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I don't know how you people in the UK put up with this stuff. You've got foreign owners controlling, not only just half the teams, but all the big clubs in the EPL.
They've done their best, particularly in the case of City and Chelsea, to try and buy titles, completely screwing up the transfer fee structure, so that very conveniently only they can afford the best players...and now they want to change the rules to further favor their interests...
This kind of garbage would never be tolerated in America and the NFL.
The English Premier League..yeah sure.
Quote:
Some of the Premier League's foreign owners want to abolish the relegation and promotion system, a senior English soccer executive said Monday.
With half of the Premier League's 20 clubs under foreign ownership, League Managers' Association chief executive Richard Bevan said if more teams are sold to overseas investors they could force a dramatic change to the rules.
"There are a number of overseas-owned clubs already talking about bringing about the avoidance of promotion and relegation in the Premier League," Bevan said at the Professional Players Federation conference in London. "If we have four or five more new owners, that could happen."
If they don't like it, get out of the English game.
I think the promotion/relegation system is one of the more attractive things about the sport..
Thing is, you've let people like Abramovich and Sheik what's his name..in the door..and people of that sort are used to getting their way.
They're not going anywhere. The EPL should have dealt with the issue of foreign ownership long ago. Instead the FA is more worried about which team has enough English players..
You also don't have to worry about the foreign owners who have top level teams - aside from solidarity or some other purpose they aren't going to be too impacted .... even with pro/reg the top 4-6 teams usually feast at the top, foreign ownership or otherwise
what you have is more "new" ownership, which happens to be foreign as opposed to the base ideals of foreign owners .... with the value of the league increasing and the cost of ownership increasing you'll get into the position where people want to protect their assets.
it will be the mid-level clubs that will push for this - the new owner (foreing or otherwise) that spent an amazing sum for control of a team that could face relegation if things don't break the right way ...... it's the argument of "i didn't spend all this money for a lower division team and revenue!"
new money doesn't care as much about old traditions - they care about building their money and investment
It'll never happen - just scaremongering like the 39th game idea some years back. The big six or so are so entrenched at the top I can't see them ever going down again anyway, so as said above their owners won't be bothered. I'm sure deep down most fans would prefer their team to have majority local players and local owners who live and breathe the club, and affordable tickets/reasonable player wages, but they know that the overall EPL product is world-class because of the foreign money - got to take the rough with the smooth! To me a bigger threat to the game is the idea of the top few teams winning the league every year from now until the end of time and the rest having nothing to realistically aim for.
It'll never happen - just scaremongering like the 39th game idea some years back. The big six or so are so entrenched at the top I can't see them ever going down again anyway, so as said above their owners won't be bothered. I'm sure deep down most fans would prefer their team to have majority local players and local owners who live and breathe the club, and affordable tickets/reasonable player wages, but they know that the overall EPL product is world-class because of the foreign money - got to take the rough with the smooth! To me a bigger threat to the game is the idea of the top few teams winning the league every year from now until the end of time and the rest having nothing to realistically aim for.
That bothers me about the EPL too. The only teams that have a shot at the title are City, Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal, Spurs, and Liverpool...and realistically, at least for this year, only the first three I listed are contenders..
When it comes to winning the Premiership, everybody else, in a 20 team league, is basically just playing out the string from the first game forward. It reminds me very much of MLB, only without the playoffs...
But then you have to think would the EPL be as popular if it was a more "competitive" league? It's THE most popular league in the world the way it is followed by La Liga where only 2 teams are dominant.
^^ Well, you're from Scotland and not a Celtic/Rangers fan - don't you wish Dundee had at least a chance of winning the league any time soon, in your lifetime even? I think one of the reasons the Champions League is more popular and considered more important than 10 years ago compared to domestic leagues is because as Europe's a bigger market you don't get the same two, three, four teams dominating every single year.
Ben in an ideal world I would. Scotland is different though, Celtic and Rangers DRAIN the rest of Scottish football but in England there is still quality sides outside the "big 6" and even sides in the Championship attract good players, the Championship is the 4th most watched league in Europe, a 2nd tier league!
Unless average joe fan is uninterested in pro/reg anymore, I doubt that the owner's hollering will come to be anything more than that.
Otherwise, It's all down to perspective. I remember reading in Soccernomics that some fans have a beef with only a few teams being in the running realistically to win hardware regularly. But then again as paul said, the EPL and La Liga are terribly popular despite (or maybe because?) of the same teams always winning.
From an American standpoint, a big factor is individual players. The biggest teams seem to have the brightest star players. It reminds me of how people in Europe or China may not have any emotional ties to Los Angeles, but they'll root for the Lakers because that's where Kobe/Gasol plays.
Continuing from my American standpoint, I can only stand to watch matches between these "supersides" when watching league games. Generally speaking there doesn't seem to be much possibility of upsets due to the talent and revenue gaps (try GULFS) between teams. Therefore a lot of my attention goes to the Champions League.
It's a sad state of affairs when you can commend England on it's league being most competitive with six (out of twenty) sides as opposed to La Liga's two.
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