they very nearly did it in '19 and then that was it. Leicester might be the one effort to succeed, but that, yet again, took a foreign millionaire to come in and shore up the club. He got far better value than was expected, but still the initial capital had to come from somewhere. Meanwhile, first Chelsea and later Manchester City decided just to engage in the pay-to-win model. Back in the 1930s River Plate gained itself the nickname ‘Millionaire club’ because they simply overbid for all their purchases and priced everyone out of business. Chelsea did it first. Abramovich just said: Expensive players? Cheque. Latest European champion manager? Cheque. Refurbish stadium? Cheque. And a 1.5 milliard pounds in the form of ‘loans’ which are now ‘forgiven’. *sighs* Manchester City just decided to play the same game and raised the stakes along the way. Chelsea had gotten Mourinho (twice) so they got Guardiola. They overpaid at first, but soon those ridiculous fees were the standard -players themselves had salaries announced that were more weekly than a ref made in a couple of months. Manchester United kept up only as long as Ferguson kept working miracles; if every year you make decent progress in the Champions League you'll ensure the millions keep coming in but since then they've been staggering, and there's only so many bunnies to pull out of that top hat. (sidenote: just like Arsenal's three-cups-in-four-years feat, Urited getting to scoff at a UEFA Cup is a sign of the times) Liverpool also got itself an organisation. It's just that instead of cashing in on anything that's not nailed down they actually are looking for a US-style win! win! win! model and building on the brand of being one of the most successful clubs not just in England but in UEFA as a whole. Other than weird wins like Birmingham winning a League Cup and Wigan an FA Cup the rest have been big-money clubs in England. If you want to look at parallels you can check up on how Barcelona suddenly couldn't hold on to Messi while Real Madrid's been propped up by an actual crook. Kaká as a bench-warmer is one of the greatest offences to football the Madridians have perpetrated recently. Edit: completely collapsed Urited have to go visit an Arsenal that's just won 4-2 at Stamford Bridge. And I'm reading that their scouts who've been working for two decades are leaving the club. Mamma mia!
Lovely optimism here Out of those Walker felt like a true humanitarian giving something back to the community. The rest not even remotely so and I'm not even sure yet if whitewashing is better or worse than nicking clubs assets in style of Glazers. Even FSG is looking like a decent bunch of blokes which is just an indication of how far in the wrong direction football has been going. I hate sport as a franchise. Out of the current PL succesful owners Leicester's one is likely the only one being more broadly liked I remember when Francis' fee was surpassing the million £ mark and Gray soon afterwards around 1.5M£ - bonkers then and not really worth mentioning anymore.
Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams touted as potential new owners of Chelsea… the rumour mill keeps grinding.
Can't help but laugh my head off at the honest press conference by Ralf Rangnick. He was a hair short of calling everybody lazy cu**s Anyway, soon the rich folks' club will include Geordie Arabia, sorry, Newcastle. Bet they'll spend a couple quid this summer. Chelsea and City have already shown the world that they can get away with it, zero consequences, so off we go! Edit: As for Rashford, I know he's been cack the whole season, but I am pretty sure he genuinely cares about 'feeding children'. You don't take on the UK government and do lots of lobbying work behind the scenes as a PR exercise. He was dirt poor himself as a kid, so it's not hard to see the motivation.
Everton look in very serious trouble now, especially with Burnley picking up form after sacking their manager. Meanwhile at Old Trafford:
It's sad to see how far down UEFA has plunged into its incarnation as the producer of one of the greatest TV shows in the world™ that member leagues have to ask it to keep its criteria for qualification to club competitions to be ‘sporting merit’ rather than shoehorning it in with arcane language for ‘historic performance’. It was already tried with River Plate and Boca Juniors being given automatic qualification for the South American Cup, which was only ended when, after many years of irregular seasons, River Plate managed to come in last in 2008 and still ‘qualified’. And it had already been qualified with the ‘Supercopa’ which was simply a cup tournament played by anybody who had won the Libertadores at any time, even if it had been 20 years earlier or more. It ended up occasionally hosting second-division clubs and was discontinued after a decade of degrading both itself and the ‘sporting merit’ CONMEBOL Cup, which ended up having all those clubs which, like the UEFA Cup, weren't in the Libertadores, but also those immediately below who were at the Super one.
And now we see Real Madrid win a series after being two goals down by scoring in the 90th, 91st and 95th minutes of the game. Not as bad as that time in Peru where a team that was 0-5 down got awarded six penalties, but still.
There is no doubt that they have the verb compete under their skin. It's increbible. On the other hand I can not understand how can Casemiro could get out of the pit without a single yellow card, one more time.
17 years ago Ancelotti was on the wrong end of another memorable remuntada. Now the man's Real has a chance to win the Champions again. After sending packing PSG, Man City and Chelsea. With all respect, it could have been Benfica, Villarreal (but absolutely, hats off to them, and their surprising winning streak) or Lille.
That PL finish was pretty lit. Was completely open there for a good while. Naturally I'm annoyed the oil money won in the end but it was close and fun. With Haaland going to City they'll quickly be even harder to play against next season.
Dear god, my Leeds survived.. what a horrible season. I really would like a boring, mediocre season next please!
Oh, come on, don't you like the possible Wigan-like thrill of playing the Cup final and a postponed relegation match inside half a week?
Just read this: Sorry Uefa, lies about Liverpool fans won’t wash this time As usual, UEFA goes out of its way to blame anyone but themselves. Real Madrid fans also getting attacked, and separate events both before and after this latest final in which French fans, without any intervention by Spanish or English ones, overrun pitches and/or force the suspension of matches by throwing projectiles and fireworks onto the playing field, is not taken into account.
Every serious article on this issue shows that it's the french security's fault : they mismanaged the entry on site from one of the transportation possibilities, and that led to chaos. But the minister of the interior prefers to blame english fans rather than his own forces (a journalist says people in the ministry told her it's quite simply because english fans don't vote in french elections).
You just can. Football management and leadership is incredibly complacent (remember when they forced Dortmund to play and lose after the bombing?) and only acts reactively. Meanwhile, France is gripped by toxic nationalism. Just ask Mbappé…
